Greg Sargent on the "centrist dodge"

Greg Sargent:

A little while back I suggested that many pundits are regular practitioners of what you might call the “centrist dodge.” Paul Krugman defines it for us very nicely:

A Very Serious, chin-stroking pundit argues that what we really need is a political leader willing to concede that while the economy needs short-run stimulus, we also need to address long-term deficits, and that addressing those long-term deficits will require both spending cuts and revenue increases. And then the pundit asserts that both parties are to blame for the absence of such leaders. What he absolutely won’t do is endanger his centrist credentials by admitting that the position he’s just outlined is exactly, exactly, the position of Barack Obama.

Krugman, of course, is talking mainly about his Times colleague Tom Friedman, though plenty of others fit the mold. MORE...

"The Morning Plum: Seeing through GOP spin on Hilary Rosen `controversy’"

Greg Sargent:

Questionable media coverage of Rosengate: By contrast, the New York Times’s big story on yesterday’s battle tells you in the second paragraph that Rosen has “ties” to Obama, whatever that means, and doesn’t tell you until the 22nd paragraph that Dems pointed out that Rosen doesn’t have any role with the campaign. And even then it’s presented as he-said-she-said. MORE...

"Breitbart's Bombshell Is A Dud, Ctd"

Greg Sargent:

Andrew Sullivan nicely deconstructs what Obama’s allegedly controversial Derrick Bell speech really tells us about the man and his supposed radical tendencies:

Derrick Bell was a passionate racial leftist. As president of Harvard Law Review, Obama had no choice but to enter this debate, but that he did so emphatically in defense of Bell and his rigid approach to affirmative action does suggest a more leftist past than his conservative brethren at the Law Review recall. But his calm rhetoric and appeal to an open mind in his little speech was not an endorsement of everything Bell stood for, just an endorsement of his place within the conversation, and a personal admiration for the man himself, MORE...

Greg Sargent; "In the end, it’s all about the Bush tax cuts"

Greg Sargent:

When you step back and think about it, it’s kind of striking how central the Bush tax cuts have proven to our politics in recent years — and how central they will continue to be through at least next year, when the argument over them will help decide the Congressional elections and presidential race.

They are a defining issue at the heart of the broad ideological argument between the two parties. They were central during the 2010 elections, and they will again be central in 2012. They are a key cause of our current fiscal problems, and now they’re at the center of the supercommittee’s likely failure to do anything to solve those problems. MORE...

Greg Sargent: "Today in supercommittee follies"

Greg Sargent:

The likelihood is mounting that the supercommittee will fail, leading to a great deal of handwringing in both parties about all the public blame that will be heaped on the supercommittee if they fail to reach a deal.

So let’s be really clear. Democrats have agreed to deep cuts in Medicare in exchange for the tax hikes that most fiscal experts agree are absolutely necessary to fix the deficit. The Dem offer is well to the right of previous bipartisan proposals. But Republicans have said No, insisting that the only revenue increases they can stomach will come from closing loopholes.

If the supercommittee fails, brace yourself for a whole bunch of bogus false-equivalence reporting to the effect that both sides, or the generic “Congress,” are to blame.

Greg Sargent: "The true nature of Obama’s political dilemma"

Greg Sargent:

If Obama reads one thing on the Web today, I hope it’s this piece by Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein. It’s a very well argued takedown of the idea that Obama risks alienating the middle by aggressively drawing a sharp ideological contrast with Republicans over the need for expansive government action amid our severe national crisis.

The key to the piece is its identification of Obama’s political dilemma. As I’ve been noting here regularly, Obama’s problem is that even though the public supports his jobs policies, Republicans are likely to benefit from blocking them anyway — because voters may end up blaming Obama for the sense of dysfunction and continued suffering that will result from government’s failure to act. Winning the moral high ground by forever seeking compromise won’t help matters. Mann and Ornstein put it better:

The voting public might now say that it is more conservative and desirous of a more limited role for government, but that’s more an expression of their general frustration with the state of the economy and the seeming failure of ambitious government initiatives to produce tangible results than their true convictions. Move beyond these labels to ascertain public views on specific policy options and you quickly realize that a conservative swing in public opinion is a chimera...

