"Parties brace for 'super' fallout"

Hensarling, Murray, Kyl and other supercommittee members couldn't strike a deal. | AP Photo

Manu Raju and Jake Sherman (Politico):

Speaking before television cameras at the supercommittee’s packed inaugural hearing in September, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the panel “has the opportunity to show the American people we can still come together, put politics aside, and solve a problem plaguing our country.”

They didn’t.

Now, both parties are quickly trying to figure out how to turn the committee’s embarrassing failure into a political win for their side.

The Democratic message: We stood up to Republicans looking to gut Social Security, slash Medicare and permanently extend the Bush-era tax cuts for high income Americans.

The Republican counterattack: Democrats wanted little more than tax increases and refused to consider changes to deficit-driving health care entitlements. Both sides are positioning themselves as the party that compromised and sought a middle-ground. MORE...

Howie P.S.: I'm not surprised, are you?

Obama's opening supercommittee bid: "abandoning the strategy of pre-compromising"

Greg Sargent has a roundup of reactions and early reports of Obama's supercommittee strategy:

As a number of us have argued, Obama’s continuing demand that Republicans pass the whole American Jobs Act — and his willingness to take it straight to the American people — represents a new approach by the White House. Rather than signaling a willingness to give early ground on core liberal principles in the name of compromise as a desirable end in itself, Obama and his advisers laid down some hard lines at the outset in a manner designed to increase leverage in the battles ahead.

The initial reports about what Obama will propose as his opening bid today for the deficit “supercommittee” suggest that they are sticking with it.

The key details, per Zachary Goldfarb: MORE...

Howie P.S.: Robert Reich is curbing his enthusiasm:

Apparently Obama will propose that people earning more than $1 million a year pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class earners. That's aiming mighty low. MORE...