Politics is a wonderful thing.
The bailout died (for now. They’ll bring it back, though).
I haven’t heard the Dems react yet, but some Republicans reacted in an interesting way.
1. Blaming the Democrats in general because 95 Democrats voted against the thing (140 or so voted for it).
2. Blaming Pelosi for a partisan speech that pissed Republicans off so much that 133 of them voted against the thing (65 voted for it). [Others are already ridiculing this idea. “Somebody hurt my feelings, so I’m going to punish the country.”]
One thing that’s interesting to me is that everyone agrees that this shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I don’t think it was voted as one. If it was voted as a partisan issue, it would have passed, with the Democrats taking the majority.
Instead, many Democrats voted against it and many Republicans voted for it. Non-partisan.
Some interesting thoughts on why the billed failed.
A different way of looking at the argument that Ms. Pelosi’s speech would cause some congress peeps to vote against the bill: She apparently didn’t think it was a serious enough subject to put aside her partisanship and make a straight “good of the country” appeal, so if it’s not that serious, why spend 700 billion?
Other than that, it was a total failure of leadership all around:
The Bush administration has, yet again, shown that it doesn’t know how to make a case for anything. If GWB recommended aspirin for headaches we’d suddenly be reading in the papers that aspirin is the worst thing to do for a headache and should be avoided at all costs. Fail.
Nancy Pelosi is a horrible speaker. Why was she telling every reporter that they had an agreement when they obviously did not have an agreement? Her main job is to use the whips to know what the vote is going to be before the vote happens. There’s also lot of news today that she wasn’t even pressuring Democrats to vote for the bill, much less Republicans, so it’s pretty clear that she was fine with it not passing. Fail.
John McCain can’t deliver. He suspends the campaign to make the deal work, says he won’t be able to make the debate. Drops in and gets the bill changed, makes the debate, and it still fails to pass. He obviously should have either not gone to Washington or not made the debate. Trying to do both = Fail.
Fail. Fail. Fail.
Not because the bill should’ve passed (it probably should have, but that’s not my point), but because our politicians were given the chance to frame the problem, craft a solution, and implement it and they couldn’t do it.
Pelosi showed really poor judgement with that speech, and should be condemned for it. But to say that’s the reason that anyone voted against the bill is really immature and shallow. I didn’t see any congressman stand up and say “Pelosi’s speech is why I voted against the bill.”
I also didn’t see any journalists ask any congressmen if that’s the reason THEY voted against it. Maybe they did, but that’s the first thing I wanted to see when Republican congressmen started their petulance.
I watched a lot of CNN yesterday, and even a bunch of Neil Cavuto on FOX, and I was impressed by the Republican negotiator dude, who seemed really rational and willing to do what he thought necessary for the country. And FOX actually had a couple Republican congressmen on saying why they voted against the bill– and their reasons had nothing to do with the speech.
But then I saw a press conference with two or three Republican congressmen standing at a podium, holding up the Pelosi speech transcript, and saying that’s why the bill failed. Their constituents should be embarrassed to have them as representatives. Ridiculous. They had a chance to take the high road, and they showed their true colors.
I think the true bottom line is that this version of the bill simply didn’t have enough support on both sides. That wasn’t a straight party-line vote after all. LOTS of Dems voted NAY. So it seems clear that they need to put more work into it.
It seems to me that more than anything it was the deadline congress set for ITSELF that caused the DOW to drop 777 points yesterday. If they set expectations more rationally that might not have happened.
Granted, it would have been known up front that credit markets would have been frozen for another week, risking even more paychecks, but now they’re going to be frozen for an indeterminate amount of time until congress is done acting like children and gets back on the job.
Any way you look at the Pelosi thing, it’s stupid for people to change their vote based on her speech, and it’s stupid for people to pretend that they did.
“Oh it’s not important to her, so why should I vote for it?”
Give me a break. Since when do Republicans vote based on what’s important to Pelosi? That’s an argument for a petulant child, not for a representative of the American people.
No, it’s a matter of people not voting for it for their own reasons, then trying to stick it to Pelosi as best they can. To me, they sound extremely stupid, and if I believed them for a second, I’d want them out of office as fast as possible.
I’d love for a reporter to say, “ok, who? Name a single representative who changed to a no vote because of Pelosi.”
“Instead… only try to realize the truth.”
“What truth?”
“There is no spoon. ”
——————-
Before we all decide there’s a crisis that needs $700 Billion to fix, maybe we ought to check if there really is a crisis. These ARE the same people who were telling us, “everythings’s ok” a few months ago, but suddenly we start trusting them?
We’re all arguing over HOW to give the $700 billion, instead of arguing over whether or not there’s a crisis that needs $700 billion. Its like the AUMF vote all over again.
David Cay Johnston’s been one of the few people talking about the framing of the crisis as part of the crisis dsicussion. Highly recommended reading: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/28/bailout_part_1_what_crisis/
Well, as far as I know none of the critters in question have made the argument I made, but I still stand by it. You’re being told that you have to vote for something that completely goes against your principals because if you don’t the country will face the most serious crisis imaginable, and yet the speaker of the house thinks it’s a ducky time to get up there deliver a campaign speech. I’d wonder if somebody was trying to put something over on me.
In the meantime, I notice that as of right now at least, over half of yesterday’s loss in the market has been recovered, which is interesting.
Oh yeah, I meant to mention before that the WSJ agrees with you, not me (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122273257698488295.html):
“House Republicans share the blame, and not only because they opposed the bill by about two-to-one, 133-65. Their immediate response was to say that many of their Members turned against the bill at the last minute because Ms. Pelosi gave her nasty speech. So they are saying that Republicans chose to oppose something they think is in the national interest merely because of a partisan slight. Thank heaven these guys weren’t at Valley Forge.”
Well, the thing that they’ve been telling us constantly is that “The credit markets are frozen” and that this bailout will unfreeze them.
And this matters because, so the people on the tv say, many businesses rely on short-term credit for normal business operations, and without that short-term credit, those operations will stop. They can’t buy gas, they can’t hand out paychecks, they can’t buy the flour they use to make the cheetos! The delicious, delicious cheetos!
So, I mean, yeah maybe this is a big ruse, but are the credit markets really frozen? If that’s true, and the economy relies on it to the extent they’re saying, then yeah– bail it the hell out!
The day somebody fails to get their paycheck because of this, is the day that the populace will wake up. That’s what I think.