This Weekend Was Always Coming [View All]

[babylonsister]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/7/30/91745/9270

This Weekend Was Always Coming

by BooMan
Sat Jul 30th, 2011 at 09:17:45 AM EST


Robert Reich is an incredibly smart man whose politics pretty much mirror my own, but he's got the same liberal myopia that I see from friends and colleagues throughout the blogosphere and the activist community. He wants to know, for example, why we're stuck debating the debt ceiling, deficits, and debt when we have persistently high unemployment, low economic growth, and increasing income disparity. Here's how he explains it to himself:

snip//

For every Robert Reich who is carping on the left, there are a dozen unhappy Republicans who think the GOP is acting recklessly. John Boehner's speakership is in ashes. Michele Bachmann in now polling about evenly with Mitt Romney. The GOP is having a huge internal fight and is loathed and mistrusted by the entire international community. They have been exposed for the radicals that they are, and the people disagree overwhelmingly with their behavior and their approach.

It could have been different. The president could have refused to accept any coupling of the debt ceiling to budget cuts. He could have, rather, argued he needed more money to stimulate the economy. He could have tried to convince people of that. But, in that case, we'd still be here this weekend facing default. And we'd be the party divided and unpopular. Obama, not Boehner, would be the one whose career was a smoking husk. And the people would be blaming the Democrats for their intransigence, instead of the other way around.

The truth is, the 2010 midterms were a catastrophe. They had horrible consequences. This weekend was one of those consequences, and it couldn't be avoided through "leadership."