Now is a critical time for America on the budget showdown, of course. But behind the real effects of the shutdown on the American public is the political arguing. While the entire news media waits for the first public opinion polls to come out on the shutdown (and the question they consider crucial: "Who should be blamed?"), Democrats have got to press the issue hard, and offer up some solid pushback on current Republican talking points. Below are the comments I would dearly love to hear from either House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Barack Obama, or some combination of the three. Ideally, it'd be issued as a letter, signed by all of them. Short of that, here are the points all Democrats interviewed in the media could be making right now, to great effect. Because if this thing is not resolved in the next day or so, it's going to erupt into a much bigger and more-drawn-out fight. And Democrats need to be ready for it.

In all fairness, I have to say that (so far) Democrats seem to be doing a pretty good job of communicating their position during the budget trainwreck. This is rather impressive, because Democrats aren't always this good at such basic political communication skills. Which is why I devote every Friday column I write to attempting to offer Democrats some ideas on how to frame their issues. In fact, this column is going to be very similar to these efforts -- call it a rare "Wednesday Talking Points" column, I suppose. In any case, here's my take on what positions Reid, Pelosi, and Obama should be staking out right now, in response to the Republican talking points currently floating around.

This is not about the budget

Previously, Republicans have staged these showdowns and shutdowns over the question of the budget and the deficit. Unfortunately for them, the deficit is falling at a faster rate than it has since World War II. The economy is improving, tax revenues are up, and spending has been cut. This takes the wind out of the Republicans' austerity sails. Make no mistake about it, this battle is not about the federal budget in any way, shape, or form. If there was some underlying "cut deficits" strategy to the Republican shutdown, then why would the House have passed a budget bill on the brink of the shutdown which increased the debt by $29 billion? Yes, you heard that right -- House Republicans, this Monday, wanted the Senate to increase the debt by billions to cut an Obamacare tax they didn't like. So -- please -- don't try to tell me this is about deficits or the budget, because Republicans' own actions prove that to be false.

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Bottoming out

Obviously, there are other things happening today in the world of politics, but instead of commenting upon them, we're going to stick to the schedule and instead offer up an abbreviated Obama Poll Watch column. It'll be somewhat shorter this month, due to the results having been accurately predicted in last month's column, and due to the fact that the situation on the ground in Washington is changing fast -- not weekly or daily, but hourly. Until we see how this week plays out, it's really anyone's guess how it'll affect the polling.

So, having said that, let's get right to it. September was a dismal month for Obama's job approval poll numbers, but even though the numbers were low, there was not much actual movement throughout the month -- meaning Obama has likely bottomed out at roughly where he stands now. Let's take a look at the chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

September, 2013

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Speaker of the House John Boehner has apparently just let the House of Representatives go home for the night, even though there's an hour left before the federal 2013 fiscal year ends (as of this writing). This guarantees at least a short-term partial shutdown of the federal government. Irony of ironies, however: the shutdown will not actually affect the Obamacare insurance exchanges, which will open on time tomorrow as planned. Meaning the whole "defund Obamacare" point of principle the shutdown supposedly hinges on won't actually be achieved by the shutdown. This basic truth was, as usual, completely ignored by most of the mainstream media who have spent the last week, instead, salivating over the prospect of a knock-down political fight.

Tea Party Republicans in the House are convinced they're going to win this battle... somehow. They're convinced that, number one, the American public will blame President Obama and the Democrats for the shutdown; and, number two, that they'll magically convince Democrats to stop defending the president's signature legislative achievement by shutting the government down. Neither is going to happen, but that is indeed what they fervently believe -- in the same fashion that Republicans believed all those 2012 public opinion polls were "skewed" and that Romney would (again "...somehow...") handily win the election. To put it another way, it's a matter of faith to them.

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I'm holding off (for now) on writing today, so I can instead post a snap reaction after the final part of this Kabuki theater we're witnessing. Yes, I said Kabuki. My bet, at the current moment, is what I've believed all along: Boehner will pass a "clean" continuing resolution at the very last possible second, after allowing the Tea Party to do what they will right up until that last possible second. He's really got no other viable choice. I have been amused at how the media has gone along with "the government's going to shut down!" theme -- virtually every commentator on this past weekend's shows and just about everyone I've heard today (surrounding Obama's just-delivered address in the briefing room) has gone with "the shutdown's going to happen, folks."

But I don't buy it. Call me an incurable optimist, but I think there will indeed be an eleventh (or twelfth, or thirteenth) hour solution. Check back in later tonight, to see what I have to say about either calling it right on the money, or (alternatively) getting it massively wrong. Either way, today's column will not appear until tonight's endgame is clear, so I wanted to warn everyone of this, early on.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Talk about missing the point. And no, I do not refer to the mindless mainstream media (who apparently don't know the difference between "a filibuster" and "a 21-hour ego trip").

