Reacting to the Dem critiques of the GOP's madman bargaining on the debt ceiling, Atrios writes:

It is negotiating, just good negotiating (and, on the other side, bad negotiating). People and the press should highlight what Republican negotiating is so people can judge, but it's wrong to say it isn't negotiating. "Give me everything I want" is negotiating when it works.

It's also good negotiating when it ends up as "I got most of everything I want." Here's the thing - this negotiation goes back to last December, when the Bush tax cuts were set to expire. My contempt for The Deal is a tedious and repetitive matter of record. But it is worth remembering that many folks (Ezra Klein! cough!) were celebrating it as a bit of brilliant bargaining by Obama, who snookered the GOP into a 'big stimulus package.' Of course that was silly. The fact is the only goal for the GOP is this negotiation was the extension of the Bush tax cuts. They won what they wanted in December. After that, any cuts in the social safety net are gravy. 2 trillion dollars in such cuts is a ton of gravy. The GOP will gladly give the President back 100 billion of it to make The Deal, Part 2. Of course, they will have the budget negotiations in the Fall to extract even more. At this point, there is no sweat for the GOP in the bargaining - they got their big chip in December. The Deal was a terrible mistake.

Speaking for me only

That's Booman's headline on the Cantor walkout. But he writes like it is a bad thing in terms of bargaining by the Republicans. Booman thinks that this means that "[Republicans] are going to blow up the global economy through their intransigence and unreasonableness." No they aren't. Democrats are going to cave. This is the Madman Theory of Political Bargaining.

As digby says, "after some drama, the votes will probably be cobbled together with Democrats being forced to form the majority because the GOP has successfully deployed the Madman Strategy. (Isn't that how it usually works?)" Yes, that's how it usually works.

We're doomed.

Speaking for me only

Cantor Walks Out of Debt Ceiling Talks:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, said Thursday that he was quitting the debt ceiling negotiations being led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. because of an impasse over the role of taxes in any final deal. “I believe that we have identified trillions in spending cuts, and to date, we have established a blueprint that could institute the fiscal reforms needed to start getting our fiscal house in order,” Mr. Cantor said in a prepared statement. “That said, each side came into these talks with certain orders, and as it stands the Democrats continue to insist that any deal must include tax increases. There is not support in the House for a tax increase, and I don’t believe now is the time to raise taxes in light of our current economic situation. Regardless of the progress that has been made, the tax issue must be resolved before discussions can continue.”

Let the caving begin! Actually, the President has a pretty strong legal argument that he actually does not need the debt ceiling raised. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides:

Two fundraisers from Newt Gingrich's campaign have resigned, citing Gingrich's excessive debt. Total defections so far for the self-proclaimed candidate: 18. Unnamed officials familiar with the details of his campaign say:

the former Georgia lawmaker racked up massive travel bills but money had only trickled in since he got into the race earlier this spring.
These officials said that he is at least $1 million in debt.

Gingrich could use his own money to keep going. He is brushing off the departures as "gossip," saying "No one has a clue why they left."

I don't think the "why" matters, given the number of quitters. When 18 people leave a campaign, it's fairly obvious there's something very wrong.

Time to fold Newt. No one's paying attention to your campaign because you are old news with no recent accomplishments and a past record of taking the worst positions on policy. Do we even need to mention his personal life?

He's finally giving up. Rep. Anthony Weiner will announce his resignation today.

Via Atrios, I discovered that Dem political lawyer Ron Klain "overs[aw] implementation" of the infrastructure spending in the 2009 stimulus:

When I worked in the Obama White House, one of my most important assignments was to help oversee implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act[.]

Why was Ron Klain charged with this task? What did he know about infrastructure projects? As Atrios points out he surely knows very little about economics and job creation. Atrios writes:

Paul Krugman:

O.K., the obvious question: If Medicare is so much better than private insurance, why didn’t the Affordable Care Act simply extend Medicare to cover everyone? The answer, of course, was interest-group politics: realistically, given the insurance industry’s power, Medicare for all wasn’t going to pass, so advocates of universal coverage, myself included, were willing to settle for half a loaf. But the fact that it seemed politically necessary to accept a second-best solution for younger Americans is no reason to start dismantling the superior system we already have for those 65 and over.

Accepting this as true (and people like Jon Gruber and Ezra Klein who championed the Wyden-Bennett exchange reform would not accept this as true based on their writings at the time), how precisely does the "second best option" work? I'm simply not seeing it, and while Krugman keeps describing the exchanges as "the second best option" and "half a loaf," I do not understand his reasoning for expecting positive results from the exchanges. As I said at the time, any expansion of Medicaid for the less well off is a positive, and that is why I supported a positive vote for ACA. But the exchange/subsidies reform? No, that's not a "second best option" or "half a loaf." It will fail in my estimation.

Speaking for me only

Rep. Anthony Weiner is taking a leave of absence from the House to seek treatment. Via Huffington Post,

Weiner's office put out a statement confirming those reports and announcing that he had requested a "short leave of absence from the House of Representatives so that he can get evaluated and map out a course of treatment to make himself well."

On Sarah Palin, I'm with Melissa McEwan:

Open Thread.

The World Bank? Blanket denials of that rumor, which never made much sense to me, but maybe it is a more influential gig than I imagine. Clinton has made it clear she will not be Secretary of State after 2012. So what then? I saw this interesting exchange between wonky bloggers E. Klein, M. Yglesias and J.Cohn. Yglesias' tweet:

Call me old-fashioned, but I think H. Clinton should consider another presidential run in 2016[.]

I do not know if she would be the best person to be President, but I remain convinced that she would be the best candidate (defined as the person with the best chance of winning) for President the Dems could offer. How soon will it be time for a Draft Hillary movement after 2012?

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias notes that according to a Marist poll, Anthony Weiner's constituency does not want him to resign. But, as andgarden pointed out the first day we were discussing this issue, Weiner's district could be eliminated in redistricting, rendering Weiner's reelection a moot issue. But what if Weiner does not go quietly in 2012 and instead decided to contest a newly drawn district that covers the old 9th? Nate Silver's discussion speculates about Weiner being challenged by a redistricted out Dem but does not consider the reverse:

Even a neighboring district is broken up to preserve the Ninth, though, that still would leave an unemployed Democrat who could challenge Mr. Weiner in a primary. [. . .] Mr. Weiner is unlikely to get a free pass, however the new boundaries are drawn.

Fair enough, but will Weiner give another Dem a free pass in a primary for a district that includes the old 9th? More . . .

Tim Geithner could cost President Obama reelection:

In a general-election trial heat in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll [Mitt Romney] runs evenly with Barack Obama among all Americans, and numerically outpoints him, 49-46 percent, among registered voters -- not a statistically significant lead, given sampling error, but a clear reflection of Obama's vulnerability to a ell-positioned challenger.

Yes, it's the economy, stupid:

59 percent, a new high -- disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy, which, in a nutshell, is what the public's frustration is all about.

Mitt Romney can beat Obama in 2012, thanks to Tim Geithner. Let's hope the GOP is stupid enough to nominate someone else.

Speaking for me only