All of this brouhaha on the internet misses the point -- if Barack Obama becomes the Democrat who shepherds through massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as the vanguard of a New Austerity, he will fail as a President, both immediately and in the long term.
And those of us who predicted this will be exactly as culpable as those of us who believed him when he said he was a Democrat -- not at all.
As we continue to watch the Debt Ceiling Failure, including this Plan B Deal, we need to remember several things.
1) This is an entirely chosen failure on the part of Obama and the Dems. They were perfectly capable of passing a large debt ceiling increase in 2009-10 that would carry them through in the case of a GOP victory in 2010. It would have been perceived as an utterly ordinary housekeeping vote, just like it was throughout the Bush years.
2) Obama's messaging on this issue has been beyond terrible. He has spent his Presidency explaining why dozens of terrible policies are needed to keep the Invisible Bond Vigilantes happy. Yet, when facing a crisis that genuinely affects the bond market as such, he has been vacillating and confusing and refuses to call for a clean debt ceiling bill.
3) Every discussion with Obama about what kind of deal he would like includes taking a hatchet to entitlements. This isn't about what he's willing to give up. It's about what he wants to see happen. The man hired Alan Simpson, people.
Fundamentally, President Obama has bought into the Austerity Myth, that the problem with the American economy is that it is too generous to its poor, working-class, and middle-class residents, and that generosity has depressed their desire to go to work -- and that's why we have unemployment.
Krugman notes this shift toward supply-side theory.
Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.
Yep, the false government-family equivalence, the myth of expansionary austerity, and the confidence fairy, all in just two sentences.
All of these myths are utterly false, and this isn't a sports game, so they will have real-life effects.
Barack Obama's problem is that he's a supply-side austerian, who isn't going to be rescued by a Democratic Congress insisting on protecting social programs like Reagan was. And when he collaborates with Republicans on dismantling our safety net, he will reap the rewards of austerians since the beginning of the Chicago School -- weak economic growth, the destruction of a thriving middle class, and widespread poverty and misery.
Yes, Barack Obama's Supreme Court picks will be with us always, and so it is worth vaguely hoping that he wins the Presidency in 2012. But there are reasons to think that he is to the GOP's right on entitlements, and so there is reason to think that he, like all economically rightward Presidents, will fail even harder than Mitt Romney to produce prosperity.
And that has nothing to do with Jane Hamsher, or any other economically literate person. It has nothing to do with clapping loudly enough. It has nothing to do with loyalty or race or hope. It has to do with President Barack Obama embracing the failure of his own Presidency.