Datechguy's Blog

Looking at MSNBC this morning on the debt ceiling I can see that where this is and where it is going.

I slept in a bit this morning but caught the end of Morning Joe and the beginning of Chuck Todd’s show, they are opining on the dysfunction of the house of representatives because Boehner bill did not pass.

Excuse me?

The House has passed bill after bill, they passed a budget when the neither the Democratic House of the Senate under Harry Reid, they have sent these bills to the Senate but they have been a model of inaction. They passed Cut Cap and Balance which still sits on the table in the Senate today.

For the MSM it has been a heads you lose, tails you lose. If the GOP passes Boehner bill (and I thought it should pass) then the Senate would ignore it, and the story would be all about how the house can’t pass a bill that the senate could accept and intransigent GOP members.

If the GOP doesn’t pass the Boehner bill then it’s all about a dysfunctional house not passing anything in a crisis. (Somehow the 180+ democrats who wouldn’t vote for it hold no responsibility for this.)

Now lets look at the senate side. Reid has passed NOTHING, zip zero nada. There have been a lot of talk about this plan and that plan but there has been no bill, nothing brought to the floor, nothing with actual figures that people can vote on.

So what is actually going on? I’ll tell you, it’s Libya on the Potomac.

In Libya, the president was a spectator as the revolution began. Questions were being asked if the president was relevant, politically this would not do. The administration waited until it rebels were at the gates of Tripoli and then pronounced “Gaddafi must go.”. Unfortunately for Obama he misjudged Gaddafi launched a counter offensive and the president found himself forced to go to war to save face (a war that is still in stalemate.)

The president found himself in a similar position politically. The election is getting closer, he is so weak that republicans were jumping at the prospect of running against him. The economy was in a shambles and the “It’s Bush’s fault” line was proving ineffective. It was so bad that even MSNBC with a 10-1 dem vs GOP ratio was considered not sufficiently in his corner.

Unless the game was substantially changed the prospects for the party are dim. He needed a game changer a crisis that the GOP could be blamed for. The debt ceiling was perfect, an arbitrary issue that could tie the GOP to the bad economy and allow him to force concessions on Taxes that could be pleasing to his base that has abandoned him.

The last funding resolution has dissatisfied the GOP Tea party caucus, who were assured that the real battle would be on the debt ceiling. It was an opening that just might be exploitable.

Thus President Obama decided early to go apocalyptic with dire predictions of what would happen if the debt ceiling was not raised. He was of course helped by the MSM that stressed the need for Tax increased a “balanced approach” but he was also helped by the ratings agencies and the big banks who are even more scared of systematic change than he is. As Mickey Kaus put it few days ago:

Would S&P have threatened a downgrade if Congress had just given Obama the clean debt-ceiling increase he wanted? If not, why are they making a fuss about plans that promise to increase the ceiling and reduce the deficit a bit? … It’s lucky I’m not paranoid, because if I were I might think that, like the Oslo judges, they are doing their part to help our President out

Unfortunately for the White house they discovered that the new members of congress actually meant what they said about wanting to change things. The normal political deals were not possible and with just a few days left the president finds himself in a quandary. For weeks he predicted the apocalypse and now every deal on the table, even the Reid deal, are written from the tea party perspective, that is no taxes and cuts in spending (even if some are an illusions).

So what are the president options?

#1. Let the Boehner plan pass: Prospect nil. If there is one thing the president can’t allow is a GOP victory, even less can Harry Reid allow it, That would give them credit for averting a “crisis” that he himself proclaimed.

#2 Cut cap and balance, Prospect: less that Nil. Even WORSE, This, unlike the Boehner plan would actually entrench changes that would assure a primary challenge and a revolt among progressives.

The president can be assured that Harry Reid will prevent both of these unpalatable options from happening

#3 The Reid Bill: Prospect: Slight The advantage of the Reid bill is that most of the cuts are an illusion but the problem is to actually get a) Republicans who will pass it in the senate. b) Republicans who would pass it in the house c) Democrats who would vote for it in the house. In terms of the press coverage he can count on the MSM to blame republicans for not compromising in the Senate if it fails there and to Attack the GOP in the house if it makes it that far. If somehow it actually passes democrats will claim “victory” publicly but privately will be stewing about having to support and defend any such bill to their base. It will be VERY damaging next year.

#4 The 14th Amendment. Prospect: Almost certain This is the Clinton Option and the one that the White House will eventually end up using as soon as every possible advantage can be drained from the Reid Bill’s non-passage. It will go to court but it will take a long time for it to wind its way through. It gives the president a “victory” in the sense that it makes him look decisive in the short-term, but it also ties him directly to the debt and that will hurt him in 2012 which his what this entire process was about in the first place. I think Cap Ed is wrong here.)

#5 Nothing! Prospect: Temporary at best That is the one thing he can’t allow to happen. That is for two reasons. First of all it can’t be revealed that this is all about nothing. When the sun rises on Wednesday and there are not bodies in the streets the president will look like Chicken Little. The longer crisis doesn’t ensure the more foolish the president will look and IF a crisis ensues when an option exists that Bill Clinton already talked about a month ago it will be the President who will be blamed.

So who is the big winner here long-term? The tea party! The direction of the debate has totally turned and they are responsible. There have been some harsh words spoken in the last 24-48 hours but does anyone rationally believe that come September 2012 anyone will be arguing about this vote?

Anyone who is panicking over this has not read history. The ship has turned and the direction has changed and the best the Democrats can hope for is a few days of positive MSM coverage that they would get anyway. One week after this entire “crisis” has passed the President will still own this economy and his re=election prospects will not have changed for the better.

The Times they are a changin.

Update: What a surprise:

Moody’s Investors Service said today it expects the U.S. will get to keep its Aaa credit rating, “albeit with a shift to a negative outlook,” provided Congress and the White House can work out a deal to avoid missing payments to U.S. bondholders.

what a coincidence Moody trying to push the Reid plan, but as Allahpundit says:

The silver lining for Republicans is that Moody’s also said it only cares about payments related to the debt service when assessing “default.” Since Treasury will have plenty of revenue to cover that, default isn’t happening.

But either way I’m ok, after all I have an extra $10 in the till.

Update 2: this is revealing:

Washington Is Annoyed at Wall Street’s Failure to Panic