WOULD I VOTE NO? IT DEPENDS

Atrios would apparently vote no on the debt deal if he were in Congress, and Paul Krugman says for certain that he'd vote no. Me, I might cast a no vote; I might not.

Atrios says:

I'd be happy for the deal to fail. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think that either a last minute clean debt ceiling would pass or the administration would give those Libyan Hostility lawyers the task of coming up with the rationale for why they can just do whatever the hell they want. Or the Fed would find some new exciting emergency powers and backstop everything. Whatever.

Krugman says,

...those legal options are still there. Obama can move now; and even if he eventually loses in the courts, that gives him time.

I loathe the deal, but I wouldn't want to be part of killing it. Why? The outcome I predicted over the weekend may not be what we have, but I still say it's what we'll get if this deal goes down: Cut, Cap & Balance, with a requirement that a balanced budget amendment has to pass, not just be voted on, before the debt ceiling can be raised again. (If the current bill fails, it'll be because a lot of Republicans voted no; most Republicans will vote yes on CC&B, as will most Democrats if we've passed the deadline.)

I'm shocked that both Atrios and Krugman can still imagine Obama pulling the 14th Amendment or some other legal means of finessing the situation out of his hat. Could he? Sure. Is there even an 0.000001% chance that he would? If we don't know him well enough to know the answer to that by now....

I'd vote no if the thing were assured of either passage or failure. Anywhere in between, I'd withhold my vote, as I think all progressives should, until very late in the process. Let the teabaggers cast the votes that put it over the top, to the disgust of their fanboys and fangirls, or let them kill it, so Wall Street can see whose fingerprints are on the murder weapon.