The list of things on which Barack Obama has been wrong goes on to the crack of doom. But there's one thing on which the President is surely right. In devising his strategy for dealing with the shutdown, the prez can count on the MSM to blame Republicans.
Mark Halperin bared the president's calculus on today's Morning Joe, saying the Obama admin has little incentive to negotiate because it believes a "sympathetic" press will blame Republicans like they did in the 1990s, accusing them of being "obstructionist." View the video after the jump.
Halperin offered what amounted to an indictment of MSM bias. But no one on the panel made a peep. They apparently just took it as a given that is neither controversial nor objectionable.
Watch Halperin let the cat out of the bag.
WILLIE GEIST: Mark, at this point then, what is President Obama's incentive to negotiate? Because if he sits there, the law that he championed and the law that he got passed and the law that was upheld by the Supreme Court will go into effect. If he doesn't -- if he doesn't give anything up on this he gets what he wants. Why does he negotiate with Republicans?
MARK HALPERIN: Here what's the White House and to some extent the Hill is going to monitor. One is how the press covers the shutdown and does it just go back into the '90s mode of saying obstructionist Republicans are causing a shutdown and people, real people are hurting? And the White House is assuming that's going to happen. Then they're going to watch the polls and see whether it's not just partisan. Whether by the end of the week there are surveys that show public/private, that people are blaming Republicans and that that's going to put pressure on Boehner to come to the floor and either force his -- some members of his own conference beyond the handful who will never be with him on this to have a compromise. So they don't have to capitulate on the floor. They don't let Nancy Pelosi dictate what gets passed. So the White House does not have much incentive. Because they think--they think--those trends are going to go in their direction by the end of the week or early next week at the latest because again, the press is largely sympathetic to their arguments on this that it's the House Republicans' fault.
