Everything that E.J. Dionne wrote in this morning's Washington Post is smart and spot-on. But this sentence especially jumped out at me: "Over the past several weeks, talk about the deficit and spending has receded, replaced by a new dialogue on job creation, fairer taxes and the abuses by financiers that got the country into economic difficulty in the first place."
This past summer, some people, including myself, why the President was making such a big deal about requiring the debt ceiling increase be increased through the election. I thought at the time that this was inside baseball. I now see that the President was right. With the debt ceiling negotiations behind him - the Special Select Committee will do, or not do, what it is supposed to, or there will be acriss the board cuts - the President has been able to change the national conversation. And, he has seemed less afriad of putting the "bully" back into the "bully pulpit." Now, the Dems find themselves fighting on more fertile turf.