The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Some Washington “wise men” and other pundits keep talking about the current shutdown and debt ceiling standoff, as if there are two intractable sides that are equally culpable for “gridlock.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of the American people, and the majority of both houses of Congress oppose the Tea Party’s shutdown of the government — and threatened refusal to pay America’s bills.
Poll after poll have shown that most Americans want the government to go back to work and believe that America should honor its debts. They don’t believe these tactics should be used for any reason — certainly not as a means to prevent implementation of the health care law. Just yesterday a new poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) — one of the most accurate polling firms in the last election cycle — found that overwhelming majorities opposed the shutdown in 24 swing Congressional Districts currently held by Republicans.
PPP also found that the Republicans were in grave jeopardy of loosing control of these districts — and the House as a whole — because of their shutdown.
And, contrary to Speaker Boehner’s assertion on Sunday’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, there is clearly a majority of Members in the House to pass a “clean” continuing resolution that would put the federal government back to work — and instruct the Treasury to pay America’s bills. One hundred and ninety-five Democrats have signed a letter indicating they would support such a measure — in fact it would probably receive 200 Democratic votes. And at least twenty-two Republicans have publicly stated they would do so as well. That adds up to an unbeatable 217 House votes (there are currently three vacancies making 217 the magic number for a majority). Assuming, of course, the Republicans still believe in the science of mathematics.
But if Boehner disagrees, there is a sure way for him to find out — call a vote.
Boehner refuses to call that vote, because he knows he would lose. The bill would pass, the hostage-taking by his Tea Party faction would be over, and the Tea Party extremists would hold him responsible.
Boehner’s refusal to call a vote on the floor of the House is all that is keeping the government closed. It is also the only thing that threatens the first default by the U.S. government in American history — an act that could have a catastrophic effect on the financial system and the world economy.

Read more…

After sorting through the responses to the new AP-GFK online poll, conducted Oct. 3-7, a couple of nuggets are worth highlighting. According to the AP report on the poll,

Overall, 62 percent mainly blamed Republicans for the shutdown. About half said Obama or the Democrats in Congress bear much responsibility.
…Fifty-two percent said Obama is not doing enough to cooperate with Republicans to end the shutdown; 63 percent say Republicans aren’t doing enough to cooperate with him.

Yet another indication that a healthy majority of Americans know who is responsible for paralysis in congress.

The following article by TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore is cross-posted from the Washington Monthly:
Today’s big MSM meme could well be “disarray in both parties” over fiscal issues. But let’s take a look at where they actually are on the biggest challenge, the impending debt limit breach.
Politico’s Raju and Bresnahan have a prominently placed item this morning entitled “Democratic cracks open in debt-limit fight.” There’s actually just one “crack” the article discusses, involving the president’s signal that he’s “open” to a short-term debt limit increase so long as it comes with no conditions, even as the Senate prepares to debate a trillion-dollar increase designed to get the federal government through the 2014 election year.

Democrats began to raise concerns privately that the White House appeared to be softening its iron-clad position.
“This is very disconcerting to us,” a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide said on condition of anonymity, referring to comments by the president’s top economic adviser, Gene Sperling, at POLITICO’S Playbook Breakfast on Monday. “All along, the president and White House have been firm on what they want, both in a [government funding bill] and debt ceiling. So we’re concerned about this….”
The Democratic discord started Monday morning when Sperling said the White House would be open to a two- to three-week increase to avert the Oct. 17 deadline when the U.S. government may begin to default on its $16.7 trillion debt. The comments were a shift from the position the White House took in the 2011 debt fight, when it demanded that Congress extend the debt ceiling through the 2012 elections.

OMG! Obama’s caving again!
Not really. The “no short term debt limit increase” position of 2011 was in the context of a deal where Obama was making major substantive concessions to the GOP. The White House didn’t want Republicans to come back a few weeks or months later and ask for more. This time around, Obama’s ruled out concessions in connection with the debt limit. So it really doesn’t matter how often the GOP asks for debt-limit related concessions so long as the answer remains “no.”
Here’s what may be the real Senate Democratic objection to the idea of a short-term debt limit increase:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, “What does short-term buy us? That buys us Thanksgiving in Washington.”