Maneuvering tirelessly to stake out some elusive political center, in other words, won’t help Obama win over swing voters. It’ll just set him up for another year of looking weak and ineffectual...Obama should likewise know by now that working with a supercommittee whose Republican members are under orders from their House and Senate leaders to oppose all revenue increases is a fool’s errand. And imagining that a substantial center in the American public will respond positively to such an approach is pure fantasy ... if there is any hope of achieving bipartisan policy success, it will come from Republicans believing that blocking the president’s initiatives or offers will cause them political harm...

Obama’s new approach of turning up the heat — by calling out Republicans for their obstruction and their opposition even to ideas they have previously embraced, like a continuing payroll tax cut — actually has more chance of achieving ... policy outcomes ... than his conciliatory approach. Obama, at the center of today’s political spectrum, should therefore be explicit and forceful in communicating the stark differences between the parties and the source of inaction and gridlock in Washington.

The fact that Obama’s actual jobs policies and even his ideological disposition represent the middle of public opinion — even as generalized disapproval of him is running high — is absolutely central to understanding what’s happening in our politics right now. Yet it’s rarely acknowledged by our top shelf pundits. Obama’s best hope for winning Congressional action on the economy is to try to communicate this to Americans as clearly as possible and hope that they come to understand who is responsible for all the paralyis in the face of the crisis. Read the whole thing.

Greg Sargent: "For critics of #OWS, it's always 1970"

Greg Sargent:

Conservatives highlighting the excess of Occupy Wall Street, while trying to sound a self-fulfilling prophesy that it will alienate the middle of the country, are trying to exploit a cultural fault line that’s persisted for decades — between ordinary working-class and middle-class voters, and liberal activists who resort to outsized tactics. This time, there isn’t yet any reason to believe it’s working. MORE...

"Obama losing jobs argument with Congress — but winning it with the public"

Greg Sargent:

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this. But even as it’s becoming official that Obama’s jobs bill in its current form is doomed in Congress, new polling shows that Obama is clearly winning the argument over it with the public. MORE...

Greg Sargent: "Obama framing 2012 election as a contest of values"

Greg Sargent:

With Obama’s push to sell the American Jobs Act intensifying yesterday — even as Democrats in Congress are now moving to change the bill — it’s becoming clearer that his aggressive new populism is part of a larger strategy: One that’s designed to frame the 2012 elections as a contest of values and moral visions.

As I noted the other day, there’s a connection between Obama’s call for tax hikes on the rich and his criticism of the crude conduct of some audience members (the “let him die” moment, the booing of the gay soldier) at GOP debates. Both are strands of argument in a larger case Obama is making about the broader, values-based choice voters will face next year. Obama continually rebuts the charge that his push for tax hikes on the rich is about class envy and division, instead arguing that “we’re all in this together,” an effort to frame the case for tax fairness as a referendum on national unity and the social contract.

This morning brings fresh signs that Obama’s jobs bill won’t pass as is, in particular over his push for tax fairness. But this is now about more than just the jobs bill and taxes, which is why Obama will continue this push. By linking his taxes-and-jobs argument to the crude outbursts at GOP debates, Obama is trying to build a larger contrast between the charitable, inclusive vision he’s fighting for and a fundamentally mean-spirited, exclusionary one he’s implicitly accusing the GOP of harboring.

Today David Nakamura and Paul Kane weigh in with a good piece fleshing this idea out in detail. They tally up the different ways Obama is making the “values” argument, in the context of his jobs push and other areas, and add this key nugget:

Senior administration officials said the president will continue his jobs tour through year’s end in a calculated effort to force Republicans to negotiate or be painted as a party unwilling to address the economic crisis.

