I learned nothing new. Obama played the role of the reasonable “above the fray” President, and Boehner played the role of outraged white guy who wasn’t going to take it anymore. Each targeted very different audiences: Obama, presumably “independents” and the markets (because he sure wasn’t talking to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, i.e., the Progressive caucus) and Boehner was playing to the Angry Tea Party Crowd.
Be interesting to see what the markets do tomorrow. They can’t take a lot of comfort in Boehner’s reaction to what Obama said. As for the political pundits, well I think we already know how they will spin this. But I’m curious. What did you learn tonight, and what do you think is going to happen in the next few days? Because the speeches didn’t give me a clue, to be honest. It looked completely like theatrics to me.
It was like watching a clip from Leave it to Beaver. Obama was Ward lecturing the Beave on what he should do and Boehner was Eddie Haskell telling the Beave “yeah, what does your old man know?”
I asked my dad what he thought. He shook his head and said “Neither one of them had any answers.” He had sort of a “We’re doomed” attitude for the first time in this whole debate.
No major impact on Asian markets yet. They’re just digesting it and maybe don’t know what to think either.
I learned that BooMan was right.
About what part? That Obama saw this coming all along? That it’s all Kabuki? Tell me more.
That it’s all kabuki at this point, and that Obama must have been clear on the impasse for a long time, at least since the first time Boehner blew up the Grand Bargain.
Boehner, though. I have no idea what he’s thinking. This CC&B Lite nonsense makes me think he’s completely lost the plot.
Neither Obama nor Boehner (nor the Club for Growth at this rate) can tame the teabaggers. And if Boehner tried to circumvent them at the last minute, they might literally murder him in his chambers Caesar style.
So yeah. Nothing’s gonna get passed and it’s full steam ahead into crisis land. Hooray.
It’s these manufactured crises that have been used to impose that transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the CEO class that we see called “austerity”. Our place in this sorry production is to play the silently suffering populace. Personally, I’m not liking the script and think it’s time to trash it.
The Teabaggers seem to running the show.
I’d have liked some idea that Obama has a plan in place for when Congress fails to act, but I guess tonight wasn’t the night to show his hand if he has one.
Do you think it would have been better if he’d said “my party has offered….” and then listed specific demands the GOP made and compromises the party made? Not a huge list but maybe 3-4 things spread out over the address?
No, I meant what he planned to do if Congress did not pass a bill in time.
I’ve wondered about that. Although I think we all overrated the quality of Obama’s 2008 campaign* (especially his campaign managers — sigh) it is true that his teams tend to plan in depth and in advance and to avoid “winging it” as much as possible.
So, I presume he does have a plan and he’s not using it. Other politicians would mention these as threats: “If the GOP doesn’t get off their ass and act like adults the following nasty shit is going to happen ….” But of course, not Obama.
However, Obama also really hates doing risky stuff or adopting out-of-the-box solutions. Rove/Cheney thought nothing of inventing some outrageous Constitutional interpretation, acting on it full force, and daring anyone to challenge it. If this were the Rove/Cheney administration now I’m sure they’d have some 14th amendment interpretation lined up and already have arrange 5 supporting votes on the SCOTUS. But, they also were nasty by nature, and used every crisis as an excuse to screw their enemies. So, OSHA, the DOE and DOE, EPA, etc would all probably have been shut down a week in advance on this excuse.
But, no, Obama won’t do any of that. He’ll probably have worked out some rational, priority-based scheme for keeping as much of the government running as he can. Of course, I would have said the same thing back in late 2008. But back then I would have thought his first priorities would have been the poor and sick. Now I suspect his first priorities will be the military and bankers.
Note that if Obama even hints that he’s ready with a plan to go it alone, the GOP will probably push even farther to the right because hey – he’s gonna go it alone so he owns it.
We won’t get a hint of what going it alone looks like until after the point of no return comes and goes. At that point there will probably be another address to the nation where he outlines exactly what the contingency plan is.
I hope they try and impeach him. I really hope they’re that stupid.
Boehner came off as a bit too angry even if the ‘baggers will eat it up.
More than a bit.
I keep reading about the three ways Obama can handle this without the Republicans: the 14th Amendment, the supercoin, and some Treasury/Fed debt juggling I don’t understand.
I’m still wondering why the hell Obama and the Dems haven’t just been screaming, ‘we raised this 7 times in the Bush Admin, it’s procedural housekeeping’ over and over (which if this is purely kabuki strikes me as a far better political play than ‘we keep offering them deals, but they won’t take them, boo hoo’), but fine. Maybe this impressed a few columnists for twenty minutes. However, I’m more interested in how bad things need to get before Obama resorts to wielding unilateral power and solving a problem instead of trying to develop ravioli-in-butter-sauce/tire-rims-over-anthrax consensus.
Something drum said made me think. The Ratings agencies will be setting policy. They led up wrong in the boom and now they want to fuck the poor too.
