Regardless of election outcome, fiscal cliff still looms
Liberals fear grand bargain betrayal if Obama wins
By: Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico.com
November 2, 2012 04:26 AM EDT
Labor unions and liberal interest groups are going all-out for President Barack Obama’s reelection — but they’re just as ready to turn that firepower back on him if he betrays them with a grand bargain.
These groups fear a victorious Obama would ink a deal with Republicans during the fiscal cliff negotiations that slashes entitlement benefits. And that could hurt the very coalition of voters — minorities, women and low- and middle-income families — that would claim credit for his second term. Even as they turn out the vote in public to keep Obama in office, in private they’re plotting a strategy aimed at pressuring him to protect those who reelected him.
The dual-track campaign, led by the AFL-CIO, MoveOn and a network of progressive advocacy organizations, highlights the political vice grip that awaits Obama if he wins Tuesday.
He wants a large-scale deficit deal. But it would inevitably mean making concessions to Republicans that infuriate the Democratic base that spent the past two years and tens of millions of dollars trying to return him to the White House. Progressives worry about which Obama will show up after Election Day: the pragmatist who offered benefit cuts to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the 2011 debt ceiling talks or the partisan chastened by a failed deal to slice into prized Democratic programs.
(More here.)
By: Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico.com
November 2, 2012 04:26 AM EDT
Labor unions and liberal interest groups are going all-out for President Barack Obama’s reelection — but they’re just as ready to turn that firepower back on him if he betrays them with a grand bargain.
These groups fear a victorious Obama would ink a deal with Republicans during the fiscal cliff negotiations that slashes entitlement benefits. And that could hurt the very coalition of voters — minorities, women and low- and middle-income families — that would claim credit for his second term. Even as they turn out the vote in public to keep Obama in office, in private they’re plotting a strategy aimed at pressuring him to protect those who reelected him.
The dual-track campaign, led by the AFL-CIO, MoveOn and a network of progressive advocacy organizations, highlights the political vice grip that awaits Obama if he wins Tuesday.
He wants a large-scale deficit deal. But it would inevitably mean making concessions to Republicans that infuriate the Democratic base that spent the past two years and tens of millions of dollars trying to return him to the White House. Progressives worry about which Obama will show up after Election Day: the pragmatist who offered benefit cuts to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the 2011 debt ceiling talks or the partisan chastened by a failed deal to slice into prized Democratic programs.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Raise taxes, baby, Raise taxes ON EVERYBODY, NO EXCEPTIONS!! LET THE FISCAL CLIFF BEGIN!!
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