But I think this deal is about the best that could have been struck under the circumstances. We should have insisted all along on a clean bill to simply raise the debt ceiling, but I fear that would simply have strung the spending/deficit debate along and put it closer to the election.
To me the most important thing we can do is to get President Obama re-elected. A second term would make it much, much easier to accomplish progressive goals. A close second is taking back the House, of course, but getting Obama re-elected is the single most important thing we can do. I think the agreement struck today helps that, despite the fact that none of us on the left really like this deal.
But it will prevent the economy from completely tanking, and postpones some of the nonsense until after the election. I still think we're probably in the midst of a double-dip recession, and cutting spending right now is the second worst thing we could do. The worst would be defaulting and having everything go to hell. We avoided that (or it looks like we will), so that is a win.
Sure, I'd rather not have had the hostages taken at all, but once the economy was taken hostage, you can't go back and change that - you have to try to get out of the situation with the least damage possible.
I'm not sure exactly how the debate was allowed to swing the way it did. I think the charts showing the reasons for the deficit spending ought to have been trotted out months and months ago. I think the simple charts the WH has put out over the last week or so are rather powerful and straightforward, and I think most of the American people understand what they are saying: Bush's presidency is what really got us into this mess. The left should not have allowed the entire spending/debt/deficit debate to be framed the way it was, but it's similar to almost any other issue spun by the right. They come out with some demonstrably false, oversimplified talking points, repeat them on every possible platform, every radio show, every TV show, in chat rooms, etc. In order to debunk the lies, you have to take more time, use logic, facts, and cannot boil it down to simply calling a lie a lie. Once the lie has gotten out there and repeated over and over and over again, simply calling it a lie isn't going to work. Democrats need to do a much, much better job of getting out in front of these issues, framing them simply, and repeating the talking points over and over and over. Once the media has their meme, then you can reframe, tweak, and drive the debate, but if you're responding to the initial blast, by the time you get around to making the cogent counter-argument, the MSM and the general public have lost interest.
We saw this with the health care debate, what with the death panels and the other ridiculous assertions. There are still people who think there are death panels in the health care bill, because it was said over and over and over. That debate should have been framed differently, and we'd have gotten a better bill.
Once the debate became about "Washington's out of control spending," it became about Obama's out of control spending. To imply that the President is asking for a blank check to spend however he wants (Boehner's description of raising the debt ceiling) is disingenuous at best, and really insulting, ridiculous, outrageous, preposterous. But you say it over and over and over, and it forces the left to take the time to explain why that is the case instead of being able to take the time to explain why not raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires hurts us all, or to explain why it's really the Bush administration's out of control spending that got us into this mess. It's not as pretty of a sound bite.
So of course the media is partially to blame, but it's our own fault on the left for not getting out in front of the issue.
The actual point of this diary is that I do think we are getting a decent deal given the circumstances. I don't see any way in which a better deal is going to pass the House.
So we get what the POTUS asked for all along - a bipartisan raising of the debt ceiling which postpones the issue (probably, at least) until after the election. I'm not happy with a lot of what is there, and think ANY spending cuts at this time are a terrible idea. But again, they are better than going into default, which unfortunately, is about the only other realistic outcome at this point in time.