The great Super Committee is dead, it just basically hasn't stopped squirming and kicking on the floor. Thank God. All that needs to be suffered through is the non-stop wanking to come of bad faith austerity cultists like CNN's Erin Burnett and Jon Avalon and the rest of their pitiless basic cable peers for the rest of the week. The next big action will be the bipartisan undoing of all of the "deep" Defense cuts that were "unstoppable" and "etched in stone" as a part of the trigger housed in the mighty watergun to the head of the Super Committee members, and the shocked look on the usual Democratic suspects faces upon discovering that the only thing most likely to be "unstoppable" or etched in stone" are the domestic spending cuts.
I'll take it when you consider what the alternative was by comparison.
The Super Committee's best possible outcome was total failure, because reaching an agreement on any so-called "Grand Bargain" was always a Democratic Party suicide pact. Thank you, GOP, for being you. The Movement Conservative Rightwing has spared us the agonizing experience of hearing about "the Democrat Party Social Security Cuts" or "the Obama Social Security Cuts" in the spirit of the Right's Medicare ads of 2010. Voters who vote for Democrats don't do so to be rewarded for their trust and their support with Alan Simpson's or Pete Peterson's policies.
The Republican Party did us all, and our elected officials, a huge favor.
The only thing that kept the Democratic Party from making one of the biggest political mistakes in modern times was Movement Conservative's utter refusal to consider any serious proposal to raise revenue. We owe the worst of the GOP a great debt here that we can't ever repay. Once the Democratic Party has surrendered being the last line of defense of the Social Safety Net it will never get that mantle back. Ever. The GOP will have won a profound and landscape altering victory that puts everything gained in struggle to improve the lives of the non-wealthy over the last century at stake. No matter how bad the Evan Bayhs, Blanche Lincolns, Joe Liebermans, or Ben Nelsons got, no matter how big the Heath Shulers, Jim Coopers, or Harold Fords pandered to forces who don't care if a Democrat (including them) even won another election again, there were somethings you could trust.
The Democratic Party at least has always had its credibility on the Social Safety Net, and, for now, it still remains preciously in place for Democrats to use to remind people that there is are still real reasons for the party to exist.
Harold Ford hasn't returned to DC, except as a corporate hack or professional concern troll, for a reason.
So-called 'sacred cows' in the American social contract are vital to the survival and expansion of the Democratic Party. The GOP being awful is not enough to make the public believe in the Democratic Party. While the GOP's pathetic answer to hunger is to take food stamps away, as if taking away the attempt at a solution is solving the problem, the Democrats still need their safety net credibility to run as a better alternative. "We suck, but the Republicans are worse" election cycles are usually pretty bad because you remind people that they can't trust you, but, since the other guy is worse, it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. I have never been involved with any organization that is quicker to blame the voters for its failures to make an argument other than "me too, just it will be humanely done over time". It is maddening that so many think the GOP being wretched is enough. It's not. The Democratic Party wakes up with no credibility on Social Security and Medicare, it wakes up a political speed bump and not a party. I do not understand why this isn't something that is burned into the heads of every Democratic Party office holder at any and every level of government service.
The only real reason to vote for a Democrat is the hope, sometimes greatly misplaced based on individual Democrats performance, that the Democratic Party has some firm minimum standards it won't throw away. That it stands for something. When you look at the Republican farm team of extremist Governors in Maine, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, and Florida there isn't anything they won't attack. From child labor laws, to eliminating the minimum wage, to forced overtime, to children working for a training wage, or for free. They are the very worst. Which is exactly why the Democrats need to ruthlessly maintain their credibility on the Social Safety Net and stand up to the forces of the cult of austerity, not join them. Not only is the GOP being fetid not enough to paper over a credibility-free Democratic Party, it actually helps the GOP by making people stop believing that anyone is walking the wall for them.
Make no mistake, as with healthcare reform, if the GOP had any sense, and we are all blessed that they don't, the Right would have recognized the opportunity being handed to them on a silver platter to cripple the Democratic Party for the forseeable future. The Democrats wanted a deal that gave them some face-saving compromise from the Right and they were willing to give up a lot to get it. 100 years of hard fought victories were on the table to be subject to negotiation. All it would have taken was for them to sit at the table and deal. They could have easily taken control of the auterity game and America's immediate future by being willing to take advantage of Democratic Party's bipartisanship fixation. If the overrated Right had the saavy to just open their eyes and see what was there, they would have determined the bare minimum of taxes and revenue to get a deal, to put together a fig leaf package of taxes and revenues, that would have allowed their eager Democratic peers to immediately agree to jump off of a cliff and cede the nation to the second Gilded Age.
