Daily Inspiration Quote by David Axelrod

Gridlock is framed here not as ideology but as bad bargaining posture. Axelrod’s sentence is built like a negotiation memo that accidentally wandered into public view: identify the two absolutisms, label them mutually incompatible, then position “progress” as the only sane, adult alternative. The repetition of “we can’t” is doing quiet work. It paints both camps as equally rigid without getting dragged into the merits of taxes versus cuts. That symmetry is the subtextual tell: this isn’t a policy argument so much as a legitimacy argument, a way to shift the audience’s annoyance from outcomes to the people refusing to deal.

The line “we’re obviously not going to make progress” is classic Washington plain-speak, but “obviously” is a pressure tactic. It implies that anyone still clinging to absolutes is either performative or unserious. Axelrod, a strategist by temperament, also smuggles in a definition of responsibility: responsibility equals flexibility. If you reject compromise, you reject progress; if you reject progress, you’re the problem.

Contextually, this reads like the Obama-era budget/debt fights where “grand bargain” rhetoric tried to create moral equivalence between anti-tax pledges and entitlement protection. Axelrod’s aim is coalition management as much as persuasion: reassure moderates and business interests that the administration isn’t captive to purity tests, while nudging Democrats to tolerate cuts and daring Republicans to tolerate revenue. The final “our interest is in making progress” sounds communal, but it’s a message to the cameras: when the deal fails, remember who claimed to want movement and who insisted on vows.