Cliff Schecter and Sam Seder had a fascinating and enlightening discussion on their most recent Friday news-in-review segment on Majority.fm. I want to focus on the discussion of Obama and the debt ceiling deal.
The first clip below is the first ten minutes of the segment, and contains an analysis of where we stand up to the point of Obama's press conference (since which, nothing has changed).
Notable:
■ Schecter's analysis of the players in this four-handed game starts at 2:20 in the clip. Note that he too says McConnell offered Obama a "clean vote."
■ Seder's discussion (5:30) of the "adult" left-leaning mainstream media types is really instructive. He mentions Ezra Klein as an example, then says (0araphrasing): They are, to a person, amazed that Obama got McConnell into a position where he [McConnell] was throwing in the towel, and yet Obama didn't accept this, and is still pursuing cuts. ... Obama really believes in austerity as a way to grow the economy.
■ Sam (at 9:15; paraphrasing again): The McConnell deal would have gotten Obama off the hook.
Schecter: He doesn't want to be off the hook.
In the long version of the segment, there are two telling exchanges — one at 14:55, where they discuss to what extent most DC Democrats (with some exceptions, like Grijalva, Grayson, Nadler, and indies like Sanders) are driven by Wall Street.
But at 17:00, Seder asks Schecter, a political consultant, what he would advise a Democratic congressperson to do if the McConnell plan passes — in other words, how he would suggest that person campaign, given that the natural line ("I protected Social Security and Medicare") means that you are also protecting it from your own party's president.
Here's the segment in full; let it download, then jump to the relevant times.
I want to quote verbatim the exchange at 18:15 (my emphasis):
Sam: If you were advising a congressperson running, how would you advise them to handle this [the idea that you're protecting the safety net from your own president]?This discussion captures the situation — and the problem today — perfectly. Either Lawrence O'Donnell is right and Obama will take McConnell's clean bill deal; or he's oh-so-very wrong (and embarrassingly lectury in being so).
Cliff: I would advise them to oppose it, all efforts. ... For virtually any Democrat at this point, not standing up for Social Security, not standing up for Medicare, is a death knell. ... I don't know how I could advise them not to stand up to their own president, as painful and dangerous as that is in some ways.
And that's just from a political standpoint. From a moral standpoint I really don't know — how do you look at what's going on right now, how do you look at people making $500 million a year and cut Social Security?
If O'Donnell's wrong, Obama and Reid are "helping" McConnell "fix" his deal so Obama (and all other neo-liberal Dems, as near as I can tell) can ram through a forced vote in Congress on massive spending cuts and reductions to Social Security and Medicare.
We'll know very soon, won't we. The final bill will be clean or it won't. DC Dems will support it or they won't. Commentariat types will "grudgingly" like it or not. Everyone gets called out; no one gets to hide.
Me? I want to thank those involved in this fiasco for taking a muddy analog situation and making it totally digital — just in time for the billion dollar ad campaign in 2012.
GP