Democrats have been willing to do just about anything to succeed. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) admitted this morning that super-committee Dems “put every single sacred cow on the table” in order to help reach an agreement, suggesting major entitlement reforms were very much a part of the mix.
John Kerry. Dick Durbin. You gentleman didn't fall off a turnip truck yesterday. What were you people thinking?
"There is one sticking divide; that is the issue of shared sacrifice," Sen. Patty Murray said on CNN's State of the Union. She also said that tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration amounted to a "line in the sand" that the parties could not bridge.
"The truth is at this point today Democrats have made some really tough decisions and come to some pretty tough choices that we're willing to put on the line … but only if the Republicans are willing to cross the line on the Bush tax cuts," she said.
Is there a single Democrat in DC who remembers the last time the Democrats agreed to painful auterity in the name of deficit reduction and balancing the budget? The Medicare cuts, the cuts to foodstamps and low-income housing?
Not one dime went to pay down the debt in the end. Not one penny.
Every single penny that was saved by the painful cuts passed during the Clinton years that led to the surpluses of the late 1990's went to justify passing both Bush tax cuts. Not a penny went to reducing the deficit. Every penny of any "Grand Bargain" passed would have gone to justify the next Movement Conservative President's mega tax cut.
Think about the Bush Tax Cuts for a moment.
The Bush Tax Cuts are going to expire, gone, poof!, time's up, all you have to do is... nothing. Nothing at all to end them for good. No "Grand Bargain" necessary.
There was literally no political upside to a "Grand Bargain" for anyone but Republicans and for Movement Conservatism, the Bush tax cuts go away with no effort whatsoever, and still there was room for a really bad deal to be had if only the GOP would put together something with a little more face-saving power than "Fuck" and "You". It's a wonder to behold what the GOP has done. The Party that they hate with every fiber of their beings was willing to roll back decades of hard work, and "Fuck You" was still the only thing they were willing to roll with because they expect the Democrats to just quit or cave.
Thank goodness this kind of dimwitted willingness to sit down with Movement Conservatives who couldn't be blatantly acting more in bad faith, as if this time it was going to be in good faith because the GOP pinky-sweared, went nowhere. But what's damning is that the Super Committee existed in the first place. That the GOP was so inflexible and so over-the-top in it's slavish devotion to the idea that anything less than "we get 100%, you get 0%, and that's bipartisanship!" ruled the day was truly a gift to the Democratic Party because they would have owned abandoning their responsibilities to the poor and the middle class, and the GOP would have added insult to injury by running on the Democrats cutting Social Security and Medicare, and we don't have a news media that would have offered up any reference to the Paul Ryan Plan or the Bush privatization scheme. The 2010 bad faith mugging on MediCare would have been the 2012 mugging on the entire social safety net.
Someday, I think the entire Democratic Party is going to look back on this era and say "what the hell were we thinking?!?" But for now, we have to settle for Republican obstructionism helping to save the Democrats from themselves.
Nobody should be exhaling in utter relief more than rank and file Democrats who do not want to see the Democratic Party crushed by a 2012 Republican wave election. Thank you Darth Grover Norquist, Tea Party, and Fox News whackjobs and wingnuts for wanting no victory but total victory. Any chance the Democratic Party has to win the House back, add to the US Senate majority, and get Obama reelected to the White House is partially owed to you for your wonderfully well-timed obstinance. Lord knows far too many of the Democrats were far too willing to jump off the cliff just because Alan Simpson and Pete Peterson told them to.
I thank you for not budging off of "Fuck" and "You". For not seeing just what a royal screwjob you had before you to stick in my parties ribs, I thank you for every phone not slammed down on my ear or door slammed in my face over the next year as I try to help send more Democrats to DC who are not suicidal to join the far-too-small circle of the non-suckers and non-rubes who are already there.
I intend to offer you Elizabeth Warren and others like her, with my sincerest heartfelt regards, as a US Senator as a "thank you".