Well, no offense to Durbin and to shutdown-ravaged staffs who aren’t jazzed about the idea, but it’s often rather pleasant in the Washington area in late November, and avoiding a debt default is a reasonably big deal. If the White House starts getting happy feet on its “no substantive concessions for a debt limit increase” stance, then that is a problem.
Meanwhile, the Senate itself is going to take up its own “clean” debt limit measure today, and the big question is whether Harry Reid can shake loose six GOP senators to kill a filibuster. Ezra Klein counts Mark Kirk and Lisa Murkowski as certain votes for cloture, and figures John McCain will go along, which usually means amigos Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte are in tow. So it could be close, which means the yelling and screaming among conservatives about RINOs and squishes and stabs in the back could be intense.
But more fundamentally, Republicans appear to be in genuine disarray over the relationship of the CR to the debt limit, and whether screwing up Obamacare or the rest of the conservative agenda is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Today Erick Erickson is still calling for a quick debt limit increase so that the GOP can refocus on “defunding Obamacare” through the appropriations deadlock. And National Review’s Robert Costa reports House conservatives aren’t giving John Boehner much leeway to cut a debt limit deal:
Speaker John Boehner may be trying to finalize a plan to raise the debt limit, but House conservatives are already skeptical of his efforts. In interviews, several of them tell me they’re unlikely to support any deal that may emerge.

“They may try to throw the kitchen sink at the debt limit, but I don’t think our conference will be amenable for settling for a collection of things after we’ve fought so hard,” says Representative Scott Garrett (R., N.J.). “If it doesn’t have a full delay or defund of Obamacare, I know I and many others will not be able to support whatever the leadership proposes. If it’s just a repeal of the medical-device tax, or chained CPI, that won’t be enough.”

As always, Paul Broun is good for a psychotic quote:

Representative Paul Broun (R., Ga.) agrees, and says Boehner risks an internal rebellion if he decides to broker a compromise. “America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare,” he says. “This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”

But here’s the bottom line:

“I think you’d see at least 50 to 60 Republicans break with Boehner if he went for something small,” predicts a House GOP aide who works closely with conservative members. “They’re also reluctant to even give Boehner a short-term debt-limit extension unless he gets something big in return. But that’s the one area where Boehner may have room to maneuver. He could tell them, ‘I’m with you fighting, but let’s just extend the fight a few weeks.'”

It’s interesting to watch conservatives debate exactly how many concessions from Obama they’ll consider sufficient when the White House has very consistently argued the number will be zero. It’s all the more reason Obama can’t even hint at changing that position, but may indeed want to be open to an unconditional short-term debt limit increase that enables Republicans to work out their many disagreements and delusions.
All in all, Democratic “disarray” looks a lot more manageable by contrast.

Writing in the National Journal Alex Seitz-Wald lays out the facts:

To hear almost any Republican lawmaker speak in post-shutdown Washington is to hear that Democrats are refusing to negotiate to reopen the government and avert a debt default. It’s a talking point that may be selling well, but it’s only true if you ignore anything that happened before last Monday at about 11 p.m.
….here are all the times since this spring Senate Democrats tried to negotiate with Republicans by sending their budget to a bicameral [House-Senate] conference committee. Every time, Republicans blocked the move:
1. 4/23 Senator Reid requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Toomey blocked.
2. 5/6 Senator Reid requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Cruz blocked.
3. 5/7 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked.
4. 5/8 Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked.
5. 5/9 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked.
6. 5/14 Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator McConnell blocked.
7. 5/15 Senator Wyden asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator McConnell blocked.
8. 5/16 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked.
9. 5/21 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Paul blocked.
10. 5/22 Senator Kaine asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Rubio blocked.
11. 5/23 Senator McCaskill asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked.
12. 6/4 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Rubio blocked.
13. 6/12 Senator Kaine asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked.
14. 6/19 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Toomey blocked.
15. 6/26 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Cruz blocked.
16. 7/11 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Marco Rubio blocked.
17. 7/17 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Mike Lee blocked.
18. 8/1 Senator Durbin requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Marco Rubio blocked.
19. 10/2 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Toomey blocked.

From Digby’s e-blast announcing a petition campaign urging major television networks to stop blaming both political parties for the government shutdown:
This week, the White House started pushing back on the media’s coverage of the government shutdown, with White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer calling an ABC reporter’s comments about the shutdown “some of the worst false equivalence I have seen in a long time.”
The major television networks have largely ignored the Republicans’ own words and tried to imply that both sides are equally to blame for the shutdown. That’s why I started my own campaign on CREDOMobilize.com, which allows activists to start their own petitions. My petition, which is to ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, says the following:

