Everyone who lives in a reality based community has acknowledged it now that President Obama's deal struck last Friday indeed was a winning deal for Democrats under the current make up of our politician environment. Looking closely at the details, the story can not be any clearer and here is what JM Ashby at Bob Cesca’s Blog had to say about all the preemptive sensationalization of the facts:
Bumped
Now that we have the details of last Friday's budget compromise, and now that we know that President Obama clearly out-played the Republicans in every aspect, will the very serious media and the pants-pissing Professional Left apologize or walk-back their narrative of cave-in and capitulation?
I wouldn't count on it, even though it's painfully obvious that a narrative was chosen to run with before anyone actually knew what was included in the bill. I myself am guilty of this. I conceded that this bill, which cuts $38.5 billion dollars in spending, would be bad news for the economy. It turns out though that we were all wrong, because the vast majority of the cuts are steeped in fiscal hijinks.
The president not only managed to hijack the Republican's deficit-cutting mission statement and make it appear to be his own, but he did so without actually cutting much of anything and denied Republicans everything they wanted in the process.
You see -- the Republicans have touted the compromise as a victory in the war against the deficit, so by extension, the President also gets credit for cutting the deficit even though the savings are all very creative in nature. And as the polls show, the majority of Americans credit President Obama for the compromise.
Here is what Andrew Taylor wrote about how the President took them fools to the cleaners:
A close look at the government shutdown-dodging agreement to cut federal spending by $38 billion reveals that lawmakers significantly eased the fiscal pain by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.
Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and "Race to the Top" aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives.
//snip
As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber passed a bill slashing this year's budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools.
//snip
Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.
Read the whole article since it is one fantastic narrative of how bright and intelligent this Administration was in how they indeed played not only them Republicans for fools but also some Democrats who always do that preemptive strike at the President and at times help the RW to undermine what the Administration has been trying to do.
Do they have the audacity to say we were wrong? No, they don't. They keep on keepin' on compiling other peoples narrative, using their narrative out of context and tell us THIS IS the biggest stickup in American history. The biggest stickup in American History has been going on for decades and from where most reasonable progressives stand, it is this Administration that is doing something about to reverse the course by implementing policies that fundamental change the lives of Americans for the better. No wonder what some selectively read really don't make sense to them.
If you keep reading nonsense like this from Paul Krugman:
Maybe that terrible deal, in which Republicans ended up getting more than their opening bid, was the best he could achieve — although it looks from here as if the president’s idea of how to bargain is to start by negotiating with himself, making pre-emptive concessions, then pursue a second round of negotiation with the G.O.P., leading to further concessions.
...well, if that kind of narrative is your main source of reliable information, I have to say you are going to keep being doomed because that kind of narrative is not interested in telling you the truth but spin and sensationalize events to create drama. After 27 months of governing, the President has showed us the kind of remarkable leader he is and has been. However, this narrative about how much the President sold his base and how he is not true to the core Democratic principles has been nothing but more of a personal jab coming out from some frastratis who seem to know it all. They will spin and spin and spin it until like in the case of Krugman, the real "base" stands up to him and challenges his assertions with an excellent step-by-step rebuttal that should give you a "wait a minute" moment.
Better yet, in another of Andrew Taylor piece, Most People Won't Notice These Big Budget Cuts, He writes:
What is more, it turns out that many of the cuts officially unveiled on Tuesday are illusory. Almost $18 billion — just less than half — involve simply mopping up pools of unused money spread across the budget. While still counting as cuts, the money from those pools can be used to shore up day-to-day agency budgets and other programs like health research. Admittedly, those cuts don't reduce the deficit.
"There's a huge chunk of money here that is ... spending that wasn't about to go out the door, so the impact is going to be smaller than we anticipated based on what the purported size of the cuts were," said Democratic budget expert Scott Lilly of the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
When Paul Krugman say, "I realize that with hostile Republicans controlling the House, there’s not much Mr. Obama can get done in the way of concrete policy" and has only the bully pulpit but "he’s using it to reinforce his enemies' narrative.", you have to wonder what he is trying to promote except applying that new norm of preemptive whining from a bitter "professional left".
This is what some missed to see in that President's reinforcement of his enemies' bogus assertion from National Journal:
A comparisonprepared by the CBO shows that the omnibus spending bill, advertised as containing some $38.5 billion in cuts, will only reduce federal outlays by $352 million below 2010 spending rates. The nonpartisan budget agency also projects that total outlays are actually some $3.3 billion more than in 2010, if emergency spending is included in the total.
The astonishing result, according to CBO, is the result of several factors: increases in spending included in the deal, especially at the Defense Department; decisions to draw over half of the savings from recissions, cuts to reserve funds, and mandatory-spending programs; and writing off cuts from funding that might never have been spent.
Do you think the President is using his bully pulpit to reinforce his enemies? Well, I guess that depends on who ask.
It is understood that Republicans are and will not be playing nice with us. They will do anything and everything to make sure Democrats fail. Let's not forget their first agenda was to repeal HCR, cut the budget by $100 billion to wipe out 700,000 jobs and cut medicare and medicaid amongst many other things that fundamentally affect working Americans. A party that run on creating more JOBS in the mid-term election has yet to show a Jobs bill that will help improve the unemployment situation. We know what Republicans do stand for but what is not expected of Democrats is implementing a Rovian tactics as done by PCCC that gins up threatening rhetoric.
It is inconceivable when we say we are Democrats and turn around stomp on our own guy based on nonfactual narrative but projections. This norm has been quite clear for a while now that critics on the Democratic side of the aisles feel they have to get upset about something, anything that at times undermines their effectiveness to advocate on behave of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party except display an illusionist narrative.
Here is the bottom line...if we continue with such preemptive strikes, always looking for negative headlines, mis-characterize our President's position, use anonymous WH sources to create a negative narrative and blog it without checking facts like them RW outlets do, constantly try to find something regardless of what the President has said to have the "he has sold us out" narrative, and when proven wrong, ignore the situation and move on to the next sensationalizing preemptive strike to undermine our President, well...we are just not protecting the Democratic core values unless that is the main objective. Unless the intent is to fail, that kind of politicking is not a winning strategy. That's a strategy that will not win the messaging battle the Left seem to think is missing but contribute to it. In fact, that kind of activism is polarizing and a prescription to not be taken seriously.
So, after listening to the President speech on Fiscal Policy this week (part 1, part 2 and part 3), let us take a step back and rethink the way we try to achieve our collective interests not just our individual interests. Let us be carefully and stop the preemptive RW talking points. Let us not forget that the odds to get all of the things we want is stacked up against us because of the Republican House majority which by the way we have a "Realistic Chance" of retaking come 2012.. As such, we must build a coalition and fine tune our messaging to defeat these RW obstructionists to move our country in the right direction. Here is a sharp and fine tuned messaging from NY Representative Joe Crowley (D) on the floor of the United States Congress a couple of days ago we should all take a queue from:
...We have many more issues that bind us together than separate us!
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