Should Obama Have Taken The Deal?

Noam Scheiber believes so:

Boehner’s idea was pure genius—at least if you’re rooting for the Democrats. It essentially solved the problem I just laid out. After all, polls show the GOP taking on massive amounts of water over the shutdown. There’s simply no way Republicans can hold out for over a month without reopening the government. Boehner wanted to use the shutdown to ensure that Obama negotiated a budget deal in good faith. But the enforcement mechanism he insisted on—government closure—is one that hurts Republicans far more than it hurts Obama politically. That means the GOP would have likely sued for a budget agreement* long before the debt ceiling had to be raised again in six weeks, very likely in the next week.

I sure hope Obama isn’t getting cocky. But we’ll soon see if the polls do all the work for him. Watching Cruz and Lee sink like stones in their home states is somewhat gratifying. But their margins are comfortable enough for Cruz to keep going, as his tub-thumping speech at a Christianist Summit this morning reveals.