Mark Halperin’s long speculative post about the debt ceiling endgame ends as follows: “And then it will fully dawn on Boehner and McConnell at the White House signing ceremony (likely as Obama is handing them their souvenir pens) that they were part of history, including part of the part where Obama was able to take off the table the single most damaging issue that could be used against him in 2012.”
This kind of thinking seems dangerously prevalent in Washington. Like voters are standing around here in the summer of 2011 saying to themselves, “well life is pretty good in America under Obama, but I’m really concerned about the long-range CBO projections so I might vote against him.” But that’s nuts. Obama’s vulnerable because conditions in the country right now aren’t very good. The unemployment rate is high, real wages are flat, lots of people have negative equity in their homes, lots of near-retired people have seen their savings vanish, etc.
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