Following up on yesterday’s post, the initial round of resistance to the Obama budget from senate Democratic centrists suggests to me that their opposition is rooted in optics and positioning rather than actual policy disagreements about how we should be running the federal government during the worst economic downturn in eighty years. The key tell so far I think is that they’ve decided to go on record saying they have serious disagreements but they apparently haven’t decided yet what they disagree with, or are not willing to disclose what that might be.

That may be an arch way to put it. And maybe they haven’t seen the granular details that will come out in January.

But still, for me that suggests a certain logical disconnect.

Remember, as a number of commentators noted during the Stimulus Bill debate, the ‘moderates’ who hash out the final deal complained that one of their big beefs was that a lot of spending was insufficiently stimulative — and then they proceeded to cut out a lot of the spending that would have had the most immediate stimulative effect. Like I said, optics, not policy.