Collective Conscious

Yes­ter­day I posted a longish essay on why the deficit is noth­ing but dis­tri­b­u­tional fights in the short term. Today I saw that the sit­u­a­tion was even worse than I real­ized: there is not even a pre­tense about car­ing for the deficit in the short run when dis­tri­b­u­tional issues are at stake.

More and more this looks like a game of chicken, or, per­haps, hot potato, when it comes to the dis­tri­b­u­tional war. Each side seems will­ing to bet that the other will end up hold­ing the bill in the end and have to sub­mit to ben­e­fit cuts or tax increases on their own favored demographic.

Even if this means sur­ren­der­ing in the short run to a broadly regres­sive tax deal, it seems appar­ent that Obama wants to dis­tance him­self from the lib­eral estab­lish­ment for the next two years. He’ll have to com­pro­mise if Boehner won’t, or Obama risks fac­ing the blame for every­thing that a Repub­li­can House scut­tles over the years lead­ing up to his re-​​election bid.

So he’s gone ahead and bought them out. Agreed to a deal that dis­gusts many lib­er­als in order to prove that he’s will­ing to give and take on his own terms with the Repub­li­cans who will be writ­ing the agenda for the next few years. And while I think this is the right move for him, I think it’s also a stronger and stronger impe­tus for a split in the lib­eral coali­tion, as Bernie Sanders so amply demon­strated yes­ter­day. Here’re the no’s on the tax deal:

A few Repub­li­cans, mainly those who are too nasty to agree to any­thing that the Pres­i­dent sup­ports. But oth­er­wise, this is the lib­eral con­tin­gent of the Sen­ate. I think this broadly under­scores the shift towards smaller small states and big­ger big states — that is, most of us “city lib­er­als” have less and less rep­re­sen­ta­tion as there are more and more of us. Dis­tri­b­u­tion­ally, we are more screwed than ever, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to taxes and distributional issues.