Republicans are just beginning to realize how they have been played...
Charley Sheen, Donald Trump and Speaker Boehner are all winners, but the messaging coming into the extension of the debt ceiling talks is that Obama is a terrible negotiator and bends over backwards to give the store away.
Consequently if the talks fail it must be the Republicans fault. Obama has the ultimate power now, the ability to do nothing, to just say no to everything and nobody is going to believe a Democrat failed to cave.
Republicans have promised their base something big. Obama knows the last thing they want is to destroy the full faith and credit of the US and its banks and corporations because its the banks and corporations that pay them. He can give them nothing and let them explain why this time they failed to win against Mr. Softy.
I know that this idea is beginning to surface on the right wing blogs; what was important to them wasn't the money it was hurting something important to Democrats. Now it turns out the budget cuts were paper cuts, cuts to things like agricultural subsidies and Defense programs.
How many of you were aware that what is forcing us up against our debt ceiling is our unpayed off borrowing of trillions of dollars from the dully funded Social Security trust Fund, and that the reason republicans want to attack it is they don't want to pay the money back.
Go back and look at what happened when Obama gave a two year extension on the Bush Tax cuts. The Start treaty and the Lame Duck fall happened. Since then revenue enhancement has begun to drown out the Republicans call for austerity. Tax cuts for Billionaires, the elimination of tax loopholes, Defense cuts are all on the table after the Republicans lose an election in which they have painted themselves as against everything American voters want.
Obama seems to like to do his community organizing from behind the scenes, but despite not putting on a pair of comfortable shoes and joining the picket lines he has orchestrated the clamoring voices that are beginning to be heard arguing that its important to protect Lily Leadbetter, equal pay for equal work, collective bargaining, the EPA, Planned Parenthood, a woman's right to have healthcare that includes breast exams, contraception and abortions, the repeal of DADT... the right of people anywhere on the planet to peaceably assemble and petition their government for the redress of grievances.
The other day there was a long list of his accomplishments which met immediately with objections that he had failed to deliver on an equally long list of important things which have caused us to see him as a betrayal of all we had hoped for. To claim that if you look at the whole picture he tends to trade material for positions that give him control of the center has to be evaluated not in the opening or the middle game but the end game.
When the economy recovers we will start to see things like people who have been unemployed for four years suddenly have four interviews and job offers in a week. Check. When alternative energy comes on line and we cease having to divert most of our treasure into resource wars in the Middle East and Asia there will be a perception that social security, medicare, education and personal freedom are worth saving. Mate.
The second four years for Obama will begin with a landslide for progressive Democrats in the 2012 elections. People will begin to see jobs and more money in their pockets, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investments will start delivering alternative energy, mass transit and healthcare jobs. The pump will be primed. The economy will once again grow rapidly.
Then the Republican naysayers, the you can't afford anything, we are taking it all away from you Scott Walker governors and the teabagger house will be recalled and their ridiculous social legislation subjected to referendum after referendum.
My expectation is that as we retire from our job as the world's cop on the beat and pass out badge on to a well organized community of nations who can as with Libya learn to act together rather than unilaterally, we will have all the money necessary to pay back our debt to social security and fund healthcare and education and mayby even some climate change mediation