No, Obama Doesn't Have A Mandate To Raise Taxes, and No, I Don't Think I'm Paying Too Little In Taxes, Says... Liberal Democratic Henchwoman Susan Estrich?

As they say about horses doing arithmetic, this isn't remarkable for what it says but for who's saying it.

Within days of winning the election, President Obama announced that his victory gave him a mandate to raise taxes on the “rich.”

Come again? This was a two-and-a-half-point election. It reflected a painfully divided electorate. The only mandate I saw was to unite a divided country. . . . I did not vote for Obama because I think I am paying too little in taxes.

Obama needs to be very careful. Yes, he was re-elected. But so were all those folks who blocked the extension of the Bush tax cuts if they excluded individuals and small businesses who make enough money to qualify as rich — but not enough to send their kids to college, or help their aging parents, or buy a home in a decent neighborhood.

We need to avoid going over the fiscal cliff. But Obama must also avoid the political cliff.

I've long had a theory that people like Ben Affleck talk up raising taxes on the rich because they know the Republicans will spare them from actually having to pay higher taxes. Thus, it's a no-cost position with social-approval upside: You can agitate for policies that would actually hurt you, and thus seem magnanimous and unconcerned with self, while not actually ever having to do anything beyond speaking a few words.

Partial proof of this is the fact that liberals, as a group, are far less generous in their charitable donations. For people who talk about the poor and needy so darned much, they seem to forget the words "poor and needy" whenever their checkbooks are handy.

So now wealthy Susan Estrich tells us she didn't vote for Obama to be taxed at a higher rate.

My theory is looking better by the minute.

posted by Ace at 02:09 PM

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