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Saturday, April 09, 2011

Twitter roundup of reaction to the massive Democratic capitulation budget deal
Posted by Jill | 5:46 AM
Via Joe Sudbay:

@ezraklein: The resolution includes rider prohibiting dc from using own $ to help women access abortions. So pp escaped, but dc didn't.

@chrislhayes: Wow. This is bizarro world. LET'S JUST KEEP CUTTING! LET'S CUT IT ALL! LET'S SEE WHAT THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE THINKS ABOUT IT!

@ezraklein: Shorter dems: these cuts we've been resisting and denouncing for months are historic and we're proud to be passing so many of them.

@ezraklein: Listening to this speech, you'd think Obama was the one arguing for larger cuts.

@ezraklein: Boehner's the political winner here. Managed his caucus. Got dems to agree to more than expected. Averted a shutdown. He was very effective.

@MSignorile: It all went exactly according to GOP plan: Demand super super extreme agenda, then settle for merely super extreme agenda.

@marcambinder: Boehner may have caved, but Obama and Reid are now celebrating a budget they roundly trashed months ago.

@mbrownerhamlin: RT @davecatanese: So did Obama just take credit for the "largest annual spending cut in our history"?

@brianbeutler: RT @speechboy71 Obama bragging about largest annual spending cut in history is maybe lowest moment of his presidency

@SamSeder: Millions of Americans asking how long after the start of austerity until the confidence fairies make them rich!

@DavidCornDC: If spending cuts are good/historic--per Obama & Reid tonight--why not have more? Can Ds escape this simplistic take-away? What's the pivot?

@fshakir: On senate floor, harry reid thanks u.s. chamber's tom donahue by name for making budget deal happen.

@ddayen: It'll be fun when job growth reverses over next few months, and GOP blame it on not cutting spending enough, and Dems go grumble grumble

@JC_Christian: rt @speechboy71 At a time of 9% unemployment both parties are working together not to create jobs but to reduce spending & cut econ growth

@GloriaFeldt: RT @blogdiva: the abused wife syndrome befits the Democrats

It makes me wonder if they weren't all in it all along: throw Planned Parenthood out there to give the Democrats cover for capitulating on everything else.

Ezra Klein, who's shown too many signs recently of having gone from being another passionate progressive kid to a measured establishment suckup (not that I blame him, after all, we all sell out sooner or later if we have something someone wants to buy), finds his mojo in his response to this debacle, and what it means for even the short-term future:

The final compromise was $38.5 billion below 2010’s funding levels. That’s $78.5 billion below President Obama’s original budget proposal, which would’ve added $40 billion to 2010’s funding levels, and $6.5 billion below John Boehner’s original counteroffer, which would’ve subtracted $32 billion from 2010’s budget totals. In the end, the real negotiation was not between the Republicans and the Democrats, or even the Republicans and the White House. It was between John Boehner and the conservative wing of his party. And once that became clear, it turned out that Boehner’s original offer wasn’t even in the middle. It was slightly center-left.

But you would’ve never known it from President Obama’s encomium to the agreement. Obama bragged about “making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Harry Reid joined him, repeatedly calling the cuts “historic.” It fell to Boehner to give a clipped, businesslike statement on the deal. If you were just tuning in, you might’ve thought Boehner had been arguing for moderation, while both Obama and Reid sought to cut deeper. You would never have known that Democrats had spent months resisting these “historic” cuts, warning that they’d cost jobs and slow the recovery.

[snip]

So why were Reid and Obama so eager to celebrate Boehner’s compromise with his conservative members? The Democrats believe it’s good to look like a winner, even if you’ve lost. But they’re sacrificing more than they let on. By celebrating spending cuts, they’ve opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile. Claiming political victory now opens the door to further policy defeats later.

And policy defeats are what will matter.

Weak weak weak weak weak.

As usual, Jon Stewart nailed it last Wednesday:



That's worth hanging up on the wall in counted cross-stitch:
Sometimes I think Democrats couldn't get laid -- if they lived next door to a hospice where whose patients' only hope, according to their doctors, would be the laying of Democrats.

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3 Comments:
Blogger Unknown said...
Here's the Dems: "These budget cuts are like the Civil War and a war on women and the bombing of innocent civilians.... Sure, okay, we're in."
4/9/11, 8:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Since we don't really know what they've agreed to, we don't really know whether it's "just for six months" or not, do we? They may have agreed to cuts that increase each year for the next ten years. They may have agreed to permanently defund Pell grants or some other burdensome expense.

This is the last straw for me. I always thought that not voting or voting for a third-party candidate was a de facto vote for the opposition. I think at this point it would be better if the opposition were in power all around. Perhaps they would be more responsible when they had to take the blame or credit and maybe the Dems would find some fighting spirit.
4/9/11, 11:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
It's true! The Republicans were right! The Dems ARE surrender monkeys!
4/12/11, 4:46 PM  
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