Negotiating do-si-doh
by digby
Here's a good piece by Noam Scheiber on the ramifications of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations:
The problem is what happens when, having crafted a favorable backdrop to the negotiation, it comes time for him to close the deal. And this is where the just-completed "cliff" episode is still disconcerting. Because it turns out Obama made a critical if underappreciated mistake in the final hours of the back and forth: sending Joe Biden to haggle with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell once McConnell's talks with his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid, had broken down.
From my after-the-fact discussions with Democratic aides in the House and Senate leadership, it’s clear that Reid had a plan for resolving the cliff and considered the breakdown of his talks with McConnell very much a part of it. By involving Biden, Obama undercut Reid and signaled that he wanted a deal so badly he was unwilling to leave anything to chance, even when the odds overwhelmingly favored him. It suggested that even if Obama plays his cards exceedingly well in the run-up to the debt-limit showdown, he could still come away with a worse deal than he deserves because of his willingness to make concessions in the closing moments.
Here’s what happened near the end of the cliff talks, as I understand it.
Read on for the details.
I have to suspect at this point that this is not entirely a function of "bad negotiating." It looks an awful lot like a subtle way to achieve desired policy outcomes which may be opposed by the president's own party. The need to make a deal at all costs has become the negotiating strategy. And it conveniently means that all the demagogueing about the consequences of not making a deal will get more and more shrill as the negotiations go on and the Republicans will always take it to the very edge --- at which point it becomes "necessary" to make a less than optimal deal than what might have been possible without all the hand wringing and rending of garments. And I hate to say it, but after several of these so-called hostage situations, it's looking to me as if the Republican leaders are partners in a little square dance, not adversaries.
In other words, it serves both parties' technocratic goal of austerity in the guise of "reform" to milk every contrived fiscal crisis to its last drop and then be "forced" to make a "compromise" that didn't have to be made. Perhaps that's cynical, but we've seen this dance enough times now to at least be skeptical.
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