did obama just win reelection?

The more you look at it, the better that deal gets for the president. The strength of the economy in the next two years is by far the biggest determinant of his reelection chances, and he's just persuaded the Republicans to give the economy a massive boost. He has - at the cost of accepting a temporary extension of tax cuts for the rich - been able to support the unemployed and the middle class. He's also - as Andrew Sullivan points out - landed the GOP with a potential civil war.

Charles Krauthammer, perhaps the premier conservative columnist and a rabid partisan, has written a brilliant column in which he argues forcefully that neither the Republicans or the Democrats have quite realised what a coup the president just pulled off:

Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 — and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years — which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?... Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own reelection chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, tea-party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility.

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[RobH]

Clive Crook writes a (superficially compelling) rebuttal here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/charles-krauthammer-is-the-fraud/67867/

[Ian Leslie]

Interesting, thanks. But he's not rebutting the basic thrust of CK's argument, which is that this deal is better for the president than either side realise.

[Hal]

Paul Krugman, using an estimate by Mark Zandi, says that the deal will add to growth in 2011 and subtract from growth in 2012, That is, the "good stuff" expires after one year, but the tax cuts for upper incomes last for two years. Because a president's reelection turns on the direction of the economy in the election year, not on the level of economic activity, Obama is actually less likely to get reelected under this deal. I hope Krugman is wrong, but I just don't know. He makes a cogent argument that needs addressing.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/december-2011/

[Ian Leslie]

Wow, you're right, that's a tough argument. Would like to see any counterpoints to it...

[Retro Air Jordans]

Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.