Criticize the President? We should not even be having serious conversations about this.

[sofa king]

279. Bad politics, I agree.

It's a bad move in that one side is clearly taking advantage of public perception and using it to sow division amongst ourselves, and to score negative points against all Democrats. This is the very least important political season of any four-year cycle, though, so the damage can be repaired.

The policy itself sucks, too, but others above and elsewhere have pointed that out far better than I can.

My beef is with people assuming this is a done deal, or that the President's proposal has any actual force of law, regulation, or even current and future policy.

I have no idea what the President is really up to on this, I won't lie. But we know that The President's plans are rarely revealed in their entirety until they are locked down so tight that they cannot be dismantled. So we can guess with a lot of accuracy that whatever is going on... is still ongoing. And that's about all we really know.

My best guess right now is that the President is making the best of being a lame duck and playing wounded. Something that is certainly factored in to the plan--and I hope to hell there is a plan--is that a large proportion of Republicans are proud of an unblemished record of opposition to everything the President proposes, so tactically, publicly proposing chained-CPI probably eroded votes for it in Congress. Perhaps the President is trying to deny the idea as a future compromise, but it's an awfully high price to pay for just that.

There is also an unusual historical precedent for this, which is that after Shrub stole Ohio, he took the flak all the following winter and spring, trying to steal Social Security by shoveling it in to the soon-to-fail markets. In the meantime, Congress was delaying two dozen investigations and writing blank checks to defense contractors while the media followed the President. Perhaps there is a reason why lame duck Presidents mess with Social Security--there are no political repercussions for them, personally, is one reason I can see.

Anyway, these snakes have a lot of twist left in 'em, is all I'm saying. I think it will be a long, long time before anything of substance actually happens on it. President Obama is still going to be an annoyingly centrist Democrat until then, and afterward, too. But he's probably not selling us out.

Probably.