[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
There was a lot to like in President Obama’s press conference yesterday, the resolute leader of the Democratic Party flatly declaring that of course America would not be held hostage, the United States a possible deadbeat nation? Never. Of course it begs the question why this sterling reason and adherence to principle was chucked into the landfill two years ago, but growth is always good.
The Republicans are beautifully trapped, if “mistakes” of two years ago in negotiating with hostage-takers carry a silver lining it’s that naturally the Republicans expect Obama to cave on this latest pledge, the Republicans have huge internal Party expectations that the debt ceiling hostage scenario will deliver. The President will stand firm with the immobility of Half Dome while the Republicans implode into a useless mass of political jelly, soon to be massaged into a heavenly clean debt ceiling with no hostages released whatsoever. Right?
"On the debt ceiling, the White House tries to solve its credibility problem," Washington Post press courtier Ezra Klein squirrelly stating the obvious in the President’s position of immutable resoluteness. Klein and the White House are obviously positive the public flaying of the President into this corner will convince the Republicans he will never, ever back down, and it will be very interesting to see how the Republicans react. There’s precisely zero in Obama’s history to demonstrate he will not cave, but this time there is no option, they’ll have to accept a clean debt ceiling with just nothing, the President absolutely cannot budge in any scenario, not after yesterday.
I’d like to point out to Mr. Klein how he earned his status of courtier, for credibility is not a single-issue mental interpretation by the little people, not by a long shot. Try this trick, Mr. Klein, go to your significant other and state well, I rang up $10,000 on the credit card when I said I wouldn’t. Now trust me as I take off for this bachelor party in Vegas. Heh.
Credibility is never a one-shot deal related to one issue in the little people’s lives, why is it magically granted to the powerful? If the President has a credibility problem, Mr. Klein, he has a credibility problem, there’s never any need to make excuses or rationalizations for him, I’m sure he can handle that himself. If you see the issue of trust then remember your duty is reporting, not enabling, the little people have to trust you too. Capito?
Now then. Although the debt ceiling strategy appears to be executed perfectly in this excruciating evolution that terrible word and political bomb is still with us, sequester. Who the fuck comes up with these words in DC, by the way? I’ve never heard it or seen it used anywhere all my life, now it appears as some reeking filthy cloak to something obviously cruel and stupid, if it was a good thing DC would use a word everybody could understand. Right?
Anyway, the debt ceiling is solved but President Obama is still resolutely on his Pivot to Deficit road from the disastrous political adjustments of 2011, you know, the same evolution that scrapped the ozone rules, that chucked Plan B, and that prosecuted cannabis clubs in California. I obviously didn’t get the campaign memo that the past is meaningless, holds no lessons or valuable truth, and that the path to maturity and wisdom always arrives by looking Forward. Sorry!
Ah yes, there will never be any negotiations over the debt ceiling but the sequester is still there, the President still foolishly claiming he was elected to solve the deficit “problem.” The President was elected to produce jobs and save us from that cruel Romney who, as Charles Pierce pointed out, could care less if the little people were eating grass by the end of his term.
What we should be hearing in any sane world connected to firm economic reality is how the President will pass his latest stimulus, or at least how the Republicans are stopping it so we can take the House back in 2014. Instead the little people can look forward to precisely the wrong bone-headed fucked-up dumbass DC policy approach of austerity in trying to produce jobs, how is it possible our precious economic wisdom of the last 80 years means nothing?
Behold the awesome powers of centrism. There is hope for the little people in that the Republicans will be so smashed and in disarray from the debt ceiling that they cannot cogently respond in any fashion to sequester negotiations and the whole horrendous idea quietly dropped. It could happen, extremely weak tea but all there is, for after the Depression and 80 years of alleged learning and even after the austerity disaster in Europe happening right now DC and the Obama administration are politically lost in space, they cannot or will not get the message from the little people: fuck the deficit. Little people got no jobs, got no money.