The episode left a particularly bitter taste for Reids chief of staff, David Krone, who had been privately assuring people that there would be no deal and that Congress would go over the cliff as taxes soared for every American, giving the Democrats great political leverage when Congress returned for a period of more intense negotiations in January 2013.
Technically, the presidents first term wasnt even complete, and he had just been reelected, but the fault lines within his own party were already sharply drawn. That tension blew up Tuesday when Krones comments about Democrats dismal showing in the 2014 midterms went public. He accused Obama of paying lip service to concerns about helping finance the midterm elections and said the president was an anchor that took down Democrats across the country, costing them the Senate majority.
The presidents approval rating is barely 40 percent, Krone said. What else more is there to say?
It was an unusual breach of Washington decorum that stunned a political community used to the shadowy background comments from senior administration officials or senior Senate aides. In general, staffers do not say such things on the record about a sitting president, especially from the same party.
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Three of those five appear to have lost on Tuesday, and Shaheen and Warner survived only by the narrowest of margins.
Throughout the tough votes, those Democrats enjoyed almost no real relationship with Obama, whose approach to social engagement with lawmakers is almost nonexistent.
Udall is considered one of the best golfers in the Capitol, and also one of the most genuinely likable people. In six years, he was asked to join the president for a round of golf just once a few days after The Washington Post noted that Obama had never played golf with Udall. (The round was on a Monday afternoon, and it lasted only 15 holes because the Senate came back into session and votes were called.)
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In the summer of 2011, Obama played a round of golf with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). From there, the duo got close to reaching a massive budget deal that would have raised taxes and cut entitlement programs slashing at two political sacred cows for Republicans and Democrats.
But Reids operation, along with his close ally, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), did not trust Obamas negotiating skills, and at one point they directly leaked the emerging proposal, timing the release precisely so that the news broke just as Jack Lew, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, entered a meeting with Senate Democrats.
As aides then recounted, Reid read the news bulletin aloud to a stunned audience of staunch liberals who had protected Social Security and Medicare with their political lives. Reid turned the lectern over to Lew.
The grand bargain, at that point, was essentially dead.
In 2012, however, the two sides ran perfect campaigns.
Then came the cliff.
Boehner and Obama again came close to a grand bargain, and it infuriated Democrats who saw it as fruitless, given how slight a hold the speaker had on his conservative ranks in the House. That effort folded, and indeed, as Krone had been predicting, it seemed that the economy was headed for a brief-but-significant jolt of higher taxes.
Many Democrats figured that once the cliff had been jumped, all the leverage would be in their hands and they could extract even deeper concessions from Republicans, particularly on across-the-board spending cuts that they wanted to nix.
Reid and McConnell engaged in some brief talks talks that included a key mistake by Democrats: They made an offer on the tax levels, and Republicans actually accepted it. There were other key issues to resolve, but once that central issue was settled, the momentum headed toward resolution.
At that point, McConnell called Biden and famously asked: Does anyone down there know how to make a deal?
Reid, Schumer and other leaders and their advisers then waited to see the final details, furious that the deal was being made. Democrats leaked stories to The Post, Politico and other outlets about how at one point Reid took an offer that Obama was considering making to McConnell and threw it into the fireplace in his office on the second floor of the Capitol as others watched.
