Yesterday, the White House bowed to reality and signaled that it would accept a two-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts. The plain fact is that the President had no other choice following our "shellacking" last week. But it is worth pointing out that it did not have to work out this way. We arrived at this point because of sheer political incompetence with perhaps a dash of arrogance thrown in.
I'm, of course, not arguing some new position that no one's raised before. I mean, DKos was flooded with similar diaries and comments yesterday when the Huffington Post piece was first published. But I remember when I wrote an earlier diary before the election pointing out the likelihood of this happening when it appeared that Congress was about to adjourn, I got plenty of comments telling me that I had completely misread the situation and that Speaker Pelosi would never let the House adjourn without passing a good tax bill. So I apologize in advance if you find this repetitive with other diaries here but this issue is important enough, I think, to deserve a little repetition. And, perhaps the White House and the Democratic leaders will notice the volume of comments and begin to realize that they've touched a raw nerve with the base of the party.
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