Compromise or Capitulation?

I love the president, I really do.
But this week will go down in history as the one when the ish really hit the fan with his liberal base.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120701402.html?hpid=topnews

If that's not enough proof, check out today's Huffington Post. 

Obama's compromise with Republicans will extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone--not just the middle and working classes--for two years, and raise the financial threshold on estate taxes.  All of which means that the wealthy will continue to get wealthier, while they continue to *forget* to do anything to ensure that their gains trickle down to the lower classes.  It also adds to the deficit.  Is getting an extension of unemployment benefits worth this major hit to revenue?  I think not.


Democrats of all stripes are seething about this.  They wanted the president to hold the line and kill the tax breaks for wealthy families.  In their view, Obama should have let it come down to a last-minute face-off instead of over-reaching on the compromise:  He could have cast the GOP as the holiday scrooges who declined to extend unemployment benefits and raised taxes on the middle class, all for the vain principle of enriching the plutocrats.  Well, for some reason, Obama blinked first, even with a current Democratic majority in Congress.  It's really stomach-turning.

Get your popcorn for the intraparty drama.  I think that Congressional Democrats will wholly reject the deal--they know that they need to project some strength and pump up the base.  If they don't at least try to push back against the Republicans, they will continue to look like losers, eroding the faith of liberal die-hards to negligible levels.  They had better make sure that their final stand of the year is a valiant one, an effort that truly embodies the spirit of what they tried to accomplish as the majority party.