“There are no winners here,” President Obama declared at the White House this morning. Then, with an elegant air of non-partisanship, Obama began to fashion the shutdown into a political weapon. Here’s how he’s going to deploy it.

1. Economic excuse. Obama noted that before the shutdown, the economy was recovering, and the deficit was falling. The fiscal standoff changed all that: “Every analyst out there believes it slowed our growth.” Obama rattled off the damage: families going without paychecks, home buyers and small businesses unable to get loans, consumers cutting back on spending, CEOs reporting that the fiscal anxiety had “set back their plans to hire over the next six months.” Even the “threat of default,” said the president, “increased our borrowing costs, which adds to our deficit.”

Today, this litany of laments looked like simple compassion from the president. But over the next year, it can…