From TPM Reader JE …

Once again, I agree with your analysis on a negotiation being a negotiation, but from my reading of Biden‘s comments, there’s a real threading of a needle. Any of the potential “workarounds” such as minting a platinum coin, the 14th amendment, or consort bonds all have serious drawbacks and the economy will take a huge hit. There’s no pain-free way around this.

From TPM Reader KW …

Thanks to Josh for calling it like it is – Joe Biden is negotiating. But I wonder if that necessarily means that we still won’t run off the cliff. What I mean is that there are any number of Republican crazies in the House who may insist on something that Biden simply cannot and will not agree to. Which would mean that we are back to the Biden team having to figure out some workaround, like premium bonds. It reminds me of the Republicans throwing a temper tantrum regarding the January 6th committee makeup, which resulted in them cutting off their nose to spite their face.

From TPM Reader CB …

Polls show that Americans are equally divided on whether a clean bill should happen or whether there should be spending cuts.  Josh in his Editor’s Blog piece “Let’s Call It” rightly points out that democracies can’t succeed if they are held hostage.  But the average voter is who counts, not those of us who actually understand political theory and its practice.  If one side or the other gets blamed for the consequences of not raising the debt limit, there will be hardcore reverberations for the next election. 

From TPM Reader PT …

I can’t help wondering if the Trump Administration’s “negotiations” with the Speaker of the House are real and good-faith, or whether they’re some kind of theater and posturing.

The thing is — Kevin McCarthy can’t negotiate on behalf of the House, and everyone knows it. In this regard, the situation is exactly analogous with 2011, when John Boehner was negotiating with the White House, made a deal, but then couldn’t get the rest of the House to support it (IIRC he got shivved by his deputy, Eric Cantor, who then hilariously lost a primary challenge a year or two later). In 2011 a lot of people didn’t understand the dynamic, but in 2023 I’m pretty sure everyone does.

From TPM Reader MM …

We established long ago that my, shall we say imperfect, political instincts are high on the list of reasons why a career in politics was never in the cards for me. Nevertheless I’m not always wrong (e.g., broken clock / twice a day).

You also know that I’ve been a supporter of Joe Biden since the 2020 Dem primaries, and remain a supporter today. No one’s right all the time (though some insist, absurdly and laughably, that they are), but Biden has been doing a pretty good job of getting the job done despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to get much love (or, more importantly, political credit) from voters for it. If he’s calling it a “negotiation”, then so it is, as you pointed out this morning, while noting that in a negotiation you give something in the expectation of getting something. I believe that Joe Biden understands the MAGA House GOP and the weakness of the Speaker perfectly, and has zero illusions about the House GOP’s intention (not willingness: intention) to cause chaos (Trumpism 101: If you can create chaos, create chaos: it drives your enemies crazy, and while they’re busy trying to fix what you just broke, you’re working on the next phase of your treason).

From TPM Reader DB …

I don’t think elected Democrats, especially tenured ones, realize how fucking disheartening it is to voters that they never fight especially over the debt limit which everyone knew was going to be a problem and once again our only strategy is to concede. 

This probably doesn’t require much saying. But I think we need to say it anyway in the context of the low-energy but still petulant “Durham Report.” Trump diehards like Durham and most Republicans have now spent years claiming that the Trump/Russia investigation was some kind of Deep State plot or “collusion” between the FBI, the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration. The kinder, gentler version of this attack is that the FBI, whatever its motives, never should have opened an investigation in the first place.

This is all absurd.

It’s too early to say definitely. But initial indications suggest the assailant in the bat attack on Rep. Gerry Connolly’s (D-VA) office staff is a person who suffers from schizophrenia and who stopped taking his medication months ago and has been in a downward spiral since. Two staffers were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after being struck with a metal bat.

Connolly suggested mental illness was at the root of the attack rather than a specific grievance or political motivation. CNN interviewed accused assailant Xuan Kha Tran Pham’s father whose account mirrored Connolly’s. “He is in a really bad condition,” said the father. “All day and all night, he mumbles … he talks and looks like he talks with someone in his brain, and suddenly, he is shouting angrily.”

As we watch the unfolding fiasco of the debt ceiling standoff, now, in fact, a negotiation and a source of gnashing of teeth down through the ages, there’s an additional point and question I wanted to address. Over recent days I’ve had a large volume of emails asking pretty close to the same question: “Josh, can you remind me why the Democrats made the decision not to raise the debt ceiling at the end of the last Congress? I can’t understand why they decided not to do it when they had the chance.”

First, the tl;dr version: That’s not what happened.

Let me preface all this by saying I take a backseat to no one in opposition to the whole clearly anachronistic and unconstitutional debt limit regime. I was banging the drums about the absolute need for the Democrats to do just this — raise the debt limit during the lame duck session last fall and winter — at the time. In fact, there’s a video I’m about to link where I talked to a couple true experts about this last fall.

But pretending they decided not to is just false.