Fuck it. Liquidate them, they’re based in the US. Let confidence in the economy and faith of a country be the marker.
HuffPo reporting that Congressional websites are crashed. I just tried mine, Cathy McMorris Rogers and sure enough it was indeed crashed.
If that’s true I still don’t know what it means. Hopefully its favorable to Obama, but unless someone in the Teahadist group breaks away from the Borg and agrees to the Reid proposal (or something similar) causing a rupture in that faction I don’t know if its a game changer.
All I can think to say is that Obama is the one who asked in his address for people to contact their repreentatives and tell them wanted a balance. Boehner sure didn’t ask for any feedback
I learned that Boehner, like the rest of the republicans, lives on the planet Magic, where up is down, Obama made the debt all by himself, and all we have to do is “live within our means.”
Boehner’s little speech isn’t going to convince anyone who doesn’t already live on planet Magic, but it doesn’t matter, really. It only takes one brick on the accelerator to sent us all off the clif
Well Boehner was speaking to the Fox Viewers. He didn’t say anything I haven’t heard since 2009 from my own family.
Didn’t listen to Boehner’s. One of the first times that the president has asked the people to call Congress directly. My Representative is Cantor, no use in doing that. I might call a few times if I can get through tomorrow, though.
I was left with a big “Meh…” in that I don’t know wtf is going to happen at this point.
Seabe,
Write to Cantor. Can’t give up. I have 2 Dem Senators and a Dem Rep and wrote to them, asking them to work to convince Republicans to compromise. That feels like a waste of time too, since I expect them all to support the President. But the numbers count. So try Cantor, even though it feels like knocking your head on a brick wall.
Oh I will, it only takes like 45 seconds per call anyway. I just leave it on speaker phone while it’s ringing.
No audio here, so read the summaries. Still have no idea how it will play out. Finding the discussions here very substantial.
Obama is a great speech-maker — Boehner is not national candidate material.
Obama was clearly targeting the moderate/centrists. Boehner’s speech was aimed directly at his base.
Given the two points above I fully expect the overnight polls to be solidly on Obama’s side tomorrow, but perhaps not by the end of the week after the full press of the right wing Wurlitzer has had its effect. At least, I very much hope tomorrow’s polls show that. If not, that means Obama’s speech-making has lost effectiveness with the public.
One interesting point is that Obama has come the closest since the campaign to actually point fingers. Oh he had the usual Brooksian memes of “both parties are at fault”, etc., but he noted that Clinton left Bush with a surplus, that taxes for the rich and an unnecessary war caused the $1 trillion deficit that Obama inherited, and that “some” in the GOP caucus (he didn’t actually name them as tea baggers) were blocking an agreement. This fits with the growing meme in the blogosphere that Obama is using this crisis as the launching pad for his re-election campaign, as his speeches start to resemble his campaign speeches. If you buy into the “rope-a-dope” theory for Obama, then this speech was the stage in the fight where, after spending all that time on the ropes, he steps up and starts backing his opponent into a corner.
As for Boehner, one has to wonder what his motivation was. While Obama tried hard to be “above the fray” Boehner portrayed Obama exactly as he would be portrayed on freerepublic.com. Obama tried to give credit to Boehner, to offer him an “out” of blaming others in his caucus, while Boehner just pissed all over Obama. Did Boehner intend to appeal to the teabag base out of fear of losing his Speakership? Or is Boehner so deeply embedded in the Fox cocoon that he thought he was being centrist in his portrayal of Obama?
One other point about Obama is that he, perhaps subconsciously, expressed a belief in what we on the left have come to scorn as the “Very Serious People” who run Washington. His speech had a simple theme: we have a major crisis, many people are to blame, and we have to overcome our differences to solve it together. The wise leaders of the two parties have agreed on the solution, however these newcomer teabaggers are blocking us from implementing it. Despite his talk about how the average person is upset with Washington, implicitly he reinforced the idea that the Washington elites are the responsible people.
Finally, although I was pleased with Obama’s speech and disappointed with Boehner’s, I was also sadden with the realization that when all the dust clears the Wise Elders of Washington will have agreed to a Grand Bargain that will screw me in my retirement and cause a negative demand shock to our very weak economy. And there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it because we peasants have no choice.
One thing I learned from the Bush years. Once you give something to Republicans (tax cuts, Patriot Act, Wars) you never seem to get them back.
As for Boehner, he was doing in public what he’s always done, he just seemed more pissed about it than usual. I got the feeling he that maybe he was extra pissed because his own caucus had put him in this position.
I feel sick to my stomach. I feel the way I felt in the lead up to the Iraq war, knowing there was an impending disaster coming, that was completely unnecessary and avoidable, and yet we were heading straight for it.
