Will House Democrats sink the debt ceiling limit bill? So far the bulk of attention has been on the Tea Party Republicans, but Greg Sargant has a report suggesting House Democrats may be simply leaving it up to Republicans. If this is the case, it’ll hurt the Democrats: if it turns out that there is a perception that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to push for the bill, the onus will not be totally on the Tea Party Republicans if the bill fails — and the United States slips into default:
According to two Democratic leadership aides, Hoouse Dem leaders are not whipping Dems to get them to vote for the debt deal announced yesterday, raising questions as to whether it can pass the House.
Nancy Pelosi, who met with her caucus today to gauge support for the deal, has not announced yet whether she’s in favor of it. More specifically, the question of whether Dem leaders will actively press members is key to gauging the proposal’s prospects for success. And it looks like they aren’t.
“We are not whipping,” one leadership aide tells me. “We are doing a leadership survey to see where members are.”
MoveOn came out against the deal today, and Paul Krugman and some liberal bloggers are calling on House Dems to vote No on the plan. People are scrambling right now to gauge how many Dems and Republicans are currently supporting it.
Those on the Democratic left who are calling to defeat a plan to stave off default (no matter how they defend it) would — here goes the outcry over false equivency…get ready…it’s coming — be in the same political doghouse in the eyes of many Americans as those on the right if the bill is defeated and the U.S. slips into default. And then there is this: many Americans want this whole crisis to be put behind them — even though many Americans will be dealing with the far reaching consquences of this deal that essentially is another big step in dismantling New Deal and Great Society programs achieved after fierce political battles in the last century.
UPDATED: No sooner did I hit PUBLISH on my trusty WordPress control panel then this poll emerged that confirms what I noted above:
Americans give overwhelmingly negative reviews to the fierce budget debate that has transfixed Washington over the past few weeks, and large numbers now think less favorably about the country’s political leaders, according to a new poll by the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center.
Asked for single-word characterizations of the budget negotiations, the top words in the poll — conducted in the days before an apparent deal was struck — were “ridiculous,” “disgusting” and “stupid.” Overall, nearly three-quarters of Americans offered a negative word; just 2 percent had anything nice to say.
So even though Mommy said “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it,” many Americans of both or NO parties are revolted over what has passed for leadership from both parties on this politician-produced issue.
“Ridiculous” was the most frequently mentioned word among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. It was also No. 1 in an April poll about the just-averted government shutdown. In the new poll, the top 27 words are negative ones, with “frustrating,” “poor,” “terrible,” “disappointing,“ “childish,” “messy” and “joke” rounding out the top 10.
May I say the word?
DITTO.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.