9 p.m. ET, all across the dial. A Politico contributor kinda sorta predicted this morning that he’d call this presser, although she urged him to pound the table and demand a clean debt-ceiling bill now that the apocalypse is almost upon us. No dice there: The One will endorse Reid’s plan instead, which helps him marginally with his campaign by giving him a talking point about how he’s “tough on spending” or whatever. But do expect plenty of table-pounding as he tries to somehow (a) be the cool, composed “adult in the room” who won’t resort to cheap political ploys like everyone else while (b) doing his level best to freak out the markets tomorrow by warning of the End Times if these damned Republicans don’t hurry up and cave already and (c) studiously ignoring the fact that we could have avoided the End Times already if he cared more about doing that than about his own reelection. Further to that last point, while we wait, watch McConnell’s floor speech from earlier today embedded below (via Breitbart TV). Boehner’s going to speak after Obama is done — which the White House, unsurprisingly, isn’t happy about. Hopefully he’ll repeat these two minutes verbatim.

I think Steve Hayes is also right that the Perpetual Campaigner will be looking for an economy-themed message tonight on which to run for the next 17 months. Watch for something along the lines of how we may have already done irreversible damage by waiting this long to compromise, even if a deal gets done. That way, if/when the economy’s still comatose next year, he can point back to the debt-ceiling fight and try to pin it on the GOP. And since you’re all wondering, “I wonder what Al Gore thinks of all this,” a little good news for you. You don’t have to wonder any longer.

Update: Here we go. “Incalculable damage.”