Sunday, July 10, 2011
Sunday Question for Liberals
On the debt limit/deficit reduction talks: if a deal is reached, is there any politician you would trust if he or she said that it was the best deal available to the Democrats?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Good question.
ReplyDeleteI'd trust Waxman or Frank. Unapologetic liberals.
Nancy Pelosi
ReplyDeleteI always find these sorts of questions interesting. Not sure who I'd pick really... Nancy Pelosi probably, since she is at least nominally at the negotiating table and obviously has tons of progressive cred.
ReplyDeleteThis is one angle where I feel that the loss of Ted Kennedy in 2009 was, aside from his skills as a legislator, truly meaningful. How much mellower would the strum und drang of progressive media be today if Kennedy had been alive and signed off on all those controversial deals - too small stimulus, no public option, etc. Particularly the health care bill, of which Kennedy would've been the prime mover and supporter. Kennedy was also famously a big Obama fan. So maybe his support of Obama's agenda and strategies wouldn't have calmed liberal ire that much; but then again, maybe it would've had a noticeable effect.
The Democrats hold the whip hand on this issue--there is a very good case that the 14th Amendment deliberately renders the debt ceiling moot. The Democrats do not need to accept ANY concessions, especially given that only with the positive SUPPORT of House democrats can a deal pass.
ReplyDeleteErgo, if someone's explaining why a deal is the best we can get, then they're already wrong.
[This is barring a deal on the order of, "$1T in deficit reduction, entirely in the form of tax hikes on the wealthy and DoD reductions"]
Call me silly but personally, if Joe Biden backs it I think the Prez got as good a deal as he could in the talks both because Biden has been involved in Washington negotiations since Nixon and his career has showed him to be a fairly mainstream liberal and deeply committed to these principles. While I am very sympathetic to people who argue that Obama keeps screwing these negotiations it seems far too similar to chalking up the handing of Iraq to Bush being “stupid” or Carter’s difficulties to him being “weak” for my tastes. It just seems like fairly flat analysis of a complex multifaceted situation. I’d argue that if Obama had taken the advice to “not negating with hostage takers” over the debt ceiling back in the beginning of the year Boehner et al would had just said "fine we won’t raise it then" and Obama would be back to square one. Except in a worse position because after the GOP (and especially the house freshmen) would be dug in even deeper and would demand even more concessions after they felt like they won a showdown. But maybe this is just because I am a bad bargainer too.
ReplyDeleteNope.
ReplyDeleteUnless you mean "the best deal available given that none of the Democrats in the room could negotiate their way out of a paper bag." In that case, Nancy Pelosi probably has a pretty good sense of the limits of the possible.
Jonathan:
ReplyDeleteI'd trust any and all of them, since the "deal" would be for a REAL debt-limit hike in return for FAKE spending cuts.
And I say that as a gloating lib/lefty, not a sulking righty spouting Kristol-generated talking points.
Part of negotiating is never letting it look like a victory, even if you've cleaned their clock. Only complete amateurs do endzone dances. And Obama is not an amateur.
ReplyDeleteTo the larger point, there are no more Ted Kennedys. To the progressives, the 2 best candidates (Weiner and Grayson) are no more. Everybody is damaged or flawed goods (and not just for progressives).
Maybe Jon Stewart?
Sen. Bernie Sanders.
ReplyDeleteFor an actual self-professed Socialist, Sen. Sanders has been an effective advocate in the media, and most understanding of the political lay of the land. He's been supportive of many deals that I'm positive he'd want to go 3x further than the Dems could actually get through Congress.
I'd second JS - Bernie Sanders
ReplyDeleteBernie - absolutely!
ReplyDeleteCheers!
JzB
Pelosi or Jan Schakowsky. Sanders too, but I can't imagine him saying this.
ReplyDeleteOnly Bernie Sanders. I think that Nancy Pelosi has been heroic at times during her tenure in the House, but she is also a party player and a politician, while Bernie Sanders is integrity personified.
ReplyDeletePelosi or Sanders, agreed. With Weiner gone, Sanders is the only politician I actually can listen to on TV without muting the sound(and Frank, but I don't think he's in on this deal) I would be surprised, though, if any deal negotiated by our current crop of know-nothings would get Bernie's endorsement, simply because they're all likely to include revising the COLA, or other cuts to the social safety net.
ReplyDeleteCute. Trust a politician? I trust the politicians of times past to keep doing what they are doing. The rest? I wonder who's paying them and what the currency is.
ReplyDeleteno ...what a stupid question....its like asking "is there anyone who could tell you that a kabuki isn't a kabuki, and would you believe them? "
ReplyDeletethe whole premise of the question is stupid.
Kirsten Gillibrand is fairly new to these "Games of Gnomes" but I find her more forth coming and courageous than most. And of course Bernie.
ReplyDeleteI trusted Michael Bennett before he voted for the last group of tax cuts for the rich.
ReplyDeleteI think we're looking at the wrong sources of savings and new incomes, so no, I don't think our politicians are even considering the best or most creative options for fixing our massive debt and spending issues, and I don't trust that anything on the table is the "best" deal available.
I also would take Pelosi's word on it. It goes without saying that any deal is the best deal available given that the Democrats already screwed up by not including an increase in the debt limit in the Bush tax cut deal last December and by pre-conceding that anything other than a clean debt limit increase was possible. If we could go back in time to December 2010 knowing what we now know (and which many of us could have told them even back then), then a much better deal than we're going to end up with could have been possible.
ReplyDeleteNO! I would trust Bernie Sanders if he approved of it, but he's not a Democrat. He's an independent.
ReplyDeleteJeff Merkley. And, of course, Bernie.
ReplyDeletePelosi or Durbin for me.
ReplyDelete