Obama comes out swinging, media still obsessed with High Broderism

As I went to bed last night I flipped on CNN and I caught Obama's speech to the House Dems retreat. It was a thing of beauty. He was forceful, he had a hint of sarcasm. He defended his plan and he ridiculed the Flat-Earth economics of the GOP.

What were David Gergen and John King discussing? Bi-partisanship. That's it, just the amorphous concept of bi-partisanship as thought it were somehow an end unto itself. They never once discussed the merits of the stimulus bill as a policy. They never discussed what macroeconomics teaches us to do in a situation like this. Nothing but but the absolute need for bi-partisanship. As if the process was the most important issue, not the substance. As if Republicans had been participating in negotiations in good faith. As if everyone's ideas were valid and should be given equal weight. It was absolutely maddening.

Interestingly enough while David Gergen and John King were worshiping at the altar of bi-partisanship the Congresional Budget Office had released a report on the substance of the stimulus bill. The bill as currently constructed will add millions of jobs in the next 3 years, it will cause GDP to grow. It will, in other words, work. Did anyone bother to mention this? Of course not, that wouldn't be bi-partisan. In John King's world everyone gets a participation trophy and that's the most important thing.

In the long term the CBO report indicates that the stimulus bill would raise government debt and that could stunt GDP growth in 2019. Interestingly enough the CBO even goes so far as to tell us which aspects of the current bill would do the most long term damage - the tax cuts that Republicans insist must be part of the package!

Got that? While elite opinion makers in the media concern themselves with making sure no one's feelings get hurt and that the bill is bi-partisan the CBO is telling us that the GOP provisions are damaging to the economy in the long term and that the spending provisions favored by Dems will rescue the economy in the short term. Facts, reality, efficacy of policy be damned. None of it matters if Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint's feelings get hurt.

We're hemorrhaging jobs, the economy is in a nose dive. One party has solutions that will rescue the economy. The other party has ideology that will actively harm the economy. Yet both ideas are treated as though they are equally valid and the goal of the debate is not to FIX THE ECONOMY but to make sure the solution is bi-partisan.

It makes me want to scream. It's the epitome of High Broderism and at a time when our country can least afford this nonsense. We need solutions. Democrats have them. Screw the GOP, screw David Gergen's feelings and fix the economy Democrats.