The week that was

An avid TPM reader writes:

"So, let me see if I have this straight. In the period of less than 7 days: It looked almost certain that the Federal government was going to be shutdown. At the 11th hour, Boehner, Reid, and Obama "made a deal." For the next few days, everyone was crowning Boehner as the master politician [with the] clout to muscle the political opposition. Dems were in great despair. Obama gave up too much. Our economy was now going to be in free-fall. Obama was now about to sell out Medicare and the Middle Class too! [Now it seems] the budget deal was, in fiscal terms, pretty minor. The amount of money that was negotiated, let alone the punch-the-hippies policy riders, was all small potatoes. And, yesterday, Obama came out hard, at least rhetorically, against the GOP. And today, Boehner looks less powerful than Hastert ... And the most prominent GOP figure right now in the news is Donald Trump."

For the folks who live blog-to-blog in the shadow of the 24/7 news cycle (a tiny minority like the reader), that's a pretty good summary of the week that was.

However, the week was vastly different for the rest of America: Polls showed a majority didn't think a shutdown would happen (they were right), most liked the way Obama handled the budget deal (per the polls), most have no idea (or care) who Boenhner, Reid and Hastert are (a given), most rational people think Trump is an idiot (a given), and if asked about Obama's big budget speech, most Americans would understandably say "what speech?" In other words, most of America has a life.