No, the big point missed in the midst of Senator Ted Cruz's talkfest was the moral of the story he read. By now, most people have heard that Cruz read, in its entirety, the classic Dr. Seuss children's book Green Eggs And Ham -- tucking his own kids into bed, long-distance, via C-SPAN. Cruz then doubled down on his point-missing by comparing Obamacare to the story's green eggs and ham. Cruz really has no excuse for this monumentally idiotic mistake, since (as mentioned) he read the whole story from the Senate floor.

Don't remember the story? Haven't heard it in a while? Rather than subject yourself to Cruz reading the story, instead why not take two minutes to listen to what would qualify (if it existed) for the "All-Time Greatest Reading Of Green Eggs And Ham Ever, Bar None, Period, End Of Discussion" award. This refers, of course, to the eulogy given (the week Seuss died) on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update." By none other than the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Seriously, if you've never seen it before, you owe it to yourself to check it out, as it is priceless (you can thank me later).

The protagonist of the story is beset by a character named "Sam-I-Am," who repeatedly tries what in advertising is called "the hard sell" -- for a plate of green eggs and ham. The protagonist refuses to eat this dish multiple times, until finally -- in order to make Sam-I-Am leave him alone -- he breaks down and tries a forkful. Whereupon he discovers that he does like green eggs and ham, after all -- he just needed to get past his fear of something new and actually try them. The moral, as with all Seussian morals, is so easy to draw a child understands it.

Ted Cruz, though -- quite obviously -- does not.

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If it wasn't already obvious, Senator Ted Cruz's recent talk-a-thon should prove to Majority Leader Harry Reid that the time is now to bring back the old-fashioned "talking" filibuster. The American people would love it. It's entertaining, and we all have fond memories of that Jimmy Stewart movie, right? So come on, Harry, unleash the "real" filibusters!

Ted Cruz's speech was notable for two reasons, really. The first is that it wasn't actually a filibuster -- it was designed to do nothing more than get Ted Cruz's face on television news (which it admirably succeeded at). The second was that, if you ignore that first part, it was apparently the fourth-longest speech in modern Senate history (Strom Thurmond still holds the record at over 24 hours). So there is obviously a desire by some senators to engage in this test of stamina in front of the American public.

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A fully-bipartisan consensus was reached today in the United States Senate, which just unanimously condemned Ted Cruz as nothing more than a self-aggrandizing and self-promoting buffoon. Well, that wasn't exactly the title of the bill which came up for a vote, but it amounted to the same thing when every senator voted to ignore Cruz's "fauxlibuster" and move forward on the budget bill. The truly astounding thing in this unanimously bipartisan vote? Even Ted Cruz voted against Ted Cruz. If that isn't a bipartisan consensus, then I don't know what is.

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A paean, my dictionary informs me, is "an exultant song of praise or thanksgiving." The reason I'm offering up such praise today is that it is officially National Punctuation Day. [Who knew punctuation had its own day? Andy Warhol would likely have been amused, one suspects.] But just to warn everyone up front, we're veering off from political discussions today in order to have a punctuation discussion instead. I almost titled this article "A Pedantic Punctuation Paean," but you're going to have to look that word up yourself to see why I thought it was a bit too much. But if an article on punctuation sounds unbelievably boring to you... well, there's always kitten videos a-plenty out there to watch on the internet, right?

I have written about proper English usage before in the past, as regular readers will remember. Most of these have dealt with capitalization or spelling, however. Such as my longstanding insistence on using the proper spelling of "TelePrompTer," for instance. Or whether the first paragraph's penultimate word should have been "Internet" instead of "internet" -- a raging editorial debate that has not yet been fully resolved. Or my more recent pondering over which is correct: "brinkmanship" or "brinksmanship"? Punctuation does occasionally come up in these discussions, such as the deep question of which is best: "lions den," "lion's den," or "lions' den"? Or pondering the evolution of the complex words when creating a neologism in the world of politics (should I go with "moose poop," "moose-poop," or "moosepoop"?). But today we're going to deal solely with punctuation; in particular, two all-but-lost (but still correct) English accent marks.

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In all the intense focus on the Obamacare fight now playing out in the halls of Congress, very few are pointing out a rather depressing fact: this is only "Round 1." Out of three of these bouts on the schedule before 2014 dawns. It's important to keep the big picture in perspective, in other words. We're going to have this week's big showdown before the first of October, then we're going to fight all during October over the debt ceiling, and then we're going to have the very same fight we're having right now all over again in December, just in time for holiday shopping.

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It's all becoming clear now. House Republicans are just really big fans of Douglas Adams -- that's been their plan all along. Adams, in his brilliantly funny Hitchhiker's Guide series, told the story of the megacomputer "Deep Thought" who spent seven-and-a-half million years working on "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything." Deep Thought famously came up with the answer to this weighty query: 42.

How else to explain the House of Representatives voting 41 times previously on killing Obamacare, other than as an homage to Adams: a precursor to today's 42nd vote (after the first 41 failed utterly)? Today's vote must be an attempt to answer the question of Obamacare, the Universe, and everything. Or something. It's hard to tell, anymore.

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