Apparently, we're supposed to worry that Obama's "inexplicable decision to offer up Medicare in the proposed Grand Bargain" will be used "against him" by the party that "retired the concept of hypocrisy*."

It certainly is a puzzle why he did that!

In closing, Digby cites the ol' "definition of insanity" meme.

How rational is it, one might wonder, to repeat one's vote for the fellow who put Medicare (and Social Security) on the chopping block? ___

Cross-posted from Orange Satan land - no reaction yet. Interested in comments from those who no longer frequent Kos.

I am not going to write about the debt ceiling deal today. The debt ceiling deal is bad, but I am going to think about the debt ceiling deal for a little while and maybe I will write about it later. Today I am going to write about things that happened in the first half of 2009 that helped set the stage for the debt ceiling deal.

Some disclosure might be helpful. I supported Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries and in the general election. I took most of a day off work and stood in line to see him when he came to town. I gave him a substantial amount of my time and money - more than I spent in the previous six presidential campaigns combined.

In April of 2009 I began to think I made a mistake. That's when it became clear to me that something called "mortgage cramdown" would not be part of the bankruptcy reform law.

Of course there were earlier troubling signs, like when President-elect Obama announced he was appointing people to run the economy who had helped cause the banking crisis. Larry Summers. Tim Geithner. Robert Rubin in the background. These folks were 100% on board with the Clinton-Bush-Greenspan program of predatory financial deregulation. As of January 2009 they showed no sign of changing their loyalties or recognizing their mistakes.

But in January of 2009 I tried to give the President-elect the benefit of the doubt.

Then I saw how the President tanked bankruptcy reform.

File this under "F," for facts not in evidence:

I have no doubt that Barack Obama wants to do right by the country...

Jackie Calmes:

However the debt limit showdown ends, one thing is clear: under pressure from Congressional Republicans, President Obama has moved rightward on budget policy, deepening a rift within his party heading into the next election.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...

If one admitted that Obama is a conservative, one wouldn't keep writing such shallow-end fiction:

At this point, we just have to accept it as a fact of life: Obama doesn’t, and maybe can’t, do outrage — no matter how much the situation calls for it. The purpose of last night’s speech, if there was one, was to rally the nation against crazy Republicans.

Why on Earth would the good professor expect Obama to show outrage against his own positions, such as "'shared' sacrifice'"?

Bulk e-mail from Bernie starts with "Don't yield, Mr. President...."

If Bernie F-ing Sanders won't admit that Obama is a conservative, rather than a progressive who just needs to remain steadfast, it's just one more measure of how fictive our national politics is. Delete.

Per Peter Clarke, Obama "is self-evidently liberal in his political convictions."

Here, quoting TNR's John Judis:

Republicans have advanced the deficit as the reason for the problems in economy and jobs. ... Obama has, sadly, bought the Republican argument for why the economy is in trouble.

Obama has tried to carve a liberal niche within this retrograde political framework by charging that the Republican plan to cut the deficit would get rid of Medicare and would keep the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s all well and good, but Obama is still playing on Republican turf. And it might not work. The last Democratic presidential candidate who based his campaign on deficits was Walter Mondale in 1984.

Many of us have been talking about this for months, worried greatly that the Democrats are not only failing on the politics, but failing on the substance, which is truly catastrophic. People are hurting [mission accomplished!] and they need good policy right now [for some definition of good] and they just aren't getting it, largely because there's no room to maneuver in this hysterical deficit obsessed environment [thanks, "progressives"!]. I don't know why Democrats always think capitulating to the right's agenda (if not the details) will "take it off the table." It never does --- it only reinforces it.

I know! I know!

Alternman writes:

The biggest problem [for whom?] with Obama’s embrace of the conservative (but not crazy conservative) center—beneath the liberal rhetorical crumbs—is that it is going to deliver conservative policies [nobody could have predicted...] . Unemployment will stay near its historic high [mission accomplished!] as the stimulus fades—a stimulus that even Larry Summers now admits was insufficiently audacious, but was embraced because, right from the start, when faced with unified Republican opposition, Obama chose to switch rather than fight [oh?].

Not only are all these cynical compromises counterproductive [to whom?] in policy terms, they leave Democrats with little or nothing to cheer for [mission accomplished]. Why, if bipartisanship was to remain his mantra, didn’t Obama go with the no less bipartisan panel co-chaired by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former Clinton White House Budget Office and CBO director Alice Rivlin, and their 50/50 split on spending cuts and new tax revenue?

