I've great respect for Bernie Sanders' beliefs and devotions -- after all, I share virtually all of them -- so it's with respect that I note that much of his nearly nine-hour resistance on the Senate floor Friday was shrewdly misleading in its emphasis.
Is an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for America's most comfortable insane fiscal policy? Is its ballooned largess to the wealthy unfair to struggling middle- and working-clsss Americans? Is it the case that more equitable policies should work to properly rebalance today's accelerating and grossly destabilizing imbalances of wealth in America?
Absolutely. You've no argument there, Senator, from any of your friends.
But Senator, those aren't the issues -- at the moment. That's no longer the relevant debate. There is, rather, just one issue now, namely: Because Senate Republicans are willing to filibuster a potential 2011-12 economic recovery and doom countless among the jobless to Hoover-era soup lines and Bonus Marcher encampments, is President Obama's compromise deal worth a capitulation on those upper-end favors you so rightly denounce.
That's the issue, Senator. The other is not. Not now.
Republicans' indifference toward average Americans and their austere solicitude for the leisure class are political abominations to be explored with lengthy precision tomorrow. But today, while almost any deal is bound to be better than a January deal or no deal at all, those average Americans and our limping economy could use some more help -- notwithstanding the GOP's mawkish anxiety over the welfare of its seven-figure constituents.
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Whenever I'm feeling especially plucky I tune in to primetime MSNBC, just to see how the latest rhetorical techniques of ideology uber alles and its internal reinforcement and thus only somewhat "false equivalency" are shaping up. And Friday night, sure enough, there was Keith Olbermann hosting Rep. Jay Inslee, liberal Democrat of Washington, praising Sen. Sanders and his magnificent distraction of GOP brutishness, which Inslee repeated:
"We," said Inslee, "have consensus to extend the middle-class tax cuts at least a certain period of time during this hard economic time. But instead of embracing that consensus, the Republicans took that consensus hostage to go forward with these incredibly pathetically unfair tax breaks both in the estate tax and the higher income tax breaks."
Inslee neglected only one item: a valid senatorial consensus equals 60. But Senate Democrats ain't got 60. Ergo, there is no consensus.
Is that fair or mathematically logical or democratically swell? That also is not the issue -- not now. The issue is, Senate Democrats can't pass what's ideal; they can't do diddly for average Americans without capitulating to hostage-taking Republicans.
This is an immediate issue of exceptional simplicity and unavoidable ensnarement. And that's why liberal Democrats prefer to talk and talk ... and talk ... about everything but.