Seriously! What are Obama's options?

He doesn't have the luxury of holding out with the debt ceiling issue looming.

It is a political reality that he has to move right to attract the non-T-bagger repukes, right?

If he doesn't appease the non-T-bagger repukes, nothing will pass, and we will enter economic
chaos and default.

Perhaps, if he had spent more time looking for cuts that don't affect the lives of really people as much as entitlements, it might have helped.

Perhaps, if he didn't perpetuate war..

But, at this point, he is pretty much fucked.

not make a deal with republicans over the Bush tax cuts, then per chance not go to the negotiating tabel with more cuts to "entitlement" programs than the republicans ever asked for.

per chance, per chance, per chance.....

He has done a magnificent job of making the Republican case for spending cuts, which he put on the table. Then when the republicans won't go for tax increases, the compromise is bills with no tax increases.

WONDERFUL job Mr. President!

like they hold all the cards. What leverage does Obama have? The only leverage
I see is that no plan could make the repukes look bad. BUT, Obama can't just
let the country take a dive on Tuesday, just to make them look bad.

I don't see how the Dems and Obama have any bargaining power. Do you?

when all he did was capitulate!

could his actions mean?

I hope the measuring stick people are using for this failure isn't..... he helped them manufacture a crisis and that was the best he could do, so we all gotta suck it and get the fuck off Obama's back.

Know what i mean?

into it thinking repukes would compromise. Huge mistake. He failed
to realize that their main goal is to abolish entitlements because
they are for the frail who they want to push down. So the rich
can become richer and the poor poorer. In the 70's the rich took
in 9% of the income. Now, 25%

But, unfortunately, we will never know what he could/would have done had he
been handed a country with a positive bank account.

And they knew it. That's why they let old geezer McCain run, knowing he
would lose. They drained the country of every red cent knowing the Dem
would have no money to spend and would eventually be blamed for the
mess. "Let's wait 4 years, and let them deal with it, and we'll be
back again to rape and pillage again.

Trouble is...they went too far..probably beyond the point of return.

coming out his ears.

he be down in the polls? Or, are you assuming he wants to be in the right middle and not with us?

like I said before, we will never know what he would have done, had he had the money, so I
guess because of his actions, it's proof enough to you that he would stay to the right regardless.

he is not a progressive, he is not a liberal. I'm not sure he is a democrat.

But maybe the Party is morphing and I just don't fit into it anymore.

I haven't changed what I believe in. So my complaints are the same as they have always been, and many of my complaints about Obama are what I use to bitch and moan about the GOP.

He's not naive, he doesn't lack political savvy, he's a Hamiltonian Democrat and a free market advocate. If you haven't read madfloridian's journal about this, you owe it to yourself to do so.

In a 2006 speech to the Hamiltonian Conservative Democrats (talk about an oxymoron), he refers to a conversation he had with the economist Robert Rubin about the "losers"(middle class) in a global economy. He accurately describes the negative impact this will cause, but does so in a cold, dispassionate, pragmatic manner. At no time does he offer any solutions. He might as well have been performing an autopsy(in retrospect, perhaps he was). It is one of the most chilling things I've read in a long, long time.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/7875

I realized quite quickly after he got in that he was not the Democrat of my dreams and he never
had that bleeding heart liberal attitude that I love... a la Ted Kennedy or Cuomo. I think we all
had to deal with the disparity between what we wanted him to be and what he is.

Obviously, He is and always was a pragmatist. He is not driven by ideology like we are. It was and is a huge disappointment...but it is reality.

All that said, I still believe he lacks savvy. First example...health care. Instead of quietly pushing incremental change...he announces to the world he wants a complete overhaul - raising every red flag, giving the opposition time to build a case. And, the situation he's in today, with his polls diving, is sure an odd way to achieve the right middle, people think he was always aiming for.

As far as lacking savvy, I think you and I will still have to disagree. It all depends on what he true goals are.

If you think he's really trying to right middle, then you're right, he's not savvy. If his goal is to move the country more to the right, then he's eaten up with savvy.

I believe, based on all his actions(I no longer listen to what he says), he's much more conservative than he led us to believe during his presidential campaign.

Default is certainly not an option. Folks, including more than a few on DU, will conveniently forget that fact and attack him for whatever the end result is. But that will pale in comparison to the attacks he would have received had a default occurred.

we had to extend the bush tax cuts, we had to, we had to, we had to take three steps back and none forward.

Now we have to have the raising of the debt ceiling tied to cutting social security and medicare.

