2011 archive

Jonathan Bernstein tries to step back and get some perspective on the debt ceiling debacle. It’s recommended reading. A nugget:

(L)ots of people just don’t understand the limitations of the presidency within the political system. There’s some of that now, too.

Voters put a lot of teabaggers in the House in the last election. As Helen Philpot observes (in another post that’s recommended reading),

You get what you vote for.

Addendum, a Few Moments Later:

Also, the Booman:

I don’t know if it is just dawning on people or what, but electing dozens of tea baggers to Congress means that horrible things are going to happen. When you finally find out what those horrible things are going to be, you shouldn’t act shocked. This is why it was vitally important that people on the left show some unity of purpose instead of taking their ball and going home. But, when did that ever happen with a Democrat in the White House? . . . It’s just who we are, and why we lose. Still, the magical thinking is depressing me.

President Obama is not the problem. Republican policies and tactics are the problem.

President Obama cannot fix the problem.

Only voters can.

Peter Bergman discusses why this is not politics as usual. It’s only about 10 minutes. Listen up.

To follow up my previous post:

Bill Maher tries to be sound absurd.

Obama said he had been left at the altar a couple of times. And he asked a great question. He said, ‘Can they say yes to anything?” A Democrat now has offered cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the Republicans still said ‘no.’

What is the Democrats’ next offer?

Kansas goes back to being a slave state? Obama moves back to Kenya?

Actually, I think he’s pretty much nailed what the Teabagger dream.

The Booman explains that nothing Obama could have done would have produced a compromise on the debt ceiling.

In doing so, he maintains (I think correctly) that President Obama had no way of averting the stalemate, because the Teabaggers in the House of Reprsentatives are implacable true believers. I suggest that everyone inclined to think President Obama has a magic wand to make the stupid stop read the post. A nugget:

For every Robert Reich who is carping on the left, there are a dozen unhappy Republicans who think the GOP is acting recklessly. John Boehner’s speakership is in ashes. Michele Bachmann in now polling about evenly with Mitt Romney. The GOP is having a huge internal fight and is loathed and mistrusted by the entire international community. They have been exposed for the radicals that they are, and the people disagree overwhelmingly with their behavior and their approach.

It could have been different. The president could have refused to accept any coupling of the debt ceiling to budget cuts. He could have, rather, argued he needed more money to stimulate the economy. He could have tried to convince people of that. But, in that case, we’d still be here this weekend facing default. And we’d be the party divided and unpopular. Obama, not Boehner, would be the one whose career was a smoking husk. And the people would be blaming the Democrats for their intransigence, instead of the other way around.

The truth is, the 2010 midterms were a catastrophe. They had horrible consequences. This weekend was one of those consequences, and it couldn’t be avoided through “leadership.”

The persons who think that the best thing to do in an election is a kneejerk “throw the bums out” really need to pay attention to the bums who want in.

Sure, politicians, including those of good will, have trouble keeping campaign promises because they, like the rest of us, don’t live in a vacuum, but what they promise tells something about what they believe, and what they believe matters, because it affects how they act.

The teabaggers campaigned on a platform of destruction. Now they are trying to fulfill their promises.

And no one should be surprised.

Also this.

President Obama’s administration sets deportation record.

Via