Let me finish tonight with this.
Remember the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come in A Christmas Carol? He's the scary one, the ghost who comes last. He shows Ebenezer Scrooge the end he's heading for—the cold, lonely, miserable future to which his greed and selfish view of the world are taking him.
In the next days and short weeks, President Obama has to be the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come.
He has to show the Republicans in the House how horrible it will be to be them come the first days of January if they don't change their path. He has to show them how disrupted and frightened the world will be, how bad they will look in that world beyond this December 31 if they hold true to a tight and jealous protection of wealth.
The reason the president must be the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come is stark. Unless he shows them the future now, we will be in that future. We will be together, this country of ours, over the precipice. We will be holding onto our economic life by the most precarious of life-lines, the fast-diminishing faith of the world money markets. We will be a still-great country that can no longer be relied upon to act great.
I really don't want to be there. Either America wins or it loses. Heading off that cliff is losing, and I want the Republicans to take their part in avoiding it.
We need a persuasive, frightening message from the president to see they take it. We don't need a smile from the president or an inspiring speech. We need cold, awesome words of warning. We need a president to scare the Dickens out of these people.