Joan McCarter did a great job summarizing the press conference (here and here) while it was happening - but it's really worth looking at the whole speech. The Washington Post has a full transcript of the press conference up now.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon
The transcript at the Washington Post spreads out over 5 web pages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 The last link is the really long one). Through it all President Obama stays focused and on point. His opening paragraphs set the tone for the whole session:
...Think about it this way, the American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs. You don't get a chance to call your bank and say I'm not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you throw in a new car and an Xbox. If you're in negotiations around buying somebody's house, you don't get to say, well, let's talk about the price I'm going to pay, and if you don't give the price then I'm going to burn down your house. That's not how negotiations work. That's not how it happens in business. That's not how it happens in private life.
In the same way, members of Congress, and the House Republicans in particular, don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs. And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America's paying its bills. They don't also get to say, you know, unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election, I'm going to cause a recession.
That's not how it works. No American president would deal with a foreign leader like this. Most of you would not deal with either co- workers or business associates in this fashion. And we shouldn't be dealing this way here in Washington.
The President talked about how the shutdown and all the uncertainty was doing real damage to the country, both for individual Americans and for all of us together:
...So we can't afford these manufactured crises every few months. And as I said, this one isn't even about deficits or spending or budgets. Our deficits are falling at the fastest pace in 60 years. The budget that the Senate passed is at Republican spending levels. It's their budget that Democrats were willing to put votes on just to make sure the government was open while negotiations took place for a longer-term budget. And what's happened -- the way we got to this point was one thing and one thing only, and that was Republican obsession with dismantling the Affordable Care Act and denying health care to millions of people. That law ironically is moving forward.
Obama is willing to sit down and talk with the Republicans any time...
...But I'm not going to do it until the more extreme parts of the Republican Party stop forcing John Boehner to issue threats about our economy. We can't make extortion routine as part of our democracy. Democracy doesn't function this way. And this is not just for me; it's also for my successors in office. Whatever party they're from, they shouldn't have to pay a ransom either for Congress doing its basic job. We've got to put a stop to it.
The last section of the transcript is of the President taking questions from the press. While most of them are about the shutdown and possible default, a few other topics come up.
What's refreshing about this is that President Obama has finally given up on the "above it all - we're all in this together" framing and is putting Boehner and the Tea Party extremists in the crosshairs for deliberately creating this mess - and reminds the press that it's clear this was their plan all along. As the President said:
...I mean, think about it. The only reason that the Republicans have held out on negotiations up until the last week or so is because they thought it was a big enough deal that they would force unilateral concessions out of Democrats and out of me. They said so. They basically said, you know what? The president's so responsible that if we just hold our breath and say we're going to threaten default, then he'll give us what we want, and we won't have to give anything in return. That's not -- again, that's not my account of the situation. You can read statements from Republicans over the last several months who said this explicitly.
Over at Digby's Place, David (thereisnospoon) Atkins noted back on October 6 it was long past time the President and the rest of the Democratic establishment woke up to the fact that they've been being played for suckers by the Republicans.
...Yeah, no kidding. Progressive bloggers have been saying this literally for years. Every time a progressive blogger said that Harry Reid and Barack Obama were giving away the store to the GOP and being played for suckers (or even secretly wanting conservative policies), all the usual suspects came out to say how important it was to be the only adult in the room, that bipartisanship was really important, how the President was actually playing 11th dimensional chess, etc.
The more President Obama talks plainly like this, the more distance he puts between himself and the Republicans - and considering they're acting like political suicide bombers, the more distance the better. At this point the Republican party has nothing to offer except fear, anger, and pain. They have no real policies, other than to oppose any and everything coming from the Democrats and especially the President. The Reagan Revolution has descended into paranoid madness: everything the President says is a lie, he's going to destroy America, impose Sharia law, give citizenship to millions of illegals....
John Boehner hasn't said this openly yet, but that's what the people he's fronting for believe. And trying to find a reasonable compromise with unreason is just not feasible by definition.
On NPR's Morning Edition, they took time to compare the confrontation between Boehner and the President to a game of chicken.
VEDANTAM: You know, it's important to remember that the problem actually doesn't lie with the people in Washington. It actually lies with the game. You know, the game of chicken is a zero-sum game. If I win, you lose. If I lose, you win. And as a result, unreasonable behavior tends to be rewarded and reasonable behavior tends to be punished. So, in the classic game of chicken, what experts actually suggest is that the first thing you would do is to grab your own steering wheel and throw it out of the car, because you signal to your opponent, look, even if I wanted to swerve at this point, I wouldn't be able to do it. And Blackstone connects this idea with the current standoff in Washington.
