I know she's in today's Abbreviated Pundit Roundup, but the bit quoted there is from the snarky beginning of her column. The serious nugget comes at the end, where she worries that Obama is trying too hard to be "post-partisan" and craft legislation that can gain "70, 80 or 90 votes" (quoting Tom Daschle) in the Senate:
There are some things about which the two parties are supposed to disagree. During the presidential campaign, Obama talked constantly about creating a national health insurance program while John McCain said the government should just give people tax breaks for buying their own policies. Obama won, and the Democrats’ job now is to figure out how to make sure the current economic crisis is solved in a way that allows him to deliver on his promise to do something big and ambitious about health care — and his other signature issue, energy/global warming. The Republicans’ job is to try to limit the big spending to tax cuts and short-term building projects. If the final bill passes by 80 or 90 votes, it’s probably going to be because it’s a watered-down mess.
Which is the sort of thing that nobody wants. Unless they live in a pot.
So are people like Collins, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman right to worry that Obama is scaling down the stimulus (and larding it up with ineffective tax breaks) in deference to a Party ideologically opposed to doing the right thing? Or is Nate Silver right that Barack is going into this with the perfect negotiating strategy for disarming Republican objections?
Discuss (and vote in my poll, please).