Anyone who remembers last summer's three 4 month marathon in Congress over raising the debt limit-I know most of us have been trying to forget every since-might recall that it was not a good time politically for Obama.
Back then before Diary of a Republican Hater really took off, I spent a good deal of time over at Firedoglake, before I was banned for no real reason. It was a hotbed of Obama hatred-still is assuredly. There was all kind of alarmist talk about how Obama wanted to end Social Security and Medicare. After all there was a point in the negotiations when Obama was reported to indicate he was willing to do something to cut Medicare-many inferred that he had in mind raising the eligibility age to start receiving Medicare benefits.
Really no one actually knew but there were media reports that he had agreed to some kind of cut to Medicare. Firedoglake was apocalyptic. This was it. Obama had wanted this all the time, had planned to get rid of Medicare and here was the proof.
There was talk of a Grand Bargain were there would be a deal that would cut $4 trillion dollars from the deficit over the next 10 years-with about $3 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in tax hikes. . FDL-and other bastions of firebaggers kept railing that this is it. Obama was ending Medicare in exchange for a couple of measly tax hikes.
What's interesting is that the GOP balked. Mitch McConnell totally retreated. After this FDLers were were out of breath proclaiming that McConnell offered to drop the Medicare cuts but Obama perversely was forcing him to do some, that Obama was very upset having his Grand Bargain foiled.
The one voice crying in the wilderness with a very different take was Laurence O'Donnell. He explained Obama's actions as part of a brilliant game of three card Monte. Of course this didn't please the Firebaggers who wailed that it's wrong for Obama to ever play a political game he must be totally up front and take the political hits. They kept using the derisive term "eleven dimensional chess.":
In their mind, O'Donnell deserved pillorizing because he suggested that there are two sides to politics-campaigning and the practitioner side that sometimes does indeed require three card Monte or even eleven dimensional chess.
In retrospect what you can't help notice is how much things have changed since last summer. Does anyone ever talk seriously about deficit reduction anymore? And isn't it now clear that the recovery in the US has been so much better than in Britain and the continent-of course the continent suffers as well by having no control over their respective currencies, being wholly at the mercy of the ECB- precisely because they practiced austerity but there was no deep austerity here-the final deal is very tame compared to say what David Cameron is doing in Britain. Off the subject Sumner's magic formula of NGDP targeting but with fiscal austerity doesn't seem to be panning out to the extent you believe as many Market Monetarists do, that English Central Bank President Mervyn King does something along the lines of NGDP.
Is it possible that Obama deserves some credit for this? In a new book by the editor at Mother Jones, David Corn, it turns out that he does.
"Obama shifted his own tactics in 2011, Corn writes, moving from compromising with Republicans to challenging the tea party. The president, senior adviser David Plouffe and other top administration officials plotted a “secret strategy” — by not unveiling a specific deficit reduction plan and not instantly challenging the House Republicans’ budget cuts — to “draw the GOP into a trap.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74181.html#ixzz1pgkxoNhq
Corn's book is available at book stores starting next Tuesday, March 27. It looks like a good one. It also discusses that Obama told labor leaders after the defeat in 2010 that Fox was partly responsible by poisoning white males against him with endless pieces claiming that Obama "might be" a Muslim.
"Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in…The Republicans have been at this for 40 years. They have new resources, but the strategy is old,” Corn recounted Obama as saying.
Fox News is trying to deny this. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74217.html
However at Media Matters the Fox's sorry history of race baiting is documented.
http://mediamatters.org/
http://mediamatters.org/research/201203200003
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