The Fight That Never Was

Weakened by the election, Obama would be likely to bear most of the blame as opponents accused him of intransigence and arrogance. Republicans are always happy to run campaigns based on tax cuts, and this impasse might set up 2012 nicely for them. - Larry J. Sabato

Now that the President has caved on the tax-cuts the question progressives must ask is this, “If not this issue, then what issue is this President willing to fight for?” This was supposed to be his signature issue. The one issue that he claimed was a “principle”. If this was a principled fight then I would hate to see an issue he didn’t care about. This issue was a no-brainer for the Dems. If you can’t win a fight against tax-cuts for people who have already made out like bandits for the last 10 years by borrowing from China to finance them, then what fight can you win?

I think this White House has underestimated the wrath of a scorned base. I think what this White House and President failed to realize is that while he is the President of those who didn’t vote for him, he owed it to those who did vote for him to stand up for the issues they elected him to stand up for. Those who did not vote for him will never vote for him. Does he think that if he passed all of the Republican agenda that they would not run a challenger against him in 2012? The progressives have for the last two years been waiting for this White House to fight for something. It began with the stimulus package that was too small and loaded with concessions to the wing-nuts and still did not get a single wing-nut vote. Then we had health-care reform where everything was bargained away before the negotiations even begun and progressives thought at least they would fight for the public option which didn’t happen. And of course we had financial reform and again no fight.

We haven’t even gotten to cap & trade, DADT, Dream Act, or Afghanistan and the White House continued to tell the base either this was not an important issue or that they got the best they could get. Here is where I get lost. The wing-nuts used intransigence and arrogance to not only block the Democratic agenda, but also rode it to victory at the polls but we are now expected to believe that on a Democrat it wouldn’t work? There is something sinister going on here folks. If this President won’t fight for the middle-class or progressive issues then what President will? If after this any progressive believes that the Democratic Party will fight for them I don’t know what it will take to wake them up. This game is rigged and if progressives can’t read the writing on the wall then God help them. These folks are lying, whether it is the blue dogs, talking heads, or Ivy-League economists there would have been no Armageddon by letting these tax-cuts expire. This nonsense about a second recession, the largest tax increase will hit the lower tax rates, or a massive stock market sell-off is a smokescreen designed to cover the massive give-away to the wealthy.

After listening to the President make his concession speech I was struck by how he looked like a defeated man. This White House cannot see that now the wing-nuts smell blood in the water and any chance for future compromise on any issue is finished. If you know that this is the only shot at compromise for your complete agenda then I would recommend that you get more than 13 months of unemployment benefits and the small tax-cuts from the stimulus package. What the President has done is kick the can down the road again which he said he would not do. In two years we will have this same fight again and if you can’t win a fight with 2/3 of the American people behind you then when can you win a fight? I thought we had this fight in 2008 with the election and we won or did we? From where I sit the wing-nuts must have won the election because they have been setting the agenda as if they had.

This President doesn’t seem to have the spirit for conflict and would rather be seen as more conciliatory than as a fighter. Maybe it is his fear of being seen or referred to as an “angry black man”, but whatever it is he is in danger of becoming a lame-duck President. This President cannot win without his base and right now he doesn’t have his base and I don’t know if he can get them back. This isn’t about the “professional left” this is about real voters feeling betrayed by this President. Sometimes you have to fight even if the odds are that you may lose. This is what is known as principles, you fight for them. If this White House was not willing to go the distance they probably shouldn’t have left Chicago. It’s like Martin Sheen said in Apocalypse Now, “If you are not going to get off the boat you shouldn’t go up the river.”

What this compromise has demonstrated is that these tax-cuts will now become permanent and it is just a matter of time. At a time when these tax-cuts should have been allowed to expire and replaced by more targeted ones we get this. The reason these awful tax-cuts will become permanent is that there will never be a better time to let them expire. If now was not the time to let them expire, then there will never be a time to let them expire. We are borrowing money from a foreign country to pay for tax-cuts for the wealthiest people in this country. What about this makes any sense? Does anyone really believe that if the economy turns around these greedy people are going to just voluntarily give up their tax-cuts? How is giving the wing-nuts two years of tax-cuts and prolonging the estate tax instead of making them permanent a victory?

Bear in mind that Republicans want to make those tax cuts permanent. They might agree to a two- or three-year extension — but only because they believe that this would set up the conditions for a permanent extension later. And they may well be right: if tax-cut blackmail works now, why shouldn’t it work again later? - Paul Krugman