I wish the President would just stay on vacation until January 1st...

[JoePhilly]

22. As a candidte in 2008, Obama made 2 promise about taxes.

Promise #1: He would not raise taxes on the 98% of Americans making under 205k.
Promise #2: He would end the tax breaks for the 2% of Americans making over 250k.

Now, let's go back to 2010 and review.

That summer, the Democratic Congress could have passed a bill to extend only the cuts for the 250k. They failed to do so. As a result, they also got their butts kicked in the 2010 midterms.

And so during the 2010 lame duck session, Obama had a problem.

If he let all the Bush tax cuts expire, he would keep promise #2, and BREAK promise #1. This is important because if he had done so, the media would have played clips of Obama promising to not raise taxes on the middle class side by side with clips of Bush #1 making and breaking the same basic promise. Those clips would have run on an endless loop from then until the 2012 election. And Obama, like Bush #1 would have been a 1 term President.

So, Obama kept promise #1 and delayed promise #2 by moving the expiration date to the end of 2012. By doing so he prevented the media from crucifying him over increasing the tax rate on 98% of all Americans, and he also got some addition stimulus and extensions to UE benefits (and a few other things).

Importantly, by moving the expiration into the 2012 lame duck, Obama ensured that he would make the decision about those cuts whether he won or lost the 2012 election. Pretty Smart.

Now, as you might have noticed, those top end cuts are going to expire, either in a deal, or on the last day of his first term (which btw, will make that a promise KEPT).

Ironically, if no deal is reached, all of the tax cuts expire and Obama will actual BREAK promise #1. But it won't matter politically and he can never run for President again, so the media can't really do much to him on this point. And better, if we do go over the cliff, the GOP is going to be blamed. And they'll be forced to retroactively reinstate those cuts for people under 250k.

And in the end, Obama keeps both promises AND gets a second term.

See how that works.