Yep, you're right, we had to do all of this to SAVE THE COUNTRY!

He has the people on his side after all.

The only options he had were to:

1) Accept the republican terms of debate.
2) Implicitly and explicitly give credibility to Republican talking points.
3) Go one step further and set up commissions to explore the best way to resolve issue that only Republicans were talking about.
4) Stack that commission with members who had a documented history of wanting to destroy social programs.
5) Signal at every turn that he was more concerned with a "grand bargain" and being "bipartisan".
6) Subtly and unsubtly spread misinformation that somehow Social Security was tied to the deficit.
7) Signal some more that he was willing to compromise.
8) Signal only one more time because he's just not going to tell us again, guys that this will be his last compromise.
9) Scold liberals for being too tied to ideology.
10) Praise Boehner for being a person who loves his country and is trying to do what is best.


You are 100% correct. These were really his only options. He was absolutely caught between a rock and a hard place. I mean honestly if he had any options other than these, I wish those crazy leftist radicals (who let's face it are the only ones who really have a problem with whatever deal comes out of this) would tell us what those options were.

that republicans would be rational and would compromise. He was naive. He didn't realize
he had no leverage. What he should have done was work with moderate repukes and dems
so he had the numbers to pass something more palatable. But he didn't.

So, speaking of today, unless he agrees to dissolve a couple government agencies, he
has no options.

just like his extending the Bush tax cuts made the deficit worse, making this current crisis worse, his slashing spending will make the economy worse.

So what can he do now? How about the 14th amendment?

14th amendment...I heard yesterday will surely lead to impeachment charges.

I sincerely doubt the Senate will hold a trial and oust Barack Obama from the presidency.

where he got really, REALLY mad!

Seriously, thank you. And here we were, being told over and over that he and Lawrence O'Donnell had the brilliant rope-a-dope strategy full of Win all figured out, and that the rest of us were just too stupid to live.

nobody could possibly have forseen things would have played out this way

:rofl:

the game, the same god damned thing.

It's called being right.

all the "hand-wringing" was from folks who've seen this movie before and knew how it would play out.

used.

He laid down on a hard place and pulled a boulder down on himself.

The one thing I don't remember hearing from Obama, which I am very sure my most unfavorite President Bush the younger would have done, is demand a straight up and down vote on the debt ceiling every chance he gets. From the getgo Obama bought into the Mepublicans idea of tying the raising of the debt ceiling to 'spending cuts', meaning cutting anything that is a cherished Democratic program or might in anyway bring votes to the Democratic party. Obama helped the Mepublicans create the so called 'crisis' by buying into that connection. He should have just stood his ground and explained to the American people that raising the debt ceiling is too important to get bogged down in a bunch of other stuff and needs to be an up or down vote. That way if the Mepublicans vote down the raise in the ceiling and the economy collapses we would all know who is responsible.

Obama's problem in all his negotiations is that he starts from a moderate to conservative Democratic position and only looks to his right politically and for compromise. He doesn't seem to really like or appreciate the liberal wing of the party and takes them for granted. With the DNC/DLC push to corporatism and more conservative positions doesn't this seem a lot like how the rightwing Republicans pushed their party to the far right. First you isolate the part of the part that is not 'conservative', in the case of the Mepublicans any member considered liberal or moderate or any member that won't toe the line. The idea being that eventually that group will either shut up or leave the party altogether leaving an idealistically pure party structure. If we liberals really want to take back the Democratic party at some point we will have to stop going along to get along and start running candidates to replace the DINOs. As much as I dislike the practice even running 'stealth' candidates that hide their strong left ward leaning until they are actually in office.

cuts as well. So, guess he believed them too. If he had kept the debt ceiling raise separate he still would have had to come up with a debt reduction bill too, right?

So, what you are saying is, he should have just gotten a simple debt ceiling bill out there and let it fail. And take the chance that they would capitulate before Tuesday? I actually posted that idea
and it was resoundingly flamed here. My thought at the time was that he would be having to prove a negative again, just like the stimulus, if it got passed.

it wouldn't fail. The idea is if Obama used the bully pulpit and could get the media to play along (I know that might be a long shot) he could put enough pressure on the Mepublicans that they wouldn't dare not pass a clean debt ceiling bill. I am sure there are a lot of people here on DU that don't believe and maybe this is the right case to do it but if you want to compromise it is easier to do it from a position of strength and therefore you have to stand your ground so that even if you eventually lose you show you are truly willing to fight for what you believe in.

Show some courage.