Good question! And here at Corrente, we have the answer. All together now:

lizpolaris caught Krugman and Reich earlier this morning. See also Yggles ("... [T]here’s no reason that Obama should be trading votes with guys like John Boehner..."), Jon Chait (..."To play by these rules is to make himself a uniquely powerless president...."), and WKJM ("... Otherwise his posture and role in the unfolding debate is rearguard and reactive, energizing his enemies and demoralizing his supporters. ...").

Useful idiots, all of 'em. The reason we get conservative outcomes from Obama? All together now:

In yesterday's article, Reich gives us this opinion of Obama's actions.

The president continues to legitimize the Republican claim that too much government spending caused the economy to tank, and that by cutting back spending we'll get the economy going again.

Wrong! The president believes that too much government spending...

Steve Cohen:

"Time for the President to Demonstrate the Courage of His Convictions"

Say it with me, "What convictions?"

President Obama overplayed his hand and did not respond effectively to both legitimate and unwarranted attacks on his policies and his leadership.

Presumably this means that Obama was too aggressive with his well-intentioned presidentin'.

While a government shut-down would be a mistake for a wide variety of reasons, if the president capitulates to the Tea Party on health care, Social Security or the environment, he will be making an even larger mistake.

Legacy party enablers often make the same classic mistake about the Ds that Lord Escahton does here. On the decision by the NPR board to fire its CEO, Vivian Schiller, after a James O'Keefe attack video appeared:

One Thing I've Learned
Is that it really isn't worth expending any effort to defend people and organizations who won't defend themselves. I've walked out on that branch a few times only to have it chopped off.

This is what VastLeft calls a category error. What makes Atrios think that NPR has any thought of "defending itself"?

"The President Is A Lousy Negotiator."

Still going every which way but admitting that Obama is not a lousy negotiator with inexplicable framing choices. Not admitting that he is, instead, the good cop for rightwing policies.

Still limning the edge of the shallow end of support for the Democrats, never getting out of the pool.

Krugman limns the shallow end (as always, from the slightly soggy side).

Apparently there's a "Democratic agenda," apparently it's a good thing, and we need contingencies "if" Obama "capitulates" — i.e., he won't deliver on that fine agenda in defiance of well-meaning groups like MoveOn that were shockingly, shockingly betrayed by him.

What a cliffhanger, huh? Stay tuned to see if conservative Obama capitulates to the conservative agenda!

Edge of Forever has the graphic:

I've got only one nit to pick with the post, and that's the category tag: "Incompetence." We get conservative policy outcomes from Obama because -- All together now! --

Sigh. Read to the last sentence.

Category errors galore, starting with the subhead:

Democrats of all stripes have been so focused on details of policy that they have surrendered public political discourse to conservatives, and with it the key to the nation's future.

I was laughing too hard to get very far through it, especially remembering all Lakoff's blather about Obama's "deeply progressive" vision and unique use of second-person pronouns.

(h/t SMBIVA)

Falstaff critiques my Krugman category-error series.

Let's examine his critique graf-by-graf.

I have an observation on Corrente's ongoing argument re "Category Error" -- and its repeated use as a club with which to beat Paul Krugman.

I come not to club Krugman, but to expose his critique of Obama as "shallow-end" dissent. Professor K. uses all sorts of shrill-sounding terms about Obama's presidency, even raising questions of morality and character. But he persists (willfully? unwittingly?) the notion that Obama is weak and a poor strategist, rather than fundamentally opposed to left/liberal/progressive policy. Such denialism is the essence of the "category error" riff.

Krugman continues to wade through the shallow end:

So look: there’s a policy issue here, and it’s a tough one; you trade off the stimulus Obama extracted now for the increased likelihood that low taxes for the rich will be made permanent, crippling policy for decades to come.

Maybe someone who, unlike me, can stand the visceral pain will care to count the category errors is an op-ed called "All the President's Captors," which describes Obama as a man with "once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think," who's succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome.

Krugman sez the Prez is "drifting," a relatively benign and presumably course-correctable situation, rather than realizing/admitting that The World's Most Powerful Man is steering the course he believes in.

Krugman resolutely persists a fantasy Obama with good values and poor tactics:

Would he stand firm for the values he believes in... Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument... [his Republican] opposition [is] calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold... [Obama's making] gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. ... a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction [... not doing] his part [... , not providing] the leadership [the Democratic Party] needs.

In this fantasy world, Obama wants good things but is a "Kick Me" sign-wearing wimp, ineffectually fighting conservative policy against "scorched-earth competition."

Krugman describes yet another shocking, shocking conservative move by conservative president Barack Obama as "in effect conceding that your bitter political opponents have the right idea."