Greg Sargent: Happy Hour Roundup

* John Boehner tweets that Obama was wrong to say the public is “sold” on solving the deficit through a mix of revenue hikes and spending cuts, claiming that “Americans would beg to differ.”

And it’s true that the 80 percent figure Obama cited at today’s presser is inflated. But polls from Pew, Quinnipiac, Gallup, and the Washington Post all find that large majorities do in fact favor a mix of increases and cuts. So while Obama overstated the case, the plain fact is that on the question of whether revenue hikes should be part of the deficit compromise, Americans don’t “beg to differ” at all.

* A Dem poll finds that Wisconsin GOP state senator Alberta Darling is in a dead heat with her recall challenger. If accurate, that’s big: She was considered less vulnerable and this would make it more likely Dems will take back the senate.

* Atrios responds to Obama’s response to the left: No, you can’t take the deficit off the table as an issue.

* Joan Walsh says that when Clinton tried cutting first to spend more later, it didn’t work, because you can never kill the GOP’s “big spending liberal” zombie.

* Word leaks that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are set to unveil the new debt ceiling escape hatch proposal next week, another clear sign that this is emerging as the only way out of the impasse.

* Joan McCarter finds one reason for optimism about the McConnell scheme’s plan to target entitlements later: “it puts the onus on members of Congress to actually vote to cut Social Security and Medicare, which they hate to do.”

* Obama is now officially open to “modifications” in Medicare and Social Security benefits, opening the door to cost-shifting to seniors.

* The Progressive Change Campaign Committee responds:

“Today, for the first time, President Obama made clear that he’s considering benefit cuts even for Americans who currently depend on Social Security and Medicare. This is something Paul Ryan didn’t even embrace publicly. ”

* Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton becomes the first Rupert Murdoch executive in the United States to resign, and the phone-hacking scandal only seems to be growing by the day.

* Nate Silver leans towards thinking Republicans will take the blame for default and economic calamity, but concludes ominously that this is all unprecedented and a big unknown.

* Nearly 250 “bundlers” have raised $50,000 or more for Obama in the campaign’s first three months, with more than two dozen raising over half a million, signaling that the bad economy and low approval numbers are not slowing what’s already shaping up as an astonishingly successful fundraising juggernaut.

* Jonathan Cohn says Eric Cantor’s opposition to a proposal to force drug companies to discount drugs for poor Medicare recipients shows he’s prioritizing the drug industry over deficit reduction.

* Interesting Rachel Maddow segment on how the Wisconsin recall wars are prompting a state-level revival of the bare-knuckled populism national Dems tend to avoid. (Starts at the 7:20 mark.)

* And Andy Kroll reports that Michele Bachmann is winning the Koch primary — she’s the first 2012 GOPer to haul in Koch brothers cash.

What else is going on?

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Greg Sargent: Happy Hour Roundup

* So far 40 House Dems and counting have signed that letter from last week drawing a hard line against any entitlements benefits cuts, a House Dem source tells me. More signers equals more leverage.

* Mitch McConnell’s new debt ceiling proposal seems designed to force Dems to repeatedly vote to raise it in the run-up to Election Day 2012.

* One wonders if the timing of McConnell’s proposal has anything to do with the fact that a slew of powerful business groups today issued their sternest demand yet that the debt ceiling be hiked.

* Could McConnell’s blink mean that Dems -- gasp! — have the upper hand on taxes?

* David Corn boils down the proposal: “McConnell to Obama: You drive, we’ll carp.”

* Markos Moulitsas on why the McConnell proposal represents capitulation.

* Good point from Taegan Goddard: “Doesn’t it seem the McConnell proposal angers the GOP base more than closing tax loopholes to raise revenue?”

* Now that John Boehner is claiming the debt ceiling is Obama’s problem, Steve Benen wraps up all the times Boehner previously admitted not raising it could cause national catastrophe.

* Atrios, on the folly of the debt ceiling grand bargain:

Governing by crisis is an undemocratic way for our overlords to try to avoid accountability.

* Obama goes there, warning that he can’t guarantee retirees their Social Security checks if the debt ceiling standoff remains unresolved.

* DCCC chair Steve Israel, in an interview, previewing the Dem argument about GOP extremism heading into 2012: “These guys want to close down government as an ideology, as a theocracy, and that’s what so dangerous here.”

* Paul Krugman demolishes David Brooks’s chin-stroking claim that believing government can help turn the economy around is “magical thinking.”

* And the Wisconsin recall primaries today are the first step in a process that will signal which way the political winds are blowing in a key swing state with major national implications for 2012.

What else is going on?

UPDATE: Interestingly, Chuck Todd is now reporting that the White House considers the McConnell plan as an “active” fallback option.

UPDATE II: White House press secretary Jay Carney responds to McConnell’s proposal with an insistence that the parties must continue trying to reach a deal, quasi-rejecting the idea, but not ruling it out entirely:

Senator McConnell’s proposal today reaffirmed what leaders of both parties have stated clearly, that defaulting on America’s past due bills is not an option. The President continues to believe that our focus must remain on seizing this unique opportunity to come to agreement on significant, balanced deficit reduction. As the President has said, “If not now, when?” It is time for our leaders to find common ground and reduce our deficit in a way that will strengthen our economy.

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Greg Sargent: Happy Hour Roundup

* Austerity USA!!! When conservatives say we need to slash government spending and slash government payrolls to create jobs, remember that this is exactly what’s already happening as the stimulus fades out. Put another way, the stimulus has become the “anti-stimulus.”

* The result: Here’s an exceptionally bleak analysis of today’s terrible jobs report, which makes a point that sounds almost quaint in the current context: “The weak numbers put pressure on policymakers in Washington to find solutions to the jobs problem.”

* Steve Benen gets it exactly right on David Plouffe’s unemployment comments.

* But John Aravosis says Plouffe betrayed a worisome lack of awareness of the reality of unemployment, political and otherwise.

* A key quote from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, demonstrating how angry Dems are about the possiblity of a debt ceiling deal with entitlements cuts:

“There’s been very little conversation between the White House and the Senate about this, and I think they’re making a grievous mistake if they think they can just present anything to us and assume that because we’re Democrats, we’ll go along with what the president has capitulated to.”

* Move On mounts a last minute emergency push to pressure Dem members of Congress into not supporting entitlements benefits cuts, another measure of the urgency on the left over what may happen.

* Dem Rep. Gerald Connolly, a strong critic of entitlement cuts, says GOP leaders will need 100 Dem votes to pass it through the House, which (in theory) should give Dems some leverage.

* Friendly reminder of the day, from Jonathan Cohn: It’s possible to address the government’s long term debt problem while also putting people back to work.

* Ali Gharib on how yet another effort to push the Jews-abandoning-Obama meme has now collapsed.

* The latest Scott Walker/Rush Limbaugh myth about Walker’s greatness gets knocked down by the Wisconsin state schools superintendent.

* Local Wisconsin bloggers dig deeper into the story of the dirty-trick mailing in the recall wars. More on this next week.

* The Rupert Murdoch phone-hacking scandal raises a host of uncomfortable questions about journalistic ethics and corporate power.

* Creative political metaphor of the day: Tim Pawlenty compares Obama’s speechifying to “a manure spreader flapping in a windstorm.”

Which prompts Eric Kleefeld to ask: “Ah ...but would he say that to Obama’s face?”

* And T-Paw gets busted fibbing to the Des Moines Register about not raising taxes in Minnesota (he raised them on cigarettes, but called it a “health impact fee”).

What else is happening?

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