In a recent piece, Chait argued that Obama will have the upper-hand should he win re-election:
[W]hile Obama has spent the last two years surrendering short-term policy concessions, he has been quietly hoarding a fortune in the equivalent of a political trust fund that comes due on the first of the year. At that point, he will reside in a political world he finds at most mildly uncomfortable and the Republicans consider a hellish dystopia. Then he’ll be ready to make a deal.
McArdle imagines another scenario:
Republicans double down. They let the defense cuts go through. They refuse to compromise on tax cuts. What happens next?
Her guess:
This time, we'd have a short, sharp recession–but it would come on top of a long semi-recovery that has seen millions of people exit the labor force. Who gets the blame? Indisputably Obama, I think, though of course, he will go on the stump and lambaste Republicans for holding out on tax cuts. But of course, the question can be turned around–if it's not that big a deal, why should Obama tank the economy over it? But that's quibbling. The general rule is, the guy in the White House, and by extension, his party, gets the blame.
Or you can listen to Jim DeMint, the most hardline of the Tea partiers in the Congress on the sequester if Obama wins:
We’re not going to save our defense unless we go along with the president’s wishes to raise taxes.
The Dish 