Democrats need to can it with the Moral Superiority Stuff

Senior CNN political analyst David Gergen is asking a simple question, will Democrats over Play their hand.  The answer is likely yes, because they seemingly do not care about the fiscal cliff.  They want to continue to try to bury the Republican Party.

The way he lays this out is simple. In last summer’s budget talks, Obama was asking for $1.4 trillion in new tax revenue.  Republicans wanted to give only $800 billion.  When Obama pushed for $1.2 trillion, House Speaker John Boehner walked away and the deal fell apart.  That meltdown happened over $400 billion.    

Now that Obama has won reelection, he is saying that the people want to see tax hikes.  He is right about this. Gergen points out that exit polls showed that 60% of voters wanted higher taxes on the wealthy.  The new Pew/Washington Post poll released this week found that 60% still want this.

Gergen says that Republicans are asking Boehner to keep the current deal under $1 trillion and that would have been a huge win for Democrats last summer, but now they want more.  Why do Democrats believe Republicans will cave the leftist agenda?  I surmise they don’t believe they will.   

Republicans want to see deductions closed instead of tax increases.  A Gergen point out the Sen. Harry Reid is saying closing deductions will not raise enough revenue.   

Gergen points out that the “The Washington Post editorial page argues that in fact, limiting deductions to $50,000 per taxpayer would raise about $750 billion over 10 years, nearly matching the $800 billion that would be raised through the proposed tax hikes on the top 2%.”

What is the problem if the wealthy pay more in the end?  Here Gergen predicts that Democrats have other goals in mind. 

“Why has a grand bargain become so much harder than it should be?  Last year, it was clearly the Republicans who were over-playing their hands, being obstinate when they should have been more flexible.  (The deal they could have gotten then would have been considerably better than the one they are looking at now.)  But frankly, it is the president and the Democrats who are over-playing their hands now.”

Gergen is likely right; Democrats know they have to depend on Republicans to get anything done.  Their goals are not honest negotiations.  They cannot advance the liberal agenda until Republicans are completely out of the way.  They want to marginalize Republicans even further than they have already done it to themselves.  The Democrats appear to be using the fiscal cliff as a political weapon.  To be honest, that is fine.  This is politics after all.  However, they should stop with the moral superiority complex they so often have.  Remember when they admonished Bush and Rove for running a negative campaign based on fear.      

Liberals are not being genuine, why do they suddenly believe that most of the Bush tax cuts are valuable.  For so long we heard that these tax cuts were bankrupting American.  Unless they agree to massive spending cuts, it is their numbers do not add up.  Let us be honest here, no one is offering real solutions to any of our problems.  The only thing they are debating is how big our problems become, not whether or not we have the problem in the future.  No matter what deal comes out of this, we will still have massive problems.

The problem facing the United States government is that it spends over a trillion dollars a year that it does not have and cannot get.  We all know taxing the rich is not a real solution at all.  It is a political solution.  The only reason Republicans must go along with this farce is that Democrats have won the PR war.  That and Republicans really do run candidates that are out of touch with the growing demographics that swing elections.  This just proves that Republicans must change or the nation is in trouble.  The middle class is the one who will ultimately pay for all this; they are the only ones who have the money.  Not to mention the affect taking that much money out of our economy will have.   

Obama and the Democrats are hoping to push the country to the left.  They know they have four years to do this.  In all likelihood   Republicans will not make the same mistakes as they did in 2012. This is why we are witnessing Obama fight a battle that he has already won.