Debt Ceiling: All Pain and No Gain For Democrats
As has been the case with every legislative battle since the end of the Clinton administration, the Republicans have absolutely steamrolled Democrats on this debt ceiling increase. Obama once again assumed a braindead negotiating posture when he should have held firm on a clean debt ceiling vote, not allowing Republicans to hold this routine piece of Congressional bookkeeping hostage. Predictably it devolved from there to the point where Republicans managed to get Democrats to agree to deeper cuts than even the Republicans were demanding at the beginning of the year without any new revenues. The biggest problem with our budget deficit is that revenues have sunk to a 60-year low 14% of GDP, yet we will almost definitely not get a penny more of it in exchange for huge budget cuts. Only Democrats could negotiate a deal that bad.
So basically, the fight was lost a couple of weeks ago, indeed a few months ago if you go back to when the seeds of pending defeat were first planted. There's still plenty of room for Democrats to come out of this even worse than is currently expected, but even the best-case scenario is not gonna be pretty. As much as Democrats like to think they've exposed the intransigence and all-out insanity of the Tea Party refusing to vote with their own party's plan and pushing the country this close to brink of a crisis of choice, the narrative will be short-lived.
If the crisis is not averted, which I believe is still 40% likely, initial outrage may fall on Republicans, albeit much more narrowly than expected, but voters will be angry at everybody in Washington who oversaw this epic failure of the federal government to do its most basic functions....a narrative parroted by a press corps petrified by accusations of bias from the far right and thus finding a way to blame both sides equally. Even outside of that, Democrats are the incumbent party in two or three elected governing bodies, so they have the most to lose in the next election as a matter of pure arithmetic.
If the crisis is averted, Democrats believe they'll be seen as the adults in the room. That storyline may hold initially but will have as much staying power in the court of public opinion as Obama's post-Osama bin Laden bump. The policies of the Republican Party tanked America's economy in the fall of 2008, yet the voting public has such a low attention span that only two years later they rehired them en masse. With that in mind, there's no way that voters will still be thinking about the immaturity of the Congressional Republicans in the July 2011 debt ceiling debate by the fall of 2012, especially since we may well be in a double dip recession by then.
Furthermore, if the should-be discredited credit rating agencies choose to downgrade our credit even after the passage of a debt ceiling increase next week, which is more likely than not, any upside from passing the debt ceiling increase in the first place will be negated. One could envision a scenario where Republicans are able to convince the public that they were right to oppose the debt ceiling increase in the first place...the same way they've convinced the public that TARP, the stimulus, and the auto bailout were bad ideas and a waste of money despite all expert opinion to the contrary.
Ironically, the one way I could see Democrats benefiting politically from the debt ceiling issue is the one thing Obama and Democrats are ruling out as completely unacceptable....a six-month debt limit extension that would reignite the debate again. That's not to say I'd want to see the country put through this nightmare again, and it is almost certainly stalling any would-be recovery as is, but from a pure political standpoint, reminding the country of the GOP's petulance, gamesmanship, and cynicism every few months is the only way Democrats have a chance of the message sticking in the thick skulls of American voters. Once again, the Democrats find themselves with no good options.
Mr. President, you should have stuck to your guns on the clean debt ceiling increase six months ago....and at least remind Congress they still have that option on the table now.
So basically, the fight was lost a couple of weeks ago, indeed a few months ago if you go back to when the seeds of pending defeat were first planted. There's still plenty of room for Democrats to come out of this even worse than is currently expected, but even the best-case scenario is not gonna be pretty. As much as Democrats like to think they've exposed the intransigence and all-out insanity of the Tea Party refusing to vote with their own party's plan and pushing the country this close to brink of a crisis of choice, the narrative will be short-lived.
If the crisis is not averted, which I believe is still 40% likely, initial outrage may fall on Republicans, albeit much more narrowly than expected, but voters will be angry at everybody in Washington who oversaw this epic failure of the federal government to do its most basic functions....a narrative parroted by a press corps petrified by accusations of bias from the far right and thus finding a way to blame both sides equally. Even outside of that, Democrats are the incumbent party in two or three elected governing bodies, so they have the most to lose in the next election as a matter of pure arithmetic.
If the crisis is averted, Democrats believe they'll be seen as the adults in the room. That storyline may hold initially but will have as much staying power in the court of public opinion as Obama's post-Osama bin Laden bump. The policies of the Republican Party tanked America's economy in the fall of 2008, yet the voting public has such a low attention span that only two years later they rehired them en masse. With that in mind, there's no way that voters will still be thinking about the immaturity of the Congressional Republicans in the July 2011 debt ceiling debate by the fall of 2012, especially since we may well be in a double dip recession by then.
Furthermore, if the should-be discredited credit rating agencies choose to downgrade our credit even after the passage of a debt ceiling increase next week, which is more likely than not, any upside from passing the debt ceiling increase in the first place will be negated. One could envision a scenario where Republicans are able to convince the public that they were right to oppose the debt ceiling increase in the first place...the same way they've convinced the public that TARP, the stimulus, and the auto bailout were bad ideas and a waste of money despite all expert opinion to the contrary.
Ironically, the one way I could see Democrats benefiting politically from the debt ceiling issue is the one thing Obama and Democrats are ruling out as completely unacceptable....a six-month debt limit extension that would reignite the debate again. That's not to say I'd want to see the country put through this nightmare again, and it is almost certainly stalling any would-be recovery as is, but from a pure political standpoint, reminding the country of the GOP's petulance, gamesmanship, and cynicism every few months is the only way Democrats have a chance of the message sticking in the thick skulls of American voters. Once again, the Democrats find themselves with no good options.
Mr. President, you should have stuck to your guns on the clean debt ceiling increase six months ago....and at least remind Congress they still have that option on the table now.
posted by Mark at 10:22 PM
1 Comments:
I told you long ago that Obama is nothing but a disaster for the Democratic party.
Republicans knew exactly what they were doing in 2008 when they tanked the economy in 2008. They knew that they would be forcing Obama on Democrats and make sure he would be the Democratic version of Herbert Hoover.
The only bright side of this is that a Democrat probably wont be elected President again for another 20 years. This will allow Democrats to focus on winning where it counts, in Congress and state legislatures.
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