So a budget deal is back on -- "negotiations ... appeared to make headway" yesterday, reports the NY Times -- whose endgame entails a number that "would fall well short of the $61 billion House Republicans have endorsed" and, according to Politico, sedates the ideological mania of a House Republican caucus now "described as subdued."
The Times, in its reporting, is fiercely lucid about Democratic traction regained: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ... said negotiators had effectively settled on $33 billion in reductions from current spending, a substantial difference from the $61 billion endorsed by the House in February."
Now, any "substantial difference" achieved -- if achieved it is -- over opponents' demands is a victory for the achiever, is it not?
After all, an aggressively reactionary Republican majority swept into the House only three months ago, eager not to create but destroy. And like a metronome on speed, that majority has been escalating its destructive demands like clockwork, since January, its momentum seemingly inexorable, its determination unstoppable.
So, again, if its plenary demands are checked, its momentum punctured and its determination barricaded for now, this, for its opponents, would be a good thing, would it not? The public relations value alone would be cork-popping: Hey, look at us, we outflanked their extremist pillaging and averted a shutdown of vital government services that you depend on; you wanted moderation -- we delivered just that, and they didn't.
This of course is what the progressive victors would chant, arm in arm with their progressive allies and cheerleaders in the media. No?
No.
Instead, all along, we've been smothered by progressives' dark messages of ubiquitous doom, with distinct emphasis on the rather ancient fact that roughly $30 billion in spending impalements was where the wicked Count Paul Ryan began his intended mass slaughter. Adept propagandists know that message-repetition is the indispensable foundation for any message-success, and sure enough, there they are, progressives, pounding the airwaves and print and blogosphere with ceaseless reminders that Budget Chairman Vlad I will, no matter what transpires next, have his embryonic and evil way. For the reactionaries it's message-mission accomplished, courtesy the left.
Is it important to note -- to stress, to hammer, to accentuate with Chesire-like grins -- that the GOP's once-insurmountable fiscal apotheosis has been sliced in half and essentially gutted? Is it perhaps noteworthy that the Democratic Senate dismissed the egregious House-passed bill merely as ... well, a bad joke? Is there cause to rally the progressive base by simply declaring a substantial victory?
Sure, but if a budget deal materializes along the abovementioned lines, you're not likely to hear those pronouncements -- not from the victors. Why? Because in truth "the victors" enjoy wallowing in perpetual doom; it rewards their paranoid sense of unjust persecution and validates the impossible struggle -- which only they are plucky enough to nonetheless undertake -- of their utopian superiority.
In short, it's kids' stuff.