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catastrophic debt default, but he needed to get out from under the debt
issue, to demonstrate that he cared about reducing deficits before public
concerns about government spending, stoked by rhetoric on the right,
overwhelmed his presidency.”
There are more things wrong about this than a penguin in the desert.
Allowing Republicans to use “economic blackmail” [9] only emboldens
them. The fiscal cliff is the third time the right is using mafia tactics –
“Nice country you got here. Shame if something were to happen to it” – as
Krugman describes it [10]. The only way to call the right’s bluff is to
allow the economy to go wobbly so Wall Street, the GOP’s masters, will
bring their attack dogs to heel.
Also, notice that Bai thinks allowing a default is unthinkable, but
pilfering food, medicine and money from more than 100 million
Americans [11] is perfectly fine. As for Bai’s contention that “public
concerns about government spending” stoked by the right would
overwhelm Obama’s presidency, it’s utter bullshit.
Take a look at this site [12], which covers 25 polls on public priorities
going back to June 2010. When pollsters list options, which skew
responses, the economy and jobs poll close to 50 percent as the top
priority, trouncing the deficit, which averages in the low twenties. The
latter figure, incidentally, is similar to the percentage of voters in the 2010
mid-term elections who said they supported the Tea Party. In six polls, the
response was open-ended, which better reflects what the public thinks.
Economy and jobs still notched 49 percent on average. The deficit and
national debt was barely a blip, averaging 4 percent.
No matter how the data is sliced then, the deficit is an inside-the-
Beltway obsession that at most inflames right-wing firebrands who are
never going to support the Democrats.
Nate Silver crunched the numbers on the debt deal in July 2011 – if
there’s only one lesson from this election, it’s that Silver’s numbercrunching
is unparalleled – and found House Republicans to be
“extremely conservative on fiscal matters and … significantly out of step
with the public as a whole.” As for the mix of spending cuts and tax
increases Obama put on the table, it was “quite close to, or perhaps even a