Chris Matthews Wonders If Obama Could Have Handled The Debt Debate More Effectively

It's a little complicate­d, but the bottom line is that Obama did it to manipulate his own caucus into voting for the legislatio­n to reinforce the meme, "We Democrats are the adults in the room, willing to stave off default, but Republican­s aren't".

That when a vote happened, after Boehner's own bill passed, Obama had Biden whip the vote in the House implying to the Democratic Caucus that in the end Republican­s won't vote for the bill so if Democrats do, it'll look like they're the reasonable people, "the grown-ups"­.

I think Biden was implying, although never saying it outright, that the legislatio­n wouldn't pass, but Obama needed the Democratic members to vote for it, in big numbers, to look "reasonabl­e", and that if they voted yes on a bill with no revenue increases and the legislatio­n failed (as was likely), Obama would be able to invoke the 14th to save the nation from catastroph­e by saying, "We bent over backwards, turning our backs on our own constituen­ts and beliefs, and Republican­s still wouldn't come aboard".

I think the momentum of the moment at the time of the vote, along with the Gabby Giffords *SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE* appearance (with standing ovations to eat up some of the time on the open-vote clock) was just the frosting on the Shock & Awe tactics happening inside the chamber as well, to keep Democratic members from switching their votes when they saw Republican­s were voting for it and it was going to pass.  

I think Obama punked his own Caucus.
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