Booman on The Deal

Booman:

I don't like the bill, but I could tell you that it was going to pass. As I said after the deal was announced, the most progressives could hope to do is to tinker with the Estate Tax a bit. I encourage the House to go ahead and do that and force the Senate to deal with them in Conference. But I doubt they will for the simple reason that they don't have enough time to do that without it costing them something more important, like a vote on the New START Treaty or the repeal of DADT or something else. One thing I keep saying that seems to gain little currency is that the Party of No Strategy deserves a lot of credit for watering down our agenda, demoralizing our base, forcing us into painful tradeoffs that pit our supporters against each other, firing up the Republican base, and doing real damage to the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The strategy has worked marvelously well in all these aims and also in avoiding blame from the media or even from us. We prefer to blame our leaders and ourselves and the intelligence of the people and the media and campaign finance laws and so on. But we are very reluctant to give any credit to the opposition for manipulating us and frustrating us and making us divided and demoralized. MORE...

Howie P.S.: I do think Booman lets Our President off a little easy for his political judgment as well as his fumbles and errors. For example see Robert Reich's "The New Era of Cooperation Between the White House and Big Business." If ever there was a more understated condemnation of Our President's policies, I haven't seen it.