Well, there’s your problem right there

Jonathan Bernstein at The Plum Line unintentionally identifies the crux of the problem:

Barack Obama is taking quite a bit of heat from liberals right now, as he continues to negotiate a debt limit/deficit deal with John Boehner and, more or less, anyone else willing to negotiate. Paul Krugman probably voices the liberal panic best, asking (in an item entitled “Conceder in Chief”): “What evidence do we have that Obama knows what he’s doing?”

The problem is that it’s awfully difficult to analyze a poker game when no one has seen the cards yet, and reports of the bidding are not to be trusted. Is the problem (that is, what would be a problem for liberals) that Barack Obama truly cares more about deficit reduction than he does about liberal priorities? Perhaps. Is it that Obama is desperate to avoid default and willing to do whatever it takes to avoid it — even things he personally would agree are terrible policy? That’s possible, too. So I don’t want to judge the president’s choices, at least not yet.

The one thing I’d remind liberals is that most, if not all, of this is a straightforward consequence of the 2010 election: The House really is this wacky, and the truth is that whatever happens will still be very far from the median House position. But of course that doesn’t mean the president didn’t, and doesn’t, have choices, and it doesn’t mean he’s making the best ones.

The 2010 elections are the least of the Democrats’ problems.  Wait til the working public comes back from the beach to find that they have to recalculate their retirement plans and save even more of the money they don’t have (better not take any more vacations), because their elected representatives let President Mashieniblick negotiate without training wheels again while no one was looking.

If I were the Democrats, I would never have permitted legislation to be carried on in secret by a bunch of guys (it’s always guys) in a “by invitation only” meeting at the White House where the players, once again, gamble away real people’s money like its poker chips and then don’t tell their own party leadership what the f^&( is going on.

It’s unDemocratic.  And you WILL pay for it.