Tell major television networks to report the truth: Republicans are solely to blame for the government shutdown.
The Republican leadership in Congress has said as clearly as possible that it does not want people to have access to healthcare and will try to do everything it can to prevent it, including shutting down the government and possibly letting the government default on its debt.
The major television networks seem determined to make the story of the shutdown one of a partisan standoff where both sides are equally to blame. This is dishonest.
The facts are as clear as day. The Republicans have opted to use a shutdown as a way of pressuring President Obama to give up or delay the Affordable Care Act. Media coverage of the government shutdown and who is to blame should reflect these facts and inform the American people, but so far it has largely failed to do so.
The false equivalence and “he-said, she-said” coverage from major television networks and the dysfunctional DC press corps has dangerous implications for the proper functioning of our democracy. If Americans who watch television news don’t understand the fact that Republicans intentionally created the government shutdown and debt ceiling crises in an unprecedented attempt to extract extreme legislative concessions from Democrats, they won’t be able to hold those responsible accountable at the ballot box.
It is not the media’s job to cover for the Republicans. It’s time for the media to come clean on this and report the truth: Republicans are solely responsible for shutting down the government.
Will you join me and add your name to my petition to the major television networks to demand that they tell the American people the truth about the shutdown of the federal government?
Thank you for your support.
Digby

A new PPP poll should encourage Dems to get mobilized to win back a majority in the House of Representatives in 2014. The findings, as reported in a HuffPo summary:

A series of polls released Sunday show just how damaging the shutdown has been for the GOP. The liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling compiled two dozen surveys, commissioned and paid for by MoveOn.org Political Action, from House districts around the country, taken from Oct. 2 through Oct. 4. Sample sizes were between 600 and 700 voters in each district.
For Democrats to win a House majority, 17 seats would need to switch to their party’s favor. Results show that would be within reach, as Republican incumbents are behind in 17 of the districts analyzed: CA-31, CO-06, FL-02, FL-10, FL-13, IA-03, IA-04, IL-13, KY-06, MI-01, MI-07, MI-11, NY-19, OH-14, PA-07, PA-08, WI-07. In four districts, the incumbent Republican fell behind after respondents were told their representative supported the government shutdown: CA-10, NY-11, NY-23, VA-02. Three districts saw GOP incumbents maintain their hold over their Democratic challengers, even after hearing their elected officials’ views on the shutdown, including CA-21, NV-03 and OH-06.

There are caveats, as always. The poll was liberal-commissioned, with relatively small samples for each of the districts. The election is still 13 months away. The margins were m.o.e. to small in many of the districts.
Still, Dems ahead of incumbents in 17 of 24 districts surveyed should give GOP realists some reason for concern. If other polls begin confirming the trend, then Dems and progressive supporters should up their game in the few swing districts remaining, and put more resources into their candidates. And if the trend is affirmed, that should also open up some senate races in favor of Democratic incumbents and candidates.
To see an excellent chart distilling the findings for each congressional district, click here.

From a CBSnews.com report by By Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Anthony Salvanto and Fred Backuson on a CBS news poll conducted by telephone October 1-2, 2013 among 1,021 adults nationwide and released yesterday:

Fully 72 percent of Americans disapprove of shutting down the federal government over differences on the Affordable Care Act…
…Two-thirds (66 percent) of Americans think any agreement on the budget should be kept separate from discussions on the health care law. Twenty-six percent (including slightly more than half of Republicans) think any budget agreement should also cut off funding for the law.
…Americans disapprove of how both sides are handling the budget negotiations, but more disapprove of congressional Republicans (72 percent) than President Obama and the Democrats in Congress (61 percent).
In the current budget debate, Americans think President Obama and the Democrats (48 percent) are more concerned than the Republicans in Congress (37 percent) about doing what is best for their family.
More generally, most Americans (61 percent) think congressional Republicans oppose the policies proposed by Barack Obama and the Democrats mostly to stop Democrats from gaining political advantage rather than because of a disagreement over policy. Americans are divided (47 percent to 43 percent) when considering why the president and Democrats oppose Republican policies.
…Republicans in Congress receive more of the blame for the shutdown: 44 percent of Americans blame them, while 35 percent put more blame on President Obama and the Democrats in Congress.

The grim news for the Republicans in the CBS poll is generally consistent with what other polls have recently indicated. But Republicans ought to be very nervous about this poll, since the “blame” questions are more probing than usual.