Obviously, the Obama team hopes that the larger case about values will broaden the election beyond being a referendum on the economy, which remains extremely dangerous turf for him, by rendering the GOP candidate an unacceptable choice. And the economy and unemployment very well may trump all in the end. But this is the playbook Obama and his team have written, and they’re sticking with it at least through the end of the year.

Greg Sargent: "Obama’s political dilemma"

Greg Sargent:

Yesterday, Eric Cantor said that the American Jobs Act is dead on arrival in its current form. This isn’t a surprise; no one expected it to pass in its current form. Obama and his advisers have been urging Congress to pass the whole bill as is, but no one expected Congress to listen to him, perhaps least of all Obama himself. He will continue to prod Congress to pass the whole bill, in hopes of getting parts of it passed, and in hopes of persuading the public that he is trying to act on jobs, but Congress won’t let him.

A new CBS poll finds that nearly seven in 10 don’t think Obama has made real progress in fixing the economy. Today’s Post poll finds Obama’s approval at an all time low of 42 percent. Yet at the same time, multiple polls have shown that large majorities, including of independents and moderates, support the fiscal policies Obama is championing — and that Republicans oppose.

The political dilemma Obama faces is stark: Republicans benefit politically from blocking measures that majorities think would help unemployment. Even if Republicans hold lower approval numbers than the president — and even if Republicans are blocking job creation measures that the public supports — the plain fact is that as long as the economy struggles, Obama will continue to pay the largest political price for it. He runs the place.

The only conceivable way out of this trap is to either get something passed or to get the public to focus their anger and blame on Republicans for refusing to support his proposals. And that’s where the American Jobs Act — dead, or not — comes in. The White House will continue to campaign for it. For all their griping about it, Senate Democrats will take it up this month, and it remains to be seen how Democratic leaders will proceed.

But we do know that nothing will happen in the House. And Obama will have to hope that House Republicans will make a potent enough foil to enable Obama to break a political dynamic that, at present, seems unbreakable.

Greg Sargent: "what the 2012 elections will be all about."

Greg Sargent (linking to E.J. Dionne):

...the choice in 2012, clarified: E.J. Dionne, commenting on the success of Obama’s rescue of the auto companies, deftly ties it to the larger question of whether government can and should act to rectify the unemployment crisis and the damage done by the individual hand of capitalism:

We did not have to accept the collapse of our domestic auto companies, and we do not have to accept that the Federal Reserve is powerless to give the economy the boost it needs. There is no reason to believe that the federal government is incapable of investing more in schools, roads and other public goods to build for the future and get more money into the hands of consumers now. We do not have to rely on giving rich people tax cuts and then confine ourselves to offering fervent prayers that they might invest some of the money in creating jobs.

We can seek to control our fate, or we can turn the invisible hand into a God who commands us to be helpless.

That’s pretty much what the 2012 elections will be all about.

(Updated with video) Greg Sargent: "The moderate, centrist elite does not speak for moderate voters"

UPDATE: Rachel Maddow on The Today Show this morning (MEDIAite), with video (03:45):

Maddow continued to push back on the idea that the President has a problem with the base, and cited broad public support for his latest policy proposals.

Greg Sargent:

My pick for read of the morning is this piece by Politico’s Glenn Thrush, which gently skewers the caterwauling of the moderate elite (Mark Penn, David Brooks) about Obama’s new populist approach.

With the claim gaining currency that Obama’s jobs bill and push to hike high end taxes are all about appealing to the base, and are certain to further alienate independents and moderates, it’s worth reiterating that the use of terms like “moderate” and “centrist” by such opinionnmakers is entirely arbitrary. They have nothing to do with where the center of public opinion, if such a place even exists, actually lies.

