What I don’t get at all is how the Dems could vote for this FAA deal without realizing how bad it would look. In the immortal words of Casey Stengel, “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

They had to know caving on this would give the Republicans a win, and they had to know caving on something which was hurting the business class and the 1%-ers while continuing to do nothing for the poor would look horrid, yet they did it anyway. What the hell is wrong with their political sense?

As collected by the Huffington Post three weeks ago, there are Head Start employees being laid off, housing agency employees being laid off, other less-visible Federal employees being furloughed, and yet at the first yelp from the flying public (which is at least middle-to-upper-middle class), the Senate and House figured out a way to get those air traffic controllers back on the job. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent; the so-called fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party made no objection. The Democrats, to their shame, didn’t object to this piecemeal reversal of the (intended) across-the-board expense reduction either.

He who has the gold makes the rules, huh?