BLACKSTONE: President Obama certainly has repeatedly said that he simply will not negotiate on the debt ceiling. And what he is attempting to do there, it seems, is strengthen his bargaining position by impressing upon Republicans and the public that he will not be the one to swerve.
INSKEEP: And Speaker John Boehner has done that same thing in different ways over the last several years, repeatedly signal: Listen, I'm a very reasonable guy, but I have a lot of people in my caucus that I can't bring along with me unless you give me a deal here, Mr. President.
The discussion makes some interesting points - but it also displays the classic media inability to distinguish one side from the other. One side definitely has a monopoly on crazy. (I mean, on the one hand they're threatening to blow up the government with default and on the other hand they're saying it won't be so bad - it might even be a good thing!) Republicans are driving a car fueled by hysteria,
big money, and lies.
The President seems for the moment to have finally realized that he has too much to lose trying to make these extortionists happy - AND he's also got the facts on his side, a line to draw, and experience to strengthen his resolve.
The polls are not being kind to the Republicans at this point. Boehner and the people who (to use Charles P. Pierce's memorable phrase) buried his balls in a mason jar and hid the map from him, may be the ones who set up this game of chicken, but their crazy car is starting to shed clowns in all directions. And if you're going to bet it all on a game of chicken, this is probably not what you want to see coming at you.
It remains to be seen if President Obama is willing to put up with a few scratches in the paint and a brief crunching sound. Because it's long past time to turn Boehner and his crazies into roadkill. As David Atkins noted in a link he quoted,
“Dealing with terrorists has taught us some things,” said Washington Rep. Jim McDermott after voting no on one of Thursday’s GOP bills. “You can’t deal with ’em. This mess was created by the Republicans for one purpose, and they lost. People in my district are calling in for Obamacare—affordable health care—in large numbers. These guys have lost, and they can’t figure out how to admit it.” Why would House Democrats give away what the Supreme Court and the 2012 electorate didn’t? “You can’t say, OK, you get half of Obamacare—this isn’t a Solomonic decision,” McDermott said. “So we sit here until they figure out they fuckin’ lost.”
4:39 PM PT: UPDATE: You can find the whole transcript here at Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
UPDATE !0-9-13: The ever shifting demands of the Republicans as to what will be acceptable as a blood sacrifice in order to get the country back from them should not be taken as a sign of disarray. It's more of a messaging problem - they're trying to spin something the media can pass off as reasonable, instead of calling them out as raving looneys, blackmailers, or terrorist extremists. (The rest of the world is rather concerned about that for some reason...)
What they really want, in their heart of hearts, can be found in this observation by Digby - particularly in a quote from their Chief Shaman, Gover Norquist:
It's important to remember that Norquist and the boys are very long term thinkers. To them, low taxes aren't just a rich man's perk rewarding them for being "job creators" --- or even a generally good thing on pure principle. Low taxes are a means to an end. And that end is this:
The common vision: an America in which the rich will be taxed at the same rates as the poor, where capital is freed from government constraints, where government services are turned over to the free market, where the minimum wage is repealed, unions are made irrelevant, and law-abiding citizens can pack handguns in every state and town. "My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit," says Norquist. "Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything."
emphasis added
Certainly not for anything like this, to pick one not so random example, because there's no threat that a real rootin-tootin American can't handle with enough firepower if the damn government will just leave him alone.
We are dealing with delusional madmen, and they are strong with the Dark Side. It would be nice if the media would just come out and say it. Same as it ever was - the names and faces change, but the rot remains the same. Deja vu all over again - a transformational Democratic president runs up against the ugly id never too far beneath the surface of American politics. 1963 to 2013 - they are with us still.
It was an amazing confederacy. People were lured to Dallas, they were marching to Dallas. There was just this rising sense of anger and distrust toward Kennedy, toward perceived socialism, religion. People feared him as a Catholic.
I found that Dallas became really one of the most singular cities on planet Earth. For some reason out in the heartland in the middle of Texas, really powerful people coalesced around this notion that Kennedy was a traitor and in fact was guilty of treason. And these weren't just folks who were idly thinking these thoughts; they were acting on them and forming organizations and movements to essentially overthrow Kennedy ...