What digby says.
If they pursue this Social Security/Austerity business I think we'll have a one term presidency (even, Gawd help us, if the Queen of the Arctic gets the nomination.) And I'm not sure that the Democratic Party won't be permanently shattered.
I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it's vitally, vitally important that the president understand that if he goes after Social Security, the Republicans will turn the argument on him just as they did with "death panels" and "pulling the plug on Grandma" and end up solidifying the senior vote for the foreseeable future and further alienate the Party from the liberal base. I know it makes no sense that Republicans would be able to cast themselves as the protectors of the elderly, but in case you haven't been paying attention lately, politics doesn't operate in a linear, rational fashion at the moment. After all, the Republicans just won an election almost entirely on the basis of saving Medicare.
Republicans are going to take on entitlement reform, and if they do it on a Democratic president's watch, they'll turn it on him with a vengance.
"The third rail is not the third rail anymore," Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the incoming House Budget chairman, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast roundtable with reporters yesterday. "The political weaponization of entitlement reform is no longer as potent as it used to be, and the best evidence is this last election."
They will go after this third rail. It's not as effective a political weapon as it used to be because Dems have ceded so much ground on it with their ridiculous acquiescence on deficit hysteria; ridiculous particularly considering the silver platter gift they were given by the Republican fight for millionaires' tax cuts. Instead of speaking with one extremely loud, united voice on the insanity of giving these tax breaks to millionaires on the backs of America's middle class and senior citizens, we get this.
A group of 14 Democrats pressed for a congressional action to address the deficit despite a failure by President Obama's fiscal commission to achieve enough votes to send its austerity plan to Congress for a vote....
The 14 senators hailed the commission's recommendations on Social Security, healthcare, and tax reforms — three cornerstones of the plan on which support for a plan could hinge....
The signatories were Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Michael Bennet (D-Colo,), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.).
Thanks, Amy Klobuchar and John Tester for throwing your lot in with the ConservaDems. Good luck keeping your base enthused for 2012. But special condemnation has to be reserved for Dick Durbin, who reversed his position on raising the retirement age and endorsed the catfood commission's plan. Here's what he said in October: “It’s tough to say just stick around and deliver mail for another couple of years, be a waitress for another couple of years." Did the intervening month and a half make delivering that message any easier?
One of the tired raps on politicians is their tendency to govern according to polls. Would that it were so! There hasn't been a reputable poll in the last year that didn't show the American public resolutely opposed to any cuts to Social Security and supportive of tax hikes for the rich. If Dems betray those majorities, they'll see the enthusiasm gap of 2010 magnified disastrously in 2012, and as digby says, the party shattered, potentially beyond repair.