Fiscal Showdown Coming to Town
As I wrote yesterday, President Obama and most of the Senate Democrats in competitive races won this election because they unified working class swing voters and their progressive base, who after a long time of discontent became more and more enthusiastic as the election went on. Voters rejected Romney-Ryan economics, and the Republican message about “makers and takers” and Romney’s famous 47%. Voters enthusiastically endorsed the Democratic message about fighting for the middle class, making the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, and not cutting important programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and education.
Now we make the turn into this monumentally important debate in this lame duck session of Congress. The Republican leadership is definitely giving mixed signals, sometimes with themselves- Boehner has already sent essentially opposite messages from Tuesday night to Wednesday about how open to compromise he is. But in all the elite media fascination with who is willing to cut what deal and which rumor to believe, here’s what should not be forgotten: the middle class and lower income folks who gave their trust and their votes to Obama and the other Democrats who won on Tuesday.
An important new ad is out that everyone who cares about the lame duck session and the big showdown on fiscal issues should know about. Here’s the text: