MSNBC stayed on the air to do some live coverage on the negotiations by the White House, John Boehner and Harry Reid to avoid a government shutdown. As John already noted, the President tried to put a "happy face" on this during his speech tonight. I'm really disgusted with the fact that he's validating Republican talking points on the deficit and our debt and the fact that making cuts to our budget in the wrong places is only going to make our already fragile economy worse.
Lawrence O'Donnell asked Chris Hayes about the statement coming out of Nancy Pelosi's office which he read on the air.
She commends the President for his hard work and perseverance. She then says, House Democrats look forward to viewing the components of the final funding measure. The American people's top priority is creating jobs.
As O'Donnell noted, Pelosi's statement means that this budget compromise is not going to sail through the House with all of the Democratic support John Boehner might want. As Chris Hayes noted, the Democratic minority was not even part of these negotiations, which isn't really that surprising given their numbers right now. But as Chris Hayes pointed out, even Rep. James Clyburn who's in a leadership position in the House could not tell him earlier just what programs are going to be cut. Hayes is exactly right when he says where these cuts are coming from and whose shoulders they're resting on really matters, and Nancy Pelosi was just articulating that it does matter where these cuts are coming from.
Then we move onto Howard Fineman who gave us the Villagers' view of what the White House's political game might be with the President deciding it was a good idea politically to be praising this deal with Republicans. And as Howard noted, a lot of Republicans in the House are not going to be crazy about voting for this deal as well. This passing is likely going to depend on some Democrats in the House voting for it as well. Whether Boehner can get enough of them to help him pass this remains to be seen. Fineman laid out what the White House is counting on here:
FINEMAN: One other thing I would say is this. I'm fascinated by President Barack Obama's ability to seem to be pushed in the places politically he wants to be. Ezra's right that in terms of stimulus, in terms of macro-economic theory, this runs totally against the grain of Democratic liberal traditions.
But politically, this is where Barack Obama wants to be. He wants to be the budget cutter. He has an unerring instinct for the middle of the political spectrum, the middle of the political conversation generally among independent voters right now, which is about budget cutting, so politically he's making the gamble that he's moved to the right political place and that economically, the economy is recovering fast enough now, we've had good growth, job growth numbers in the last couple months.
He's making a bet that those job growth numbers will continue and whatever stimulus is removed by this will not adversely affect the economy enough to counter balance what he thinks is a smart move to the center.
And he looks like he's been pushed there, but politically that's where he wants to be.
If the Obama administration honestly thinks throwing their base under the bus again during this budget fight is good for them politically, I'd like to have a little of what they're smoking. Democrats in Wisconsin have figured out that if you stand with your base, your base is going to support you and be enthusiastic with that support. That's apparently something that's been lost on this administration.
