Chris Hayes filled in for Lawrence O'Donnell on the Last Word on Wednesday night, and opened with a panel discussion of Obama's relationship with the business community that completely broke all Village rules:
It had no fake Democrats pretending to be Republicans, no former Clinton White House staffers pushing sixty, and most of all nobody saying Obama hadn't been bipartisan enough. In fact, what Ari Berman, Roger Hodge, and Adam Greene spent a good 15 minutes on was something I had yet to seen broached on cable news: what the hell is Obama thinking when America's corporations are raking in record profits and he's still on bended knee while big business is accusing him of killing their bottom line? Watch:
Hodge is definitely a Firebagger, but he's balanced out by the progressive PCCC activist Greene, and Berman is in the middle. But all three men made excellent points at times and Chris Hayes asked some very good questions. More importantly, they had an adult discussion without the name-dropping, chest-beating, and groupthink common to any other panel I've seen this year.
They all mentioned however that Obama had to take a stand on tax cuts for the middle class and to go after John Boehner to force two votes, one on middle class tax cuts, one on tax cuts for the wealthy. If Obama didn't, he was done in the eyes of all these guys and much of his base. Hodge replied that he didn't think Obama was going to do it and that he was bereft of hope on the issue. Even Greene admitted that he thought Obama's obnoxious habit of being bi-partisan all the bloody time was going to get him killed by the GOP.
I'd have to agree. We'll see what happens next week with tax cuts and unemployment benefits extensions in the lame duck.
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