As Thrush puts it, saying what must never be said in polite centrist company:

Polls show the major components of the plan, particularly the tax hikes on families earning $250,000 or more — and the “Buffett tax” on millionaires, polls well with all voters, including swing state independents.

This happens to be true. Key takeaway: Self-proclaimed centrist and moderate opinionmakers and pollster types do not speak for moderate voters. MORE from Sargent's The Morning Plum...

Greg Sargent: "Obama really has hit the "reset button" on his presidency"

Greg Sargent:

A changed landscape? On the morning after Obama vowed to veto any deficit deal that cuts entitlements without raising revenues, and accused Republicans of waging class warfare on behalf of the wealthy, the sense is unmistakable that a page has been turned, that the President is trying out an approach that’s fundamentally new. Commentators had constantly asked — in the awful Beltway cliche — how Obama would move to “hit the reset button” on his presidency. We now have our answer. The reset button has been pressed. MORE...

Howie P.S.: Ezra Klein (via AMERICAblog) wonders: Is the White House finally "manning up"?

Greg Sargent on the Wisconsin recall vote results

Greg Sargent:

Labor and Dems lost. They should be proud of what they accomplished.---The history of the American labor movement is crowded with losing battles and crushing disappointments. The men and women who have fought for workers’ rights, often against tremendously long odds, have all too often suffered defeat and humiliation, only finding consolation in the idea that their efforts perhaps succeed in awakening a bit of public sympathy for their plight, inching their larger cause forward in unseen ways. MORE...

Greg Sargent on the recall vote today in Wisconsin

Greg Sargent:

Whatever ends up happening, Wisconsin Dems and labor have already succeeded in one sense: They reminded us that it’s possible to build a grass roots movement by effectively utilizing the sort of unabashed and bare-knuckled class-based populism that makes many of today’s national Dems queasy. Their effort — whether or not they take back the state senate — could provide a model for a more aggressive, populist approach for national Dems in 2012. MORE (from Sargent's always worthwhile 'The Morning Plum)...

Post Debtmadgeddon Pundit Super-Roundup

Greg Sargent (The Morning Plum):

Lori Montgomery (WaPo), Karen Tumulty and Perry Bacon Jr.(WaPo), Timothy Geitner (WaPo op-ed), Steve Benen, Mark Landler and Jeff Zeleny (NY Times), Erik Wasson and Mike Lillis (The Hill), Naftali Bendavid And Carol E. Lee (Wall Street Journal), David M. Drucker and Humberto Sanchez (Roll Call), Joan Walsh (Salon).

"Abbreviated Pundit Roundup" (Daily Kos):

Peter Nicholas, Ezra Klein, Mark Gongloff, NY Times.

Eugene Robinson: "A hold-your-nose debt deal"

Eugene Robinson:

It’s supremely galling. It’s unbalanced, unfair and mostly unwise. For President Obama and the Democratic Party, it’s a comprehensive defeat. But it’s not the end of the world.

The deal struck Sunday to free the U.S. economy from its Republican hostage-takers is impossible for progressives to love. It gets all the big things wrong, starting with the most fundamental: Obama never should have acquiesced to linking a routine hike in the debt ceiling — necessary to pay bills Congress has already incurred — with all the difficult spending questions that should be dealt with in the budget process. MORE...

Howie P.S.: Greg Sargent

"As many observers have noted already, Democrats have effectively given up on trying to make the case for further government spending. The result has been bipartisan agreement to marginalize that argument to the point where it’s entirely vanished from the conversation. It’s only in this context... that the deal ...makes any sense." MORE@the link.

Jay Inslee

"...don’t like debt deal, but I’m for it."

John Aravosis (AMERICAblog)

We keep being told that the Obama administration endorsed the GOP talking points on the deficit, and gave away the farm in negotiations with the Republicans on the debt ceiling, as part of a strategic play to win independents come the next election. Only problem? Independents care more about jobs, which aren't being addressed, and which will be hurt by the President's budget deal.

