The headlines will blare today about the rough appropriation of an Australian soap opera that occurred in the White House last night, with Eric Cantor’s ego deeply bruised and glasses fogged, after the President reportedly said “I have reached the point where I say enough. Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I’ve reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this… Eric, don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people with this,” and walked out of the room. Problem for Cantor is that the meeting was wrapping up anyway, and it wasn’t as angry and abrupt as he made it sound, others in the room allege.

Just because Mitch McConnell wants to surrender on the debt limit, doesn’t mean that the House GOP is going along with him. In a closed meeting today, Eric Cantor, who I guess is Speaker-in-Waiting at this point, introduced a series of slides that he claims are the “Democratic options” on the debt limit.

Over the past few months the political discourse in Washington has been pulled rightward at a mind-boggling pace. Given how narrow and bizarrely focused the debt ceiling debate has become, regardless what the final package contains, it is assured to be a massive victory for the right.

Hearing the word “compromise” at all in association to the debt limit talks is a bit of a revelation, so I suppose there should be some hope that something gets done after all. But take a look at this article from Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane. It posits that Republicans are considering a compromise on their demands for all spending cuts. The compromise is that they’ll allow a different kind of spending cut.

We interrupt our coverage of the ongoing assault on American Democracy, illustrated by the misguided discussions in Congress and Joe Biden’s dining room to decide how shamelessly to break faith with the American people while tanking the American economy, to remind folks that Mother Nature is indifferent to how careless our elected officials have become; she moves on relentlessly.

In a world supposedly governed by 11 dimensional chess, we find unusually straight forward advice directed at the Obama Administration on how to react to the dismal unemployment numbers.

Honest economists and sentient observers looking at the most recent and increasingly dismal economic and jobs numbers have their hair on fire over the failure of Washington D.C. to do anything about it. But neither Congress nor the Administration can get their heads out of the deficit sand to see the devastation.

But with budgets already shrinking over the past two years, it’s going to be hard to find that level of sustained cuts, especially without touching the large safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare has already become a flashpoint thanks to the Paul Ryan plan that would end it. The victory of Kathy Hochul in NY-26 gave Democrats a powerful motivator to draw the line on Medicare benefit cuts. Indeed, as they have the advantage now, to go back and allow cost-sharing or other cuts would ruin that advantage and wipe out the possibility of a House takeover. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today that “the substantive differences over Medicare are real,” criticizing the Ryan approach and saying that the President’s plan for empowering IPAB to issue more extensive cost control recommendations is a better way forward.

That’s not the title of his John Harwood’s NYT column today, but it might have well have been. It’s a typical example of sloppy, one-sided Beltway thinking.

In theory, the win for Kathy Hochul in NY-26 should give Democrats tremendous leverage in the budget fight. Republicans have to be searching for an exit strategy, with their Medicare phase-out plan this unpopular and this resonant in elections. They alienated the biggest demographic portion of their base for no real reason, and politically this will haunt them for years.

But as I said earlier, just because Democrats have a good hand to play doesn’t mean they’ll play it.