Much of the recent commentary about the tax cuts has skipped over this political reality. It’s instead focused on how tough the Democrats should be and whether they should insist on the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts on income above $250,000 a year. But that’s no longer one of their options. Unless they believe they will benefit more than Republicans from a standoff in which taxes go up, which is hard to believe with a Democrat in the White House, their only choice now is among various versions of retreat.

(Emphasis supplied.) Yep, Bill Clinton got killed in the 1996 election because he raised taxes. Oh wait, he didn't. Sheesh. You know what's going to hurt Obama and the Dems in 2012? No job growth. Do low taxes lead to job growth? David Leonhardt (yep, the same guy) says no:

Apparently, some people are doubting President Obama's negotiating skills.

You don't say. It runs in the political family though, as progressive activists pretty much stink at political bargaining themselves.

Maybe Obama can send this guy instead of Geithner to the tax cuts for the rich negotiations:

Open Thread.

Digby:

Ed Henry just said that it's true that President Obama apologized for failing to be bipartisan and promised to work harder to find common ground.

If it wasn't so tragic, it would be absolutely funny.

Speaking for me only

Via Krugman's blog, David Dayen reports that OFA, the Obama organization, is asking supporters to write letters to the editor supporting the President's pay freeze initiative:

The economy is growing again, yet all across America families and businesses have been tightening their belts. The President knows their government must do the same. Yesterday, he announced a proposal to freeze pay for non-military federal employees for two years[. . . . W]e need your help to get the truth out there.

Will you take a few minutes and write a letter to the editor today to set the record straight?

I think that's dumb policy so I wouldn't write such a letter. But I would write one supporting school uniforms. That was pretty harmless I thought. Maybe Obama should adopt the physicians' code, first do no harm.

Speaking for me only

Very clever post from Matt Yglesias:

Something that I think should be understood about the idea of “triangulating” via a proposal to freeze federal salary is that triangles are two dimensional objects. To triangulate properly you can’t simply occupy a point between where the left and right poles are, you need to also move off the line.

[. . .] Better triangulation requires a triangle. Liberals say spend more money on schools, conservatives say spend less. I say: School uniforms![. . .]

(Emphasis supplied.) Heh.

Speaking for me only

The Great "Pragmatist" Revolution against Dems is in full bloom. I've always called myself a "Centrist" not for descriptive reasons, the term describes precisely nothing, but rather for posturing purposes (though to be fair to myself, I am a free trade/Afghan war supporting hawk, so there is some basis for my claim of "Centrism.") What always get me about us self proclaimed "centrists" and pragmatists" is how we always claim to be the moderate, centrist pragmatists and everyone who disagrees with us is an extremist. Funny how that works out. Anyway, I found this amusing from a "Pragmatist:"

Via John Cole, Ezra Klein writes:

[I]t'[s . . .] worth taking a moment to appreciate how far Democrats have backslid on th[e tax] issue since Bill Clinton. Clinton, of course, raised taxes in the face of large deficits. The Obama campaign, by contrast, swore not to raise taxes on any family making less than $250,000, and Democrats might now effectively raise that to $1,000,000. In setting up the expectation that taxes can't go up for anyone but millionaires, Democrats take most of them off the table. And given that Republicans have no interest in taxes, either, that basically removes them as a tool of fiscal policy going forward.

What Ezra does not mention is that Clinton cut taxes on the working poor by significantly increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit. As regular readers know, I have long believed that letting the Bush tax cuts expire was the most important issue of this Congress. For all the talk of the "most progressive legislation" in 50 years, I've always felt that the most important progressive achievement President Obama could present after this Congress was the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. But it appears that Democrats have retreated from Clintonism on tax policy.

Speaking for me only

The anticipated Wikileaks document dump has arrived. It includes 250,000 American diplomatic cables, most from the past three years.

The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. ...The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.” Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days.

Some of what's covered:[More...]

One of the better things I have written (IMNSHO) was the first thing I ever wrote for Talk Left in 2006. This part remains pertinent I think:

Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle.

Mike Lux does a nice job of this:

Via Atrios, The MERS Protection Act:

The [Grifting h/t kdog] industry is seeking legislation that would effectively affirm MERS's legality and block any bill that would call into question what MERS does. MERS has spent more than $1 million in lobbying since fall 2008, when lower courts around the country began to rule against it. But MERS had kept its name under the radar until the recent uproar over foreclosures revealed broad problems in mortgage paperwork.

How much you wanna bet that the incompetent and corrupt Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner supports this?

Speaking for me only

While I have previously written about what Obama can do as President (especially regarding tax cuts), there are of course things he can not do alone. Ezra Klein focuses on a couple of them - extending UI benefits and raising the debt ceiling (Obama can block tax cuts for the rich):

Getting rid of the tax cuts for the rich is not as important as extending unemployment benefits or protecting the Affordable Care Act. [. . .] The right outcome here is not the end of the tax cuts for the rich, though that might be nice. It's an extension of unemployment insurance and an increase in the debt ceiling. Democrats shouldn't vote with Republicans to extend the tax cuts -- which is, of course, the only way the tax cuts can be extended -- unless Republicans will simultaneously vote with them to extend UI and lift the debt ceiling.

This is a TERRIBLE idea. Ezra seems to think that the $700 billion given up for tax cuts for the rich will not be taken out of programs for the less well off down the line. It is an old problem with Beltway bloggers - they never understand how important tax policy is. It is why they have spent the past 2 years denigrating the Clinton tax plan of 1993 and pretending the ACA was the greatest progressive achievement in a generation. UI extension is of course critical, but this is a matter of political bargaining imo. Tax cuts for the rich is too high a price. As for the debt ceiling extension, I can see trading THAT now (it is in the GOP's interest that it happen now, not in February contrary to Ezra's bizarre belief to the contrary) in exchange for extending UI benefits. Ezra seems to think raising the debt ceiling now should be a Dem priority. That makes no sense. Does the GOP REALLY want to shut down the government in February, 2 months into their control of the House? No way.

Speaking for me only

Kevin Drum writes:

Chris Beam says a bipartisan effort to reduce the deficit is probably doomed. So the only answer is a partisan effort to reduce the deficit[. . . .] Have we forgotten about the filibuster already? This idea would be lovely if either party manages to win 60 seats in the Senate — or close to it — but that seems pretty unlikely in the near term for either side. This strikes me as little better than a fantasy.

(Emphasis supplied.) More . . .