Use the 14th amendment if they refuse.

utterly flamed...saying he would be putting the country in jeopardy to prove they are idiots.

So he should insist on a clean debt ceiling only bill, and veto anything else.

Use 14th if needed.

They would be ruined by the end of the month. I mean these people don't really have leverage. They understand they are creating uncertainty and they believe that will create fear enough to make people do what they want. They are wrong: uncertainty in itself is not sufficient to prevent retaliation.

You can't paint yourself into a corner like Obama has and then complain about lack of good options

to raise the debt ceiling (and takes the risk of nothing passing) his only option
left is to get something agreeable to the non-T-baggers. It's really the repuke non-t-baggers
who hold the power now.

Use the 14th.

Use the Homeland Security provision.

Form a coalition between Dems and the saner Repubs that will vote for a clean bill.

The problem is that I'm not sure he wants a clean bill.

Let's talk about the shoulda-coulda-woulda because we all know that, in politics, that's what REALLY matters . . .

:sarcasm:

Many people, not just in the blogosphere, have been pointing out and calling for reasonable alternatives to this before and during this process. They said all along how this could have been avoided in a variety of ways. That is very different than "woulda,shoulda coulda."


But instead of their views even being acknowledged by Obama and those who think he can do no wrong, those g suggestions have been ignored and dismissed out of hand. Instead its "Trust Obama he knows what he's doing. You're just fringe left idiots."

We didn't have to let it get this far. Democrats screwed the pooch when they didn't have to,.

against a united republican house, wouldn't it? The saner Republicans and the T-crazies, even up to Saturday, nixed any Democrat alternative. The only way anything good can happen is if these two republican factions split and the saner ones align with us.

How do you think a factions split could have happened? What leverage would we have had to do this?

This was not like a natural disaster or a 9-11 that comes out of nowhere. This is a problem that everyone saw coming down the pike for a while.

It was a failure of leadership that could have been avoided if Obama, Congressional Dems and the saner GOP leaders had quietly met long before and agreed that whatever other disagreements they may have they did not want the economy to crash because of the debt ceiling thing. "Compromise' was not an issue with that, because no one -- except the minority of teabag crazies -- wanted things to come to this or the economy crash.

If the teabaggers had been isolated by a coalition of Dems and Rs, the y would not have had the votes to blackmail the global economy.

I know that sounds simplistic, and there are a lot of nuances. But the basic point is that it did not have to come to this -- and whatever deep divisions exist in the country, because defaulting was not something anyone wanted.

A huge portion of the initial cuts are from defense and the expected draw-down of troops in the two major wars. It doesn't cut entitlements. I'd rather have some revenue sources, but we couldn't get that right now and this is a good debate to have in the 2012 campaign.

when you are replacing troops with mercenaries who are paid two to ten times as much, spreading war to new countries, and arming every revolt that occurs overseas. The banks profit from wars run on credit, and there are no serious plans to stop this lucrative (for them) enterprise.

Obama talks of cutting defense, but watch the money. Defense spending for next year will increase, and it will continue to increase after that. The defense spending cuts we are hearing about now are all hypothetical and in the future, and if you believe significant cuts will actually happen, I have a bridge to sell you.

It's true that sometimes promised cuts don't materialize, but that's true of both defense and social programs as well. Republicans usually have a problem with the latter too.

and no one has ever defined the social program cuts either. It's all or nothing thinking.

You are right - with these Republicans, this is what we get.

From the start, he should have said something like this.

"I will NOT sign a bill with cuts, especially one with cuts to medicare, medicaid or social security. The American economy is too weak to sustain cuts. I will sign only a clean debt cieling bill, or one with revenues. If the republicans in congress fail to pass this bill, they will be held accountable."

From that point on, Obama would have cleaned his hands of the mess, and it'd be up to congress.

Of course, that ship has sailed. But Obams still has the 14th Amendment! Not to mention circumvension through the trillion dollar coin idea, or one of Bush's Executive powers.

He is in the same debacle. Obama no longer owns federal policy. We have divided government: both the Democrats and the Republicans have equal responsibility for our fiscal situation.

That's the point of view from which Obama had to negotiate. He should have appreciated that default would be really bad for the House Republicans, too; that they didn't want it any more than he did. That would have given him leverage. It would have allowed him to get an actual balanced deal.

Instead, as so often he has in the best, he assumed that he must be the responsible one, that he should take the hit, apparently on the belief that his political enemies will reciprocate with equal generosity--despite the overwhelming evidence that they won't.