The unraveling of pretty much any Democratic hope to delay or deny extension of the Bush tax cuts has been kind of amazing, even to me, who pretty much expected Democrats to fail, mostly by being bad negotiators. I knew they were bad... but in some ways, this is ridiculous.
Or beyond ridiculous: it's one thing that Democrats could wind up wilting and giving some absurd extension of the whole package for an extended period... but even more absurd that the net result could be what Democrats want anyway, by letting the tax curs expire, naturally, at the end of the year.
I mean, letting them expire... and still looking like losers for it.
In my argument for Democrats failing to add leverage, I realize now I missed something just as obvious: Republicans are setting up a situation where, even if they lose, they win: I take them at their word that they want some sort of blanket extension, but consider the obvious: the Bush Tax Cuts have blown an enormous hole in the government's budget, which makes reducing the deficit all but impossible. Republicans ran on being the people who, finally would tackle the enormous debt problem. But they also ran on the tax cuts.
So how do they lose while angrily defending the tax cuts... only to see them expire at the end of the year?
Almost everyone admits that, if the tax cuts expire, no one's going back to retroactively reinstall all of them; there are sensible compromises already in the works on estate taxes, capital gains, and even the overall tax rates. Next year, it will benefit the Republican leadership to look like people who can work with the Democrats, including Obama. Being able to sorrowfully declaim "we tried to salavge all the tax cuts... but this is all we could pass" makes them heroic, and accomplished, and doing things that people actually want to have happen. Win - win - ... and win.
That, I suspect - as do others - is the real reason the Republicans postponed this week's "reconciliation" dinner with the President; there's nothing to be gained, just now, when Democrats desperately need to look like they can negotiate a compromise, and get along with the GOP. Letting Democrats twist in the wind for a couple of weeks, doing nothing on the tax issues, just makes everything more urgent. And Republicans still hold all the cards: negotiate an extension on their terms, or let the tax cuts expire and start the new year with much less of a deficit problem than they had before.
For desperation, nothing was more obvious than yesterday's suggestion by AFL CIO head Richard Trumka that Democrats could sever the extension for "middle class" taxpayers from those at the top of the scale; Republicans will not - as some progressives wish - look "anti-middle class" by voting against it. They've already framed the issue as one for supporting small businesses... and people believe them. And it doesn't help that Democrats, as I've noted before, have gone to the Obama standard of calling $250,000 a year in salary "middle class" when the median income in this country is $55,000 (and probably decreasing). Unless Democrats get much tougher, and throw a whole group of educated professionals into the upper brackets where they belong, there's a fundamental dishonesty that's undermining an chance of portraying themselves as the real defenders of working people. I like college professors - honest I do - but well paid, tenured faculty, advertising executives and others are not middle class. They're very well educated... and very well off.
There was a time when this kind of "lose-lose-lose" prospect for Democrats made me sad or angry... but now it just seems foreordained: you could see this coming, and there are actions that could have prevented this disaster... and you went ahead and got there anyway. Oh well.
Like I said before: Democrats can't get to a strategy for winning, until they can face that we've lost... and that we will continue to lose not changing anything at all. Welcome to the brave new world of Minority Leader Pelosi, where the budget gets balanced... and Republicans get the credit for it.
Let's not be careless in our glib remarks...Somewhere b/w 2/3 and 3/4 of college faculty are now adjuncts - these are not your $250k middle-class, but PT, no-benefits unless they're unionized workers who are exactly the types the Dems ought to be representing.
I'm assuming you're dismissing tenured college faculty at highly ranked institutions. The median faculty salary among FT, tenured faculty is about $84k, ranging from high 30ks and low 40ks for faculty at lower ranked institutions to the six figure salaries at elite universities and for rock star professors.
Precision is your friend!
Posted by: Leigh | November 17, 2010 at 11:56 AM
Have to second Leigh's comment...maybe you mean college presidents? I don't know of many $250 thou plus professors.
But to the bigger point here, this "weak, ineffectual" narrative
assumes the Democrats have been acting on good faith, an assumption no longer safe (see the Great Uncle Aetna Bailout).
Posted by: jinb | November 17, 2010 at 06:04 PM