Not that the political footrace is the most important aspect of this story, but it's hard not to be happy about evading cuts in food inspection programs and Pell grants (previous post aside). I think the thing that his base often forgets is that the default position at this point is a standstill, much as we saw with the health care reform debate. That, as we saw, is the most perilous possibility for reelection. The president, we are finding, must swim forward, or he suffocates. We have seen him take a lot more proactive position in terms of moving policy forward, with the realization that it's going to come at the cost of the "purity" of policy decisions. My opinion of what all this is about is that the executive branch is attempting to drive solid economic growth leading up to the election, since the rate of economic growthin the year before election often determines who wins. At the same time, a lot of what he is giving up is Republican candy--sweet and attractive, something they'll surely go for, but insubstantial in the long run, and not even effective in drawing them votes in the short term. The mistake of the president's base, it would seem, is that their "upset-o-meter" is cued to report the opposite of "how happy Republicans are at a given deal," instead of a more appropriate metric like "the effect on long-term prospects of getting stuff passed they actually want."
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