On the Deal
Needless to say, I don’t have much to add to Krugman and Rortybomb. The deal, once you accept that the cave-in on extending the Bush tax cuts was inevitable, was better than expected. But the caveat pretty much swallows the good news. The die on this cast in September, and while I would have preferred that Obama put the better long-term policy of letting all the tax cuts expire above his political self-interest, I’m not naive enough to think there was any chance of this happening. But let’s be clear — this isn’t a “temporary” extension of the Bush upper-class tax cuts. The chance to let them expire has vanished. The political context certainly won’t be better in 2012.
In a very related point, Unequal Democracy is indeed a fantastic book.