Obama’s speech was fine, he said everything that needed to be said. But I have the same complaint I’ve had since the beginning. I understand your point, that by bending over backwards to negotiate with Republicans he’s highlighted how intransigent they are, but I feel he’s lost something as well. The reason what House Republicans are doing is so destructive and horrifying isn’t because they’re refusing to compromise. The reason it’s horrifying is they’re willfully setting out to destroy the economy of the nation and the world if they don’t get their way. My opinion of the Republican party has never been high, but even I’m shocked they’d go this far. And so when the administration abandoned their demand for a clean raise of the debt ceiling, I agree it highlighted how intransigent Republicans were, but I feel it’s also muddled the core of what’s really going on, with issues of whether we should raise taxes and such. The core of course is that one party has decided they will threaten the well being of the country if they don’t get their way. It is shocking.
Obama did touch on this, and I think anyone listening for it would hear it, but I wish he’d give it more emphasis. He could say, again, look he wants a deal to reduce the debt, but the debt ceiling should be raised regardless, and even if it’s done clean, the debate on the deficit will still be there. He’s said that before regarding McConnell’s proposal, but I feel he could emphasize that more, even at the expense of his desire for a grand bargain.
As for Boehner, I feel I’ve gotten to understand what he’s up to better in the past couple days. Republicans are in a bad spot. If the country defaults and we face the consequences, of course they’ll do their best to blame Democrats. But it’s the responsibility of the House to raise the debt ceiling. And except for a silly bill to pass a constitutional amendment, they haven’t passed a bill to do so. So when the economy collapses, except for the most partisan, everyone will know who’s to blame.
I wasn’t expecting this going in. I thought Republicans in the House would pass some sort of bill to raise the debt ceiling with severe cuts, and then dare the Senate and the President to kill it. But they haven’t even done that, and so when the collapse comes, there will be no ambiguity as to who’s to blame.
I think Boehner understands this, and he’s desperate to get something else through. He’s not willing to pass something with primarily Democratic votes, but he wants a bill Republicans can pass that raises the debt ceiling and extracts some sort of concessions from Democrats. Ideally, Democrats will cave to the House Republicans’ ultimatum. In a worst case scenario, at least they’ll have some device to avoid blame; hey, we tried to raise the debt ceiling, and the Senate Democrats killed it, it’s there fault.
But the problem is, he can’t get House Republicans to do it. And so he’s pretending the call for a constitutional amendment was a serious attempt to address the debt ceiling, but he knows it won’t convince anyone but the true believers. And so he’s doing his damndest to cajole House Republicans to pass something relatively reasonable, getting chummy with them, identifying Obama as the enemy, talking about how they have to pull together, how they need to pass something that can pass through both houses but is faithful to the principles of cap and balance. He’s bullshitting them, but they’re not falling for it though. He doesn’t want to be left holding the bag when the economy goes south, and so he’s pontificating how House Republicans have already proposed to raise the debt ceiling and how they’re going to propose something else. But they’re original proposal was a joke, and they’re not going to pass anything else, no matter how Boehner butters them up. If he has an ounce of concern for his country, maybe he’ll turn around and work to pass something like the Reid bill with the help of Democrats at the last moment (which would be now), but it doesn’t look like that’s happening.
I feel sick to my stomach. I feel the way I felt in the lead up to the Iraq war, knowing there was an impending disaster coming, that was completely unnecessary and avoidable, and yet we were heading straight for it.
I’m with you. Only now it’s somehow worse. In early 2003 we were discovering the blogosphere and realizing that there were other like-minded people who were going to fight the evil that had taken over our country and media.
But now we thought we won a major victory in that battle 2.5 years ago. But today we are split, without a clear direction. One group of us is deeply disappointed in the current leadership. The other thinks the current leadership is doing the best they can, which is by itself an extremely depressing thought given that: nothing is being done to address climate change; torture, the Patriot Act, and the death of Habeus Corpus have now been established as fact by both parties; and both parties are endorsing supply-side economics.
that’s not very hopeful or changeful.
Just to add, in case it wasn’t clear, the reason Boehner’s speech was so partisan is he was directing it to House Republicans as much as he was to the general public. He has to play the role of the committed true believer to have a chance of convincing House Republicans he’s on their side and so they can trust him when he asks them to pass a bill that proposes to raise the debt ceiling with less than a constitutional amendment.
I don’t know. The speech was for people who have little to no idea what’s going on and he basically sic the American people on Congress.
Overheard Boehner saying “I didn’t sign up for going mano-a-mano with the President of the United States” leaving the Capitol.
~Jill Jackson
Steven D.,
We didn’t learn anything, because we’re highly-engaged and have seen him do this same thing many, many times over the past few months.
He wasn’t talking to us. He was still playing his game of making the Republicans look bad, and last night was just another effort to spread that impression to a wider, less-politically-engaged audience.
Think of Obama’s speech last night as a televised mass-mailing. Of course you and I already know everything on the card; that’s not the point.