So all of this has poisoned the atmosphere to the extent that within the president's own party there is considerable consternation and dissent, if not open rebellion and rejection of the deal. Republicans, especially those with large working class constituencies, are also signaling that the deal is too toxic to handle. President Obama has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden and his top political operatives to sway errant Democrats and convince them that he's going to start fighting next year and that he's played the best political hand that he was dealt with in the circumstances.
Lost in this argument and counter-argument, spin and counter-spin, wheeling, dealing, arm-twisting, turning and compromise is the fact that poor Black and Latino Americans have been basically overlooked and left out of the debate. Republicans are adamant that tax cuts for the rich must be part of any deal no matter such a move will jack up the national deficit by another $1 trillion --" nearly $800 billion by 2012. Obfuscated in the debate of the 9 or 10 percent national unemployment statistic is the silence of political leaders from both parties about the 2.9 million Black unemployed and the 3 million Latinos. For them it is meaningless to have a tax credit when you do not have job.
And too, President Barack Obama may think that he's put a Band-Aid on the Bush Era Tax cuts cancer while he searches for a permanent cure but all he got in the end was 13 months of extended unemployment benefits, a temporary payroll tax reduction for workers in exchange for a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. This will not change Republican attitudes towards him and their ultimate aim to make him a one-term president. He can expect the GOP and the Tea Party zealots to dig in in 2011 and ratchet up the "Obama failure" rhetoric as they obstruct and block everything that he tries to accomplish. The Republicans got the best of the deal. For one thing they walked away with a major concession: an exemption of fortunes under $5 million from any inheritance taxes.
The criticisms at President Obama's negotiating strategy have also come under fire from the Left in his party. They feel that he should have drawn a line in the sand and challenged Republicans since the vast majority of Americans (over 80%) do not favor extending the Bush Tax cuts for the rich. Republicans had adopted a controversial position of very visibly going all-out for the very richest Americans with no concern for the $1 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts ($700 billion plus $300 billion in interest) for another 10 years.
At the same time that they were batting for their rich friends they were threatening to kill unemployment benefits for poor Americans and jettisoned a measly $250 living wage adjustment for senior citizens who voted for them in the mid-term elections in the sixty-five percentile. This is a national outrage, illustrating the inherent and structural inequality built into the U.S. economy. And it comes at a long-term cost to the quality of civic participation in our national life. Political leaders have demonstrated that they just don't care about the unfairness and callous disregard that they exhibit towards the poorest and neediest Americans when they tailor and tinker with tax cuts that benefit only rich people.
Liberals and progressives are understandably upset with President Obama because they feel that he could have taken the fight to the Republicans by exposing their preoccupation and focus on the super rich while conspicuous in their indifference to poor, jobless families. And the deal is fraught with serious political minefields that can explode in the president's face during his re-election year. The two-year extension of the tax cuts for the richest 2% will mean that Democrats--already badly battered by the catastrophic loss of at least 63 House and six Senate seats--will be facing the very same choices and issues on the super-rich tax-cut extension two years from now.
This tax cut debate is not going to go away and for President Barack Obama and the Democrats they have already given Republicans talking points in the opening hours of the 2012 Presidential campaign. For the president and his party the stakes are extremely high since, as the mid-term elections demonstrated, the coalition that catapulted him into office in 2008 is now divided, frayed and disillusioned with him.
To win in 2012 President Obama has to display strong leadership and guts. In short, he has to show Americans what he's made of, what he stands for, and demonstrate a willingness to fight for what he believes. Anything less and he a gonner.
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