Portside

Sociologist Theda Skocpol tells what drives the angry right -- and what comes after the government shutdown. The Right in this country, over the last half century, has recognized that fighting across many localities and states is worth it. And they've developed mechanisms for doing that, and that turned out to have a big payoff in Congress. The real problem that you've got right now on the Left is how to defeat this stuff, how to contain it, how to beat it.

All of this could be avoided with legislative action but there seems be little likelihood that the current Tea Party strangled Congress will do anything that might relieved the economic pressure on the nation’s working people.

The chained CPI has risen to walk among us again in the muttering and jawboning around the government shutdown/debt limit standoff and the search for an exit. We're hearing again about a "grand bargain" on the government deficit -- never mind that the deficit is falling, not rising.

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