Who is the target audience for Obama's ''give away the store'' negotiating style?

I've read op-eds that claim it's a cagey play for swing voters, but as a one time swing voter myself, I have to say that's bullshit.


If someone stands for nothing but a negotiating strategy (and one with mixed results at best), I would have more confidence in someone who offers specific policy solutions, and is willing to kick asses and bloody noses to get there.

No one outside of DC gives a syphilitic rat's ass about ''process.''

That's not going to be any comfort to people who would have had the Social Security or Medicare cut if the Republicans had accepted Obama's unilateral disarmament deal in these debt ceiling negotiations.

I don't even think Obama thinks he is negotiating with the Republicans.

He is having a fight with the GOP who can carry more water for transnational banks and corporations. The Republicans are afraid if they take Obama's deal, the wealthy will rightly see DLC-type Democrats as the more reliable servants since they confuse the otherwise vocal left into silence. Just like Bill Clinton with NAFTA, welfare reform, and telecomm deregulation among others, Obama seems intent on giving Wall Street most of what it wants with just enough window dressing of enforcement and reform to put us back to sleep.

But I could be wrong.

Who do you think Obama is playing to with his negotiating and governing style?

The few indies I know are just closet Ds and Rs who swing back and forth, depending on the low information they've gleaned the previous cycle. Not all indies, of course! but the few I know ... They wait until the very last second, "in the booth," and then just hail-mary it.

I think that anyone who wants to work in fed gov should be required to live ONE YEAR outside the beltway. AT LEAST. Six months in suburbia, six months in poor urban areas.

Just one woman's opinion.

He was peace-maker supreme on the Harvard Law Review, as its first black president.

Maybe he thought he could do it again, on a bigger scale, as the first black President.

But he never met a dick like Eric at Harvard.

Individual reputations and future careers were at stake with the law review. In politics, debate and persuasion have little to do with anything. His opponents are bought and paid for and the only tools at his disposal are carrots and sticks of votes and money: he can convince voters to turn out uncooperative pols and/or his big donors to share their largesse with his allies or withhold it.

Any words he says to the GOP beyond that is jacking off.

Believing in the power of logic and reason. And in his own powers of persuasion.

Then again, he may just be another corporate asshole sell-out. :shrug:

edit: too much whitespace at the bottom.

And the Harvard Law Review involves a lot of politics, too. Very much.

swing voters don't like being in limbo as much as everyone else doesn't. They're looking for a clear path to somewhere, and strong & steady leadership to guide us there.

appearing ready to negotiate everything, while Repukes showing non-negotiating style.

It seems that they are who count -- and why not since they own the monetary clout as well as control the major media outlets?

Obama is a smart politician who cares about his own butt first, and if anyone kinda benefits on the side then all the better. The heads of the Republican Party are cut from the same mold though.

Insights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MZCHjGkTPg&feature=related

It takes some subtle listening and a bit of thought to get there, but actually "fundamental changes" were never on the table. There were tweaks that over a large number of years resulted in lower expenditures for benefits, there was apparently plenty of discussion of "means testing" these changes, so that folks who do not have retirement savings and other pensions would not be hit.

The difference was between an average 3 percent and an average 2.7 percent cost of living increase to benefits. While I am not supportive of the concept, this hardly qualifies as "giving away the store".

I would however be supportive of changes in benefit structures that reduced benefits over time for those who have the financial resources to afford it. I would be supportive if the changes made would secure permanent benefits for those with less. This will probably hit me personally as I have (for the moment anyway) a "defined benefit pension" that at least under current calculations, will considerably exceed my SS benefits. Lord only knows if this will still be true when republicans get done with "reforming" the pension system, but for the moment at least, it appears that I will be better off than most.

What Wall Street wants is completely different. What they want is "private investment accounts", where government takes 6 percent of your paycheck by force of law and hands it to Wall Street investment firms. This was apparently never anywhere near the table. This would be "giving away the store".

and when it has zip to do with the deficit is precisely giving away the store.

Obama should be standing at that podium every day of these negotiations saying what Bernie Sanders says, Social Security doesn't contribute a nickel to the deficit. He shouldn't be standing there praising himself for being willing to increase the poverty of millions of American seniors.

SS benefits paid out now exceed SS tax revenues, so in fact, the benefits do add to the deficit. The proper cure for this is to get more people working. But that is besides the point. Currently the deficit between revenues and benefits is made up by cashing in T-bills. The cash to cover redemption of T-bills to pay this portion of benefits comes from general fund tax revenue, mostly income taxes.

Read up.

For a very long time, nearly 30 years, surplus SS revenue made up a portion of the general fund deficit, now because of the republican engineered economic collapse, both, and in fact all funds are running in deficit.

I think getting more people to work and raising taxes on wealth is a far better solution, but this is not in the cards in a post 2010 world. It could be in the cards in a post 2012 world, but only if we quit our complaining, re-elect the President and elect a ton of progressives to congress.

It is the difference between looters and shoplifters. If over time you tolerated shoplifting you might as well have allowed looters.

is factored into most retail business models. Not a good analogy at all. Nice try though. A 0.3 percent cut = 99.7 percent retained. Keeping 99.7 percent is not "giving away the store" and saying it over and over does not make it so.

and be able to sell middle class whites on killing it since ''welfare'' is for the dirt poor and blacks in their minds since the Great Society had the misfortune of passing at roughly the same time as the Civil Rights Act.

whenever it wants, facts be damned. One cannot make policy and worry about what the right might say at the same time.

They lack a coherent philosophy on politics and the economy in general and may actually hold conflicting ideas in their head. They may want to give up Social Security and Medicare if they thought it would eliminate deficits, yet at the same time they may think it's odd for people to go without in the richest country in the world. A more direct example is a union worker voting for Republicans because he feels they represent him better than Democrats.

These are the the voters Obama is playing towards in my opinion. They are fickle voters as a result of an incoherent philosophy and are easily swayed by fear, leaders who are very charismatic, and selfish interest.

they are probably swayed by talking heads on TV, right wing talk radio, and campaign ads right around the time of the election.

You don't have to follow politics in general to be in contact with memes that are commonly recited but easily refuted if one thinks. A very common one would be "tax and spend liberal." Repeated and spread often enough, and uncritical people will start to accept it as conventional wisdom despite the vote histories. It's those people that we need to come out and vote, incidentally.

They just need to wake up.

Always been that way even as a senator.

I think his approach is all about telling Corporate America that the Democratic Party is a better, more efficient servant than the GOP. That's what the third way sorts have always been about-- reshaping the party to be less about labor and more about Wall Street.

And considering the headway he's been making on SS, not only attempting to loot the fund once and for all, but alienating the party's traditional constituencies in the process, I'd say Obama has advanced the third way strategy considerably.

and the DLC Dems want to take the corporate torch when they fall, rather than use it as an opportunity to put down the rabid dogs on Wall Street.

The ultimate goal of "entitlement reform" is to funnel trillions of dollars from taxpayers to Wall Street. It's an untapped source of funds handed to them by the world's most effective collection agency, the United States government.