Atrios writes:

David Ignatius:["]The best sign that the economic engine is really repaired would be a joint plan by the White House and congressional Republicans to trim the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. [. . .]["]

Leaving aside the merits of such things, how the hell would some random policy decisions be a "sign that the economic engine is really repaired." [. . .I]n what possible sense would Congress doing some stuff prove that the economy is all better?

Of course Atrios is right, but you know who else plays the "a productive Congress means things are better" game? The Beltway Dem pundits and bloggers, led by Ezra Klein. How is their nonsense any less stupid than Ignatius'?

Speaking for me only

Filibuster reform is all the rage in the progressive blogs these days. I am not a fan of filibuster reform at this time for results oriented reasons. Now is not the time to make the passage of legislation easier, given the extreme GOP controlled House and a supine Dem President.

But I also have an objection on the philosophical merits to filibuster reform regarding judicial nominations. My old law professor Bruce Ackerman revisits this issue and turns back to an article he wrote in 2005, when opposing filibuster reform was all the rage in the progressive blogs.

My objections are, and were in 2005, as a matter of substance, to elimination of the filibuster to lifetime appointments to the Third Branch of our government, the Supreme Court. As Professor Ackerman says, "[m]y bottom line: the separation of powers should become a fundamental part of serious talk about the filibuster."

Speaking for me only

Digby:

On Hardball this afternoon Matthews was talking about "cut-go" with Todd Harris and Steve McMahon, the Tweedledum and Tweedledummer of the Village and he ranted and raved about how both parties promise spending cuts to bring down the deficit but refuse to give any big specific items that would really make a difference. [. . .] After Harris babbled for a while about "entitlements" destroying the country, Matthews again said how frustrated he was that Republicans always refuse to say what they will cut [. . .] McMahon piped up at that and said:

Update: Gov. Arnie also commuted the sentence of a woman serving life for killing her former pimp to 25 years with parole, and 7 pardons, 1 conditional pardon and one additional commutation. The full list is here.

Today is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's final day in office. On this final day, he granted a commutation of sentence to the son of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, who had pleaded guilty to participating in the stabbling death of a college student. He was not the stabber, and had no priors, but received a maximum 16 year sentence. Schwarzenegger said the sentence was excessive and reduced it to 7 years. [More...]

The New York Times, which editorialized in favor of The Deal NOW provides this advice to President Obama and the Dems, in light of the Norquist Rules just adopted by the House GOP:

The new Republican rules will gut pay-as-you-go because they require offsets only for entitlement increases, not for tax cuts. [. . .] The new rules mandate that entitlement-spending increases be offset by spending cuts only — and actually bar the House from raising taxes to pay for such spending. Even worse, they direct the leader of the House Budget Committee to ignore several costs when computing the budget [. . .] For example, the cost to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent would be ignored [. . .] At the same time, the new rules bar the renewal of aid for low-income working families — extended temporarily in the recent tax-cut deal — unless it is fully paid for.

This "shocking" development, after The Deal, leads the New York Times, supporter of The Deal, to counsel:

Discussing E.J. Dionne's column today, Booman makes some good points:

Considering that [the column] is supposed to be about [Dems] regaining the initiative, it's pretty weak to lecture the White House about its tendency to defend itself and "the left" about never being satisfied. Those things aren't going to change. We can be critical of that reality, but we ought not offer it up as something to fix so that we can get our mojo back.

In fact it is not something to fix. The White House should tout its accomplishments. They are in the politics business after all. And people dissatisfied with what the White House is doing should say so and work to make them do what they want. That's how it works. But both Booman and Dionne miss the connection between the political problems Dems have and the economic policies of the Obama Administration. More . . .

The results are in for the annual USA Today-Gallup poll of the year's most admired persons. Most admired man, for the third year in a row, is President Barack Obama. The most admired woman, for the 9th year in a row, is Hillary Clinton.

Who would you have picked?

Republican pollster Jon McHenry said that agreeing with the GOP to cut spending will help Obama with independent voters. “He gets to look like an adult who can work with another side,” McHenry said

The sequel to The Deal, The Norquist Strategy: Part 2, opens in February. Here is a trailer for the upcoming attraction:

[C]onservatives interviewed by The Hill took issue with the notion that deep spending cuts will curtail growth. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, said cuts would stimulate the economy because taxpayers will perceive it is less likely that their money will be “stolen” to pay for wasteful spending. [MORE . . .]

Let us not confuse objectives with methods. [. . .] The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. - FDR

DennisG at Balloon Juice scolds unenthusiastic progressives:

By any fair measurement the 111th Congress and the first two years of the Obama Administration have been an incredibly productive time. The list of real legislative accomplishments is long and so is the list of new Executive orders, Presidential Memorandas, rule making and changes to the way the Federal Government is run. But of course, none of that matters because not everything desired has been accomplished and there have been some compromises along the way that make some of the successes less than perfect.

This reflects the Beltway mentality of thinking passing laws is the goal, as opposed to making things better. It confuses methods with objectives. More . . .

If the health bill leads to a revolutionary reform of health insurance and health care delivery in the United States, history will consider Barack Obama to have been a very successful President. That's how history works. (I'm of the opinion that the health bill, while progressive in some aspects, such as expansion of Medicaid coverage, is not meaningful reform and does not contain elements that will lead to reform (I'm no fan of the exchanges.))

But the issues I care about the most right now - economic growth, the foreclosure crisis and income inequality, were not addressed adequately in the first two years of the Obama Administration and almost certainly won't be in the next two years, And indeed, to read the year end stories about the Lame Duck session of Congress, it is amazing how the Overton Window has moved well to the Right in the first two years of the Obama Presidency. Take, for example,TPM's Brian Beutler's listing of winners and losers of the Lame Duck session:

One of the strange conceits Beltway pundits have is that most politicians actually give a fig about policy outside of how it affects their political prospects. Consider this from Ezra Klein:

So far, the lame-duck session has managed to pass an $850 billion tax-cuts-and-stimulus deal, the repeal of DADT, the Defense Authorization bill, a continuing resolution to keep funding the federal government, the START treaty, the food-safety bill, and probably a few more pieces of legislation I'm forgetting. [. . .] The question is why the Republicans didn't just drag their feet and let things expire and then come back to everything in 2011,The answer, I think, is that there are plenty of Senate Republicans who aren't too comfortable with the class of conservatives who got elected in 2010.

The answer actually is that Republicans took credit for the things that help them politically (tax cuts, stopping the spending bill) and avoided blame for things they do not want to be attributed to them. Let's consider Ezra's list of "accomplishments:

Via mcjoan, here it comes:

[T]he larger spending debate [was kicked] into the new year, when Republicans will control the House and have more Senate seats. It would also start the bargaining between congressional Republicans and the White House at a lower funding level than the now-defunct Democratic plan.

(Emphasis supplied.) Feel the stimulus! The Deal was a terrible mistake.