I gather that President Obama is opting for a compromise in which long-term unemployment benefits will continue, but so will the entire spectrum of Bush-era tax cuts. I won't criticize the president harshly for this compromise; I will instead do some simple-dino thinking out loud, set (if you like) to the background music from "Eve of Destruction." I opine that there are two ways to look at the matter -- which seems best?
1. Thanks to our predictably dim-witted, memory-free electorate, the GOP now has a much stronger hand and is essentially blackmailing the entire country to benefit its own prospects for 2012 and the tiny sliver of ultra-wealthy citizens that is the party's main purpose for existing at present. Faced with such prospects, the president might be viewed as having acted appropriately and compassionately. Sure, it adds to the deficit/debt problem to the tune or almost a trillion dollars and will eventually give the conservatives an even stronger hand when it comes time to ELIMINATE all those annoying social programs ordinary people need. But it's still what I called in an earlier post "keeping a declining republic going with baling wire and chewing gum." It's either that, one might say, or run with the prospect of letting the country fall apart right in front of the current generation's eyes.
In this view, all those brilliant so-called liberal or independent voters who stayed home last November "to send a strong message" have nobody to blame but themselves, the Blinking Idiots of America. If you're amongst that honorable assembly, I've got your message right here, channeled (as near as this dino can attune its liberal sensibilities to the appropriate frequency) straight from the Grand Old Party: "If you don't have a net worth of at least eight figures, we don't care what happens to you, now or at any other time. Go straight to hell, you twenty-first-century peons, and don't bother sending us the bill for the trip."
2. President Obama might have done best to let the cuts expire, then strongly and continually advocate the proposal and reinstatement of working-class and middle-class tax cuts and an unemployment benefits extension, all the while excoriating congressional Republicans when they resolutely refuse to help millions of people whose well-being is of no interest to them. This is a difficult and painful path, especially since, if I understand the process correctly, come January House Democrats will no longer be able to drive the legislative agenda. In that body, the Republicans will have the main say in what gets proposed and voted on. The most likely scenario is two years' worth of gridlock. The up side of this strategy would be, of course, that at least the GOP would come under intense pressure not to do the worst it is clearly meditating to do. What I'm describing is something like Bill Clinton's gambit against the shutters-down of government back in the 1990's. It worked pretty well for him, I recall -- the conservatives backed down because people rightly blamed them for their juvenile temper tantrums and stalling tactics while people suffered. The president's hand might be very strong in such a case: "Do something! Stop arguing about what did or didn’t happen last month or last year! Do something, you mean-spirited rotters!" It's exactly the sort of blinkered-historical-vision, short-term, bark-it-up strategy that Republicans themselves are so good at (as when they call liberals "whiners" for reminding us that Bush 43's mistakes are partly the cause of our current troubles) -- why not turn it against them for a change to do the people a good turn?
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Wanted to add a simple-dino thought: I suspect that the Democrats' rationale often credits "the people" with more memory and analytic power than they really possess. If the tax cuts were allowed to lapse, Dems fear that just about everyone will blame them eternally for it. I don't think they would -- it probably wouldn't be more than a couple of weeks (given a halfway decent PR campaign) before the only subject of public talk became, "Obama wants to reinstate tax cuts for working people and the Republicans won't let him do it." People tend to focus very narrowly on the present predicament and they quickly lose interest in past whys and wherefores. In this case, such narrowness would work to the Democrats' advantage, but perhaps they just can't bring themselves to believe that.
ReplyDeleteWhile I believe your thoughts are pretty accurate, the Dems are mostly spineless and not willing to stand up to the GOP.
ReplyDeleteThere were other ways to deal with this but I think the president did what he had to do to relieve the pressure on the middle and poverty classes and the unemployed. He must be sick and tired of hitting that brick wall no matter which way he turns.
I think the best way to move forward is to broadcast everywhere just how much more money tax cuts for the wealthiest will be costing future generations and stick McConnell's ugly mug right out fron along with his despicable cronies.
