This isn’t 2010, President Obama’s no means no

President Obama won't give in to Republican ransom demands over tax cuts for the wealthy—even if that means going over the so-called fiscal cliff on Jan. 1, 2013. This has got to have John Boehner perplexed. To his right Boehner will have teaparty caucus screaming for an economic Kamikaze dive into austerity oblivion, to his other right he'll have the GOP's big defense contractor money screaming for him to raise the white flag. It should get interesting if this holds.

Monday Open Thread

Hillary Clinton for President, 2016:
All kinds of circumstances could intervene between now and 2016 to derail her—politics, health, family matters, a renewed Clinton fatigue—but Hillary’s numbers are enormous, her ambition equal to her capacities, and she was in high political gear.
Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, 2014:
"If Speaker Boehner refuses to schedule this widely-supported [Middle Class Tax Cut] bill for a vote, Democrats will introduce a discharge petition to automatically bring to the floor the Senate-passed middle class tax cuts," Pelosi said in a statement.

More of John Carney’s vaporous nothing makes it into print

I think that it is a strange choice for John Carney to set himself up as the Democrat with no ideas. It hurt him in his primary against Markell, and now he seems determined to repeat his mistake. I mean, we can assume he'll be facing a Democrat in a primary election at some point, and he will want to have some kind of Democratic brand identity when that roles around, right? And yet, Carney wastes ink in this weekends News Journal telling us that 1) Returns day is awesome 2) People want bipartisanship 3) The debt is the worst thing ever, and 4) He is proud of addressing the debt "crisis" by having voted for a commission report so flawed and lacking that never made it out of committee. Genius! ...