Everyone who reads this blog already knows what I think of these "negotiations." There's simply no excuse for the Democrats to have gotten to this point in the first place and I hold them equally, if not more, responsible for the repurcussions. There can be no excuses -- "the president had no choice" or "they didn't have the votes." Bullsh!t. The GOP signaled long ago what they were doing. The Dems could have held tough for a clean vote --- and taken it to the people if they had to. Would they have been any worse off politically than they are now?
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Clearly, the Democrats believe that at the end of the day massive spending cuts will be so popular that the beltway and the people will reward them with fawning press and a big majority. I'm guessing they'll get the first, but if it tanks the economy even more I'm guessing that Michele Bachman is their only hope. They'd better pray the confidence fairy is so impressed with all this that it waves a magic wand and creates a gigantic boom that will make everyone in the country so rich that even the old and sick will be able to survive just by picking up the hundred dollar bills that are lying all over the sidewalks. link

Indeed, the President's willingness to connect the debt ceiling to deficit reduction negotiations was his grave mistake in this particular episode (the gravest mistake was The Deal imo.)

But now we have another choice?  We don't have to make raising the debt ceiling contingent on making huge cuts?  How come?

Of course, the biggest part of this whole mess is that Obama believes that message - he believes we have to make these choices; if he believed otherwise, he'd have been making that case to the people all along, been showing them a better way to solve our economic problems.

He's failing on substance and he's failing on the politics, and he's not listening to the voices of opposition, and isn't surrounded by people who are telling him he's wrong about the substance or the politics.  It would be nice to think that if Tim Geithner didn't have his ear, that things would be different, but Obama's overall history as president tells me that it isn't Geithner that's the problem - it's Obama.

Senate Democrats have discussed with President Barack Obama a scaled-back budget deal that would avert a looming default but force Congress to tackle the politically toxic issue again before the 2012 elections, a Senate Democratic aide told Reuters on Thursday.

Such a deal would cover the country's borrowing needs for seven months, the aide said, adding it is one of a handful of options discussed in meetings. A seven-month debt limit increase theoretically would include budget savings of roughly $1 trillion to attract the Republican support needed to pass it through Congress.

The White House said it was not considering the plan.

"The president has consistently said it's in the country's best economic interests for Congress to reach common ground on a significant long-term deficit reduction package," White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said.

"He has been clear in conversations with leaders in both parties about that."

And the drop-dead date for getting any deal done has been moved up to July 22:

The Obama administration believes congressional leaders must agree to a deficit-reduction deal by July 22 in order to raise the government's borrowing limit in time to avoid a default in early August, according to Democratic officials with knowledge of the negotiations.

The government needs a week or two to write and pass the necessary legislation and take the steps necessary to avoid missing a payment. "We're down to the wire," one official said.

President Barack Obama and Senate leaders have agreed on the outline of an agreement to cut federal spending by about $1 trillion over at least 10 years, but are deadlocked over whether to include some tax increases, as Democrats insist, or take them off the table, as Republicans want. The Senate agreed Thursday to cancel its planned recess next week to stay in town in pursuit of an agreement. Still, many disagree about what would happen if they don't reach a deal, and it is hard to know for certain because the federal government hasn't defaulted in modern times.

Indeed, you have to play to the Very Serious crowd by arguing that if the Congress is irresponsible and does not raise the debt ceiling, then the President is prepared to do whatever is necessary to fulfill the Constitution's requirement that "[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States [. . .] not be questioned."

I couldn't agree more. I just wonder if it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle at this late date, after the failed negotiations, with positions hardening. Ironically, his willingness to negotiate may in the end lead to more partisan division rather than less.

But again, draw back and see the big picture. The public overwhelmingly supports the Democrats on the tax question. On cutting Medicare and Social Security the public not only takes the Democrats side, the opposition to Republicans is at near lethal levels. The debt limit question may favor the Republicans but the public is generally divided and a significant plurality say they don't even understand the question.

From these facts, you'd expect that the debt ceiling/debt cutting debate would be a pitched battle or that the Democrats would have the whip hand. But that's far from the case. In fact, the Democrats have continued to concede ground as Republicans have upped the ante, daring the Democrats not to agree to cuts which are extremely unpopular.

Something doesn't fit about this picture. What's the disconnect? Some of this stems from deeper trends in the political economy -- a topic I'll discuss in another post. But the main answer is political. The Democrats have been overawed by Republicans continually raising the ante and bluffing -- and being genuinely worried about the consequences of the United States defaulting on its debt, something the GOP doesn't seem worried about. The real error here was buying into the idea of negotiations based on holding the future of the country's economy hostage. But now the problem is that the Democrats are focused on a behind closed doors negotiation with no outside game while not making any effort to bring the larger public into the conversation.

I don't really think voting to raise the debt ceiling is "political suicide."  Maybe I don't watch Fox News enough, but I wasn't aware that polling on the debt ceiling was particularly influential in this debate.