Kind of like an infomercial.

From David Dayen:

So Ryan changed his budget for 2012, as it relates to senior programs. He dropped the privatization of Social Security, which he has been pushing since at least 2005. And in what is sure to get repeated often throughout the campaign, he teamed with Democrat Ron Wyden on a "premium support" plan, where seniors still get a voucher to buy insurance, but they get an option of traditional Medicare on the menu. In addition, the voucher is slightly more generous over time, although it will remain inadequate - that's how the government derives savings from the plan, after all.

This still would present a problem with the shrinking risk pool, killing the bargaining power of Medicare, which leads to much cheaper health costs than private insurance. Seniors in traditional Medicare would get worse coverage. It resembles the "withering on the vine" of Medicare that the Gingrich plan back in the 1990s contemplated. And of course, it incorporates all of the Medicare cuts that they are now criticizing the Obama Administration for including in the Affordable Care Act.

But wait!  There's more!

Ryan really would decimate government funding, to the point it could no longer carry on many routine operations. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Ryan's most recent budget would, by 2050, shrink spending in everything but the big entitlements (Social Security and government health insurance programs) and interest on the debt to less than 4 percent of gross domestic product. To give you a sense of scale, spending outside those entitlements and interest now represents more than 12 percent of GDP and has never, since World War II, represented 8 percent. What would this mean in practical terms? Massive, debilitating cuts to everything from law enforcement to education to highways to food inspections. (Ryan has said he wants to increase defense spending, which would mean steeper cuts to everything else.)

And more!  Charts!

My fear - a well-founded one, I think - is that rather than stake out positions and arguments based on what used to be the Democratic world view that looked out for the least among us, Obama will allow Romney/Ryan to define the argument - an argument that really has as its end game the complete transformation of government - and will then show the American people how much he respects these good Republicans and how willing he is to "get things done," by incorporating significant elements from the Ryan Budget.  

Obama is, after all, in love with the Grand Bargain and has shown no signs of letting go of it.  If Obama wins and puts Erskine Bowles at Treasury, we are screwed.

I mean, he has his signature legislation, his legacy, if you will...the ACA. He could spend the last four years strengthening and improving it. That would be quite an accomplishment, and all future generations would be grateful to him for it.

So, why does he need to go after the backbone of middle class stability and security with his SS/Medicare "Grand Bargain" crap? An issue that won't even be an "issue" for years to come, and even then, so easily fixed it's a joke.

"But he and his supporters should drop the argument that if we don't change our ways we'll wind up like Europe. That's a mistake because Americans like Europe, and in some complicated ways wouldn't mind being a little more like it. In the past 40 years, jumbo jets, reduced fares and rising affluence allowed a lot of Americans, especially the sort who vote, to go there. The great capitals of Europe are glamorous, elegant and old, the outlands are exquisite. What remains of the old Catholic European ethic that business isn't everything, life is everything and it's a sin not to enjoy it, still has a lure. Americans sometimes think of it as they eat their grim salads and drink from their plastic water bottles.

When Americans go to Europe they see everything but the taxes. The taxes are terrible. But that's Europe's business and they'll have to figure it out. Yes what happens there has implications for us but still, they're there and we're here.

What Americans are worried about, take as a warning sign, and are heavily invested in is California--that mythic place where Sutter struck gold, where the movies were invented, where the geniuses of the Internet age planted their flag, built their campuses, changed our world.

We care about California. We read every day of the bankruptcies, the reduced city services, the businesses fleeing. California is going down. How amazing is it that this is happening in the middle of a presidential campaign and our candidates aren't even talking about it?

Mitt Romney should speak about the states that work and the states that don't, why they work and why they don't, and how we have to take the ways that work and apply them nationally.