I am so disappointed, I can't even muster a nasty rant.
ReplyDeleteYes, in a sense I'm not really disappointed in the President but I most certainly AM disappointed in the country -- Obama's a political realist, and he surely realizes that he's just been handed a bitter cup from which to drink: the people have decided to turn one chamber of Congress over to a thoroughly irresponsible political party, and even the other chamber is dysfunctional since you need 60 votes to say good morning, let alone get something important done. It's not necessarily wrong to calculate that the Republicans wouldn't lose a nanosecond's sleep over, say, poor people's tax rate going from 10% to 15% on the first of January. Depressing as hell, but not wrong or to be dismissed as a mere cave-in, either. Perhaps the man is just playing the bad hand dealt to him by a bevy of childish dolts. How well he's played it is open to question, but it's not a good hand in any case.
ReplyDeleteTo consider: I found it startling today to a) hear a President of the United States call his opponents "hostage-takers" and b) to find myself thinking the comparison entirely appropriate. Wow! How far we've descended in recent years!
dino, don't know how I missed this post! I like your option #2. I also agree that th public memory tends to focus on the moment and that we would move on from blaming the Dems to placing the focus where it belonged--the Repubs. Regrettably, I think the time for option 2 may have passed. In spite of the voices of a few Democrats raised in firm opposition to the compromise idea, most are still sitting silently as if bewildered by it all. Reid apparently cannot muster the votes in the senate that would end debate and get the bill already passed in the House to a vote. That bill does not include tax cuts for the wealthy, only the middle class. Currently the Dems have enough votes to pass the bill (only a simple majority is needed) but not the 60 votes needed to end debate and get to a vote on the merits. This procedural nonsense in the Senate will be the end of us all.
ReplyDeleteSheria,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughtful response. Yes, this tax-rates & such bill is moving rapidly, and so, I've noticed, are perceptions of it. All the action seems to be on the latter front: the MSNBC-talker split is really interesting: Rachel and a few others started off saying it's a wretched deal, while Lawrence O'Donnell (whom I recall being a Clinton guy – he's a sharp analyst and often blows younger libs out of the water because they're short on experience and specifics and long on ideals) is clearly in favor of it as approximately the best Dems are going to get, and not all that bad. The "spin" is that it's a decent stimulus bill by way of taxes other than the much-hissed upper-income brackets -- not a favorite Democratic strategy for stimulating the economy, but if it's the only way, they'll take it. Supporters keep quoting a prominent conservative columnist as saying the Republicans got taken to the cleaners, all things considered. I wouldn't go anywhere near that far because the columnist in question seems to me pretty far to the right, so anything short of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner personally casting widows and orphans into snowbanks, for this guy, might be a sellout of conservative principles. (And maybe they should toss a couple of cute kittens and puppies as well: "I can has cheezeburger? -- Help!" Kerplunk. "The puppies and kittens should have been non-negotiable!" I can hear the ultra-conservatives muttering in disbelief as the bill passes....)
President Obama seems pretty calm and upbeat about the whole thing, as if he senses that it's not a bad thing for him or the Democrats after all, going into 2012. Passage might allow a few other big bills to make it through the lame-duck session as well. On verra….
Seems to me that we have punted on the deficit/debt issue, but I guess that's not surprising since you can't deal with deficits in the grips of a horrible recession. It's a long-term structural income/outgo problem, and it won't be solved overnight. My own long-term fear is that "we the people" have become pretty much an idiocracy and will not be able to deal with this structural issue, and will go to our dooms like the kittens and puppies murmuring, "But ... but Mommy and Daddy, why can't I has cheeseburger?" until we, too, go plop-kerplunk-SPLAT and, after we recover from the daze induced by the fall, we'll realize that we have just voted in Sister Sarah as Madame Presidente de la Vie and Halibut-Basher-in-Chief. Or something like that.