Winning!
by digby
You’re a big winner. I’m gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: who’s the big winner here tonight at the casino? Huh? Mikey, that’s who. Mikey’s the big winner. Mikey wins.
Ezra says that Boehner ending negotiations with the White House on the Grand Bargain helped President Obama dodge a bullet:
Thus far, this debate isn’t helping anybody. Obama’s approval rating hit 40 percent in the most recent Gallup poll — a new low for him. But it’s devastating the GOP. As you can see in the Pew chart to the right, confidence in the Republican leaders has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since February. They’re now well below the Democrats.
That’s good news for House Democrats, in particular. But it’s also evidence that Obama’s strategy of trying to personally manage the negotiations hasn’t improved his numbers. Which is why it’s probably helping him that Boehner decided to move the negotiations over to Congress and assume more of the blame himself.
Apparently studies of these gridlocked budgets in the states show that people tend to blame the legislature more than the executive when the legislative majority is of the opposite party. Or something. Ezra has the data.
The President did everything in his power to own this debacle but I think Boehner saved Obama from himself not so much by taking more of the blame for the breakdown in negotiations but by making it impossible for him to take a Greatest Deal in History Grand Bargain victory lap. Considering what’s probably going to come of all this, the greater distance from the results the better. In their zeal to prevent Obama from being perceived as a winner, they may have saved him from his worst instincts.
And speaking of “winning”, Rush Limbaugh is giving his listeners quite the pep talk today. This is from David Frum:
I listened to about 45 minutes of the first hour of Rush Limbaugh in the car today.
The dominant theme of the hour, repeated over and over: “You” – meaning, Limbaugh listeners – are not “losers.” It’s Obama’s who’s a “loser.”
The word “loser” must have been repeated dozens of times, half as reassurance (that’s what you are not!), half as epithet (that’s what President Obama is!)
The psychological interpretation of what’s going on here is almost too obvious to remark. But what I can’t decide is whether it’s more sinister or more sad.
I’m voting for sinister.
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