Yashwanth Manjunath (Liberaland) asks a great question in a recent post, "Do the recent Obama victories make the tax cut deal less painful?" That would be a resounding "no" for me, but I understand that some may be reassured by the progress made at the end of this Congress' term. As Manjunath points out, this Congress and this president do indeed have some concrete things they can point to as progressive victories. I agree that this is important, but I'm not quite ready to say that it overshadows the many failures.

To be clear, I think it is a mistake to credit or blame President Obama for every single thing Congress does. We are talking about separate branches of government, after all. And it should be evident by now that we have many Democrats in Congress who are either more progressive or more conservative than our president.

But do the recent Democratic victories make up somehow for the earlier failures? In some case, they just might. But I would not put the tax deal in that category because it is bad policy, regardless of the politics.

• We know that giving tax cuts to the wealthy is a poor way to stimulate the economy.
• By giving into GOP threats, President Obama virtually guaranteed that he will face more in the future.
• By extending the Bush tax cuts, Obama has made them his own tax cuts. He will be judged on their merits.

If the tax deal had been something as simple as picking an effective but less desirable course of action, then the recent accomplishments might indeed make the deal less painful. I'm not sure this applies to a case of ineffective policy though.

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