I decided to take a break from blogging over the last few days. I hadn't really taken any time off since the elections were over, and between the Thanksgiving weekend and being generally irritated by many of the events of the last month, it just seemed like a good time to mellow out for a few days- and hopefully I didn't also, to steal a line from Woody Allen, ripen and rot. Plus, I was getting tired of writing about a bad economy, bankers ripping off everyone else and no one holding them accountable, and dumb insider DC political debates. But the life and death battle over issues that really do matter to regular Americans doesn't ever stop, and this is a huge couple of political weeks.
The next couple of news cycles will be dominated by the deficit commission report, the attempts by Bowles and Simpson to round up votes on the commission for it, and the Obama administration's reaction to it. The way Obama reacts to this, in particular, will be one of the most consequential and politically significant early signs over which path the administration wants to take going forward. If they decide to embrace this report, as many people are predicting, it means they have decided to choose the DC centrist path toward political rehabilitation: get the Washington Post, the Third Way, and DC establishment all excited, and hope all that excitement trickles down to real voters someday. Given how unpopular the specifics of this plan are, and given that it takes away the fervent defense of Social Security and Medicare (Democrats' strongest political selling point right now), that would be a terrible political decision, making Obama's re-election hopes very dark.
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