On the front of Politico is an article about how the big bipartisan deals that used to be relatively common in Congress now appear to be a thing of the past. Good bye and good riddance. At their core these bipartisan deals were and are about destroying basic democratic accountability.

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein is calling for a total popular boycott on political donations. He believes that the problem with Washington is that we have an inherent stalemate that will not be solved by an election and only a boycott by campaign donors will magically make all members of Congress agree to the “grand bargain” Pearlstein wants.

The American people overwhelmingly think the Super Committee will fail to reach a deal on the deficit. According to Quinnipiac polling, an overwhelming 67 percent think the Super Committee will fail to come up with a plan, while only 27 percent think it is likely that they will.

I guess I’ve been remiss in writing about the American Jobs Act (AJA), but then I haven’t written anything about Libyan admission into the United Nations, either, which is a policy I’m sure somebody somewhere agrees with, but which also isn’t going to happen.

I was pleasantly surprised that President Obama in his deficit speech today didn’t publicly endorse cuts to Social Security benefits or call for any specific major cuts to Medicare benefits. But are they really off the table?

The threat to Medicare is very real and pressing. Over the past several months more and more political forces in Washington have being slowly lining up behind a campaign to raise the Medicare eligibility age.

This most recent effort really got started when Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) put forward a bill to raise the Medicare retirement age in late May.

We now have additional proof that raising the Medicare eligibility age would be a ridiculous program on all levels. It would not only cause needless anxiety and suffering to 65 and 66 year-olds, it would not achieve its alleged goal of saving money. In fact, it would increase costs almost everywhere in the health care system.

The President could of course say that he wouldn’t sign such a package. And he plans, according to these reports, not to negotiate with Republicans but to make the case to the public that they’re blocking progress. Given that the only things that have passed in this Presidency have been the result of intense negotiation, that means these are more political ploys than actual proposals. And again, it would have been nice to see public works ideas when they had a chance to pass.

President Obama will give a “jobs speech” in September. And yet his last half-dozen speeches have been “jobs speeches,” where he castigates Congress for doing nothing, says he has a raft of ideas that Congress can get done “right now” that he would sign, and says that they involve compromise. And yes, among those ideas is deficit reduction, which he mentions during every jobs section of the speeches, usually first. Then he goes on to say that deficit reduction is not the only thing we can do.

If this is different, if it actually offers newer ideas than an infrastructure bank and extending unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut, if it touts something other than trade deals and patent reform, that would be something to write about.

If you think that the committee is designed to fail, these are good members to that end. If you think that the entire exercise is a ploy to cut entitlements and lessen small-d democratic accountability, you can see that at work here as well. In that sense, ultimately the specific members of the committee don’t really matter.