By Klas Bergman
It’s already almost a month since President Barack Obama’s convincing victory over the republican challenger Mitt Romney.
Recently, Romney met Obama for a private lunch at the White House, but otherwise, the man who thought (largely because of faulty internal polling) he would win on November 6, came to and left the nation’s capital largely unnoticed. There was no thank you from the Republicans in Congress. Their candidate lost, and losers in America are rapidly forgotten.…
There is still some discussion on why Obama won and Romney lost and about the important democracy question following the many republican attempts to suppress the vote. The eminent political observer Elizabeth Drew writes in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books under the headline "Determined to Vote:"
“Despite their considerable efforts, the Republicans were not able to buy or steal the election after all. Their defeat was of an almost biblical nature. The people … whose votes they (Republicans) had plotted, schemed and maneuvered, unto nearly the very last minute, to deny, rose up and said they wouldn’t have it. The long lines were the symbol of the election 2012—at once awe-inspiring and enraging.”
Drew concludes that the Republicans overplayed their hand and got, instead, “the very result that they had gone to unprecedented unconstitutional lengths to prevent.”
However, today the eyes in Washington are mainly focused on something called the “fiscal cliff,” by some called the “austerity crisis,” of seldom seen proportions and seldom seen consequences if not dealt with before the new year. If the White House and Congress cannot come to an agreement, a series of events—all extremely negative—will unfold.
The financial cliff came about because of previous failures after the big debt ceiling crisis of 2011 in Washington to lower the budget deficit and the national debt. The parties decided to postpone the tough decisions, to kick the can down the road, as it is so often put. No one imposed the cliff on Washington—the politicians did this to themselves, and thus they own the cliff and will go down together if there is no deal before 2013.
If there is no deal, all American will see their taxes go up next year—by an average of $3,446 and $200 billion in spending cuts will take effect. A non-deal will cause the U.S. economy to shrink and unemployment will turn upward, to over nine percent. It’s a frightening scenario, and for many it seems incomprehensible that the White House and Congress will let this happen. Too much is at stake, both politically for the parties, and economically for the whole country. And no one wants to be blamed for such a collapse.
Common sense says there will be a deal, although time is rapidly running out. As a leading Democrat said the other day, this is the “magic moment,” there is no better time than right now to make a deal. It doesn’t get any easier with time.
But, so far, the Republicans have resisted that “balanced approach”—with tax rate hikes for the richest two percent of the population, those with incomes over $250,000 per year, combined with a series of spending cuts—an approach on which Obama campaigned and won the election. Stubbornly, the Republicans have said no to any tax hikes, but without them there will be no deal. The majority of voters seemed to think Obama’s “balanced approach” is a sensible approach, and Obama is clearly now in the driver’s seat, holding the best cards.
Maybe, maybe, plain fear of failure and the subsequent wrath of the voters, who want a deal and want Washington to come together, will in the end drive the parties together to reach an agreement. Fear … fine! Who cares? The main thing is that there is a deal before midnight strikes on December 31.