Greg Sargent: "GOP on verge of huge, unprecedented political victory"

Greg Sargent:

If Dems had refused to budge from the demand for a clean hike, would Republicans have blinked — or would they have allowed default? The bottom line is Dems weren’t prepared to take that risk, and the fast-approaching deadline meant moving to negotiations was imperative. Should Obama have waged a far more aggressive P.R. campaign to saddle the GOP with potential blame for default? Maybe, but public opinion in recent days was running strongly for compromise and against Republicans — and they still continued to use the threat of default as leverage. Could Dems have had more success with a more aggressive approach? We’ll never know. Call it the road not taken.

The road that was taken is leading to a deal in which Dems are agreeing to take huge amounts of money out of the economy when the recovery is shaky at best. It also seems to ensure that Dems will agree to entitlements cuts heading into an election where the GOP was supposed to be deeply vulnerable over their drive to end Medicare as we know it. Dems will promise to salvage victory in the form of “smart” entitlement reform. Maybe so. For now, it appears the GOP is on the verge of a huge and unprecedented victory.

UPDATE: As Jonathan Cohn notes, maybe the deal won’t be quite as bad as it seems, but this is the last chance to make as much noise as possible. MORE...

Howie P.S.: The above was published @01:04 PM ET, 07/31/2011 but it showed up on my Twitter feed just now. At 03:00 PM ET, 07/31/2011 Jonathan Bernstein posted this, "How the deal won’t affect 2012" on the same WaPo website, The Plum Line:

I’m not going to try to figure out who won or who lost in the negotiations over a final deal, if there is one and it passes, until we actually have all the details. It’s certainly a huge win for Republicans over the status quo — but as I’ve said before, that’s mostly a consequence of GOP electoral victories last November. Whether Republicans won more than that victory would have predicted — that’s where we need to study the details. In the meantime, I will push back, once again, at a couple of things that people are saying about the debt limit/deficit deal and the 2012 elections. MORE...

From another report just up on HuffPo right now, "Debt Ceiling Deal That Cuts Trillions, Creates 'Super Congress' Announced By Party Leaders":

"This is going to be close. I think in the end, the president and Nancy are going to have to twist arms, and I'm not sure how hard she'll work to do that," the aide said, noting that Pelosi still remembers the infamous TARP vote where she delivered 150 of her members but Boehner did not get 100 of his. "MORE...

Greg Sargent: "Senate Dems game out their strategy"

Greg Sargent, from today's 'Morning Plum:

With Boehner’s proposal seemingly set to pass, Senate Dems are mulling three options: First, don’t vote on Boehner’s bill at all, which would anger GOP senators. Second, vote down Boehner’s bill and try to pass Reid’s proposal, using the failure of the Boehner bill to exert pressure on GOP Senators to support Reid’s. And third, vote down Boehner’s plan and try to pass a compromise version of Reid’s plan negotiated with Mitch McConnell and also with Boehner, so it can hopefully pass the House once it’s kicked back to that chamber.

As best as I can determine, option three is the most likely. The key questions: Whether there is ultimately any kind of compromise proposal that can pass the House; how much Dems are willing to concede to make that happen; and how much spine Dems are willing to display right up to the drop-dead moment in order to force House Republicans to move in their direction. MORE...

"In a role reversal, it’s now Obama who’s pushing for the big deficit deal"

Greg Sargent (WaPo):

The key thing to understand about the events of the weekend is that they brought about a remarkable role reversal. After months in which GOP leaders were challenging the President to join them in seeking a major deficit reduction package, it is now Obama who is pushing hardest for a $4 trillion deficit compromise, while GOP leaders are the ones pushing for a more modest deal — all because they can’t tolerate a compromise that includes any revenue increases of any kind. If the White House’s strategy has been in part about maneuvering Republicans into the position of appearing to be the main obstacles to compromise, it seems to have succeeded. MORE...