Horse race coverage in all the things.
Earlier in the week I noticed this piece by David Leonhardt at the NYT with the following headline question, The House Passed the Bill. Who Won? The question itself typifies a lot of the coverage I have seen on the debt ceiling debate and is maddeningly (IMHO) simplistic and all-too bothsidesy.
First, and foremost, I will answer the question by stating that we all won, because a major (and unnecessary) economic crisis has been averted and the price for its avoidance was not high. I think we all won as well because, despite a broader context of political dysfunction, this process was, at the end of the day, relatively normal.
Before (probably too late!) anybody gets upset and goes to the comments to accuse me of not being sufficiently outraged about hostage-taking and the absurdity of the debt limit, let me calm the waters a tad. I find the debt limit structure that we have in the US to be utterly absurd. Indeed, it is an example of American exceptionalism that we should not be proud of in the least.* And I agree that it is ridiculous and irresponsible (and also exceptional is the bad connotation of the word) to use this pivot point to literally threaten the global economy.
Having said that, I was pleasantly surprised that the deal that has emerged consisted largely of things that were relatively mundane in the grand scheme of things.
As such, if we have to play winners and losers, the winners are the world economy (and by extension the US economy), Biden, the Democrats, and Kevin McCarthy. The losers are the Freedom Caucus. And yes, there are some benefits cuts that will hurt vulnerable Americans.
Let me return to Leonhardt, under the heading “How Biden Lost.”
This background helps explain why Biden and his aides insisted — publicly and privately — that they would not negotiate over increasing the debt ceiling. Doing so, they explained, would encourage future ransom demands when the country again approached its debt limit.
