Obama is itching to make a "grand betrayal": he emphasizes the wrong points

The White House keeps sending out emails like the one I got today:

Here’s the situation: If Congress doesn’t act, a typical middle-class family of four will pay about $2,000 more in income taxes starting on January 1. President Obama is asking folks to add their voice to the debate and tell us what that money means to their families. And across the country, hundreds of thousands of people are speaking up.

The President should be emphasizing the dangers from cutting Social Security or Medicare, the injustice of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and the outrageous defense budget. Instead, the President emphasizes why we need to compromise. So, yet again, he’s starting out from the compromised position.

Indeed, the Nation is reporting in Emerging Fiscal Cliff Deal Spares Corporations, but Not the Safety Net:

Obama could easily end up agreeing to a deal that asks corporate America to contribute nothing—revenue-neutrality is the selling point of his corporate tax plan—and could even end up giving them extra benefits. Meanwhile, Americans who rely on the safety net would have to make substantial sacrifice, and moreso if they’re not wealthy. If this gets put down on paper and put before Congress, expect a nuclear war to start on the left.

As Robert Reich says in the video below, the Dems should hold their ground, because no deal is better than a bad deal.

Robert L. Borosage wrote, “If Democratic legislators join the president in a grand betrayal, they may witness a powerful Tea Party movement from the left, as Republican legislators have from the right.”   Would that it were true that the left would be so organized!