Richard Eskow’s “The GOP’s Shutdown Tab: One Billion Dollars and Counting” at HuffPo shares some of the various cost estimates for the the shutdown:

Forty million dollars an hour. A third of a billion every day. $1.6 billion every week. That’s a conservative estimate of the money Republicans are wasting by keeping the federal government closed down…Republicans in Congress recently voted to cut $4 billion per year from programs that feed the needy. In two and a half weeks they’ll have wasted more than that on their shutdown.
…That $1.6 billion per week figure first received widespread publicity when Morgan Stanley’s analytical team began discussing the potential cost of the shutdown, expressed in “basis points” (see notes below), in an investor newsletter this week. (A Morgan Stanley team member confirmed the number with us on Wednesday.) Other groups, including IHS Global Insight, have since offered similar estimates.
…Economist Stephen Fuller, who runs George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, estimated this weekend that the Washington DC metropolitan economy could lose as much as $200 million for each day the government remains closed. Since only 15 percent of Federal workers live in the DC area, the true cost of the shutdown nationwide (including parts of the country with lower living costs) could conceivably be a billion dollars per day or more.
…A month? That’s nearly $7 billion lost (almost two years of Republican food stamp cuts). Two months? That’s nearly $14 billion.
Re the numbers: Loss estimates are based on the income of furloughed Federal employees, which has been estimated at one “basis point” of the US GDP (one 100th of one percent) per week. Using 2012 numbers from the IMF, that comes to $1,623,774,600.
That means the shutdown’s costing us $324,754,920 per day, based on a five-day work week. The cost per hour, based on an eight-hour work day, is therefore $40,954,365. A month’s losses are calculated by multiplying the weekly figure by 4.3, the number of weeks in an average month.

This from the political party that claims to hate government waste. As Eskow observes, “if there’s one thing Republicans know how to do it’s run a tab….The GOP’s Federal shutdown is on the verge of becoming the most fiscally irresponsible gesture in modern political history.”

The following post is by Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps:
Today, Democracy Corps is releasing findings from focus groups with evangelical, Tea Party, and moderate Republicans. Our conversations with these Republicans help explain why the GOP is committed to shutdown politics — and why in the future, its leaders likely will move more deeply into intransigent far-right conservatism.
While moderate Republicans want their leaders to seek what they call “middle ground,” they form only one quarter of today’s Republican voters. The most conservative factions in the party — evangelicals and Tea Party adherents — now comprise more than half of Republican partisans. These folks do not worry that Republican leaders’ intransigence has led to this kind of shutdown politics in Washington. Instead, they worry that current Republican leaders are too compromising:

The problem is there’s not a party that thinks like us. We don’t have a voice in Washington. Or where else? The Republican Party? They might as well just have a D beside their name, as far as I’m concerned. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)
I don’t have a party anymore. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)
And the Republicans – a lot of Republicans are just RINOs – Republican in name only. But we’ve really got to turn this ship around, or we’re in deep doo. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

Above all, they think that the Republican Party has proved too willing to “cave” to the Obama administration’s agenda:

They cave all the time. (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs)
They’re rollovers. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

They turn to the Tea Party because it gives them hope that someone is finally “standing up” and “fighting back” against the forces of Obama and big government.

Well, I would say, the rise of the Tea Party, that people are getting involved, and they’re standing up… Grass roots. I’ve never been really into politics. And I’m getting more involved. And people I think are standing up. Like you were talking gun control. People are saying hey, this isn’t what’s in our Constitution, and it’s not what’s in our schools. And I think people are taking a stand now, and we need to, before it’s too late. (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs)
America is rising back up and getting a backbone again, and making our voices heard one way or another, whether it’s Tea Party, or whatever else. People are being emboldened. (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs)
They are a group to be reckoned with, because if we’re going to turn things around, The Tea Party’s going to need to be part of it. And less government and less spending, and throw the rascals out – to quote Ross Perot – is what they’re all about. I’m there. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)
I would say that our greatest strength is…we do have a lot of rednecks in our country, and we have a lot of people who are stepping out and saying things now. (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs)

As a result, they believe that the Tea Party should form the new core of the Republican Party.

I think [the Tea Party] is good [for the Republican Party.] I think that the rest of the GOP needs to get on board. We need to all agree on some of the basic stuff. (Tea Party man, Raleigh)
I think it’s a good thing, because [the Tea Party represents] core Conservatives…So you’ve got the Republicans against the Conservatives, and they said, “You need to be more Conservative if you’re going to win the elections and get more people.” (Tea Party man, Raleigh)

These voters — a majority of Republican partisans — do not want their leaders in Washington to work for compromise. Instead, they support the kind of strong-arm government-by-threat-and-fiat that finds us now in a government shutdown — and possibly also heading for a default on the country’s debt. In the future, this majority looks to move the GOP farther to the right. It will do so at the expense of moderate and center-right voters, but in the interim, we should not look for more moderate Republican leaders to step forward to broker pragmatic solutions.
Read the full Democracy Corps report here.