Shocking: Smart talk on the “fiscal cliff” on television (Chris Hayes, of course)
by digby
This discussion of the president’s opening bid on Chris Hayes this morning is quite good:
I had never heard before that the Congressional Black Caucus was going to vote against the estate tax because of a few black millionaires. That’s a dynamic I hadn’t even considered.
There’s more here on the Village CW that “entitlements” have to be on the able:
The polling on this is fascinating. The people clearly don’t want what the CW insists “must be done” (and which rational analysis says shouldn’t be done.) But beyond Obama’s stump speech promise to “fix the deficit with a balanced approach that asks the rich to pay a little bit more” it wasn’t a topic of discussion in the last campaign. Why? We knew the so-called fiscal cliff was looming. I wrote about it several times a week. We tried to get candidates interested in the progressive alternatives. But aside from a few stalwarts like Bernie Sanders, nobody cared.
So, here we are. In their defense, I’m not sure the American people believe that anyone can actually do anything in government so they’re counting on all this being much ado about nothing. I am too. But unlike most people, I believe that some very powerful people in both parties would very much like to see all this Grand Bargaining get done over the next year or so. And I’m scared to death they’ll succeed.
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