The Fallout

Going to point you to a good article by William Grieder over at The Nation on the Bailout Bill that fell apart yesterday and it's importance. Basically he thinks they will take another whack at it but there's not enough political will to make large changes. We are looking at tweaks not serious revisions.

His analysis of Republican motives is pretty chilling.

Republicans, as usual, are playing their own political game--trying to evade the blame, now and later. Their proposal for an insurance program that financial firms must pay for is ludicrous. It's like trying to buy hurricane insurance on your house after the storm has already blown it away. But the GOP already is in ruin, so its members are thinking long-term survival and creating a predicate for revival. Blame the government, blame Wall Street, blame the go-along Democrats--maybe people will start liking Republicans again.

Yeah, that pretty much covers it.

It was unintentionally hilarious listening to Rush Limbaugh basically argue that this bill falling apart proved that Republicans were going to win big in the fall.

This is a monumental day. There is so much to learn in what happened here today. You had the president behind this. You had Democrats pushing this. You had the Treasury Secretary pushing this. You had Obama pushing this. So what this tells me is that out there in the country, all of this bitter clinger stuff that Obama talked about, there are a lot of Democrats who are not happy with this particular bailout, which means they are conservative Democrats, they are not happy with the Obama campaign. This tells me that the Democrats easily holding the House and Senate is not a slam dunk. This tells me that a lot of Democrats in the House really fear not being reelected, and you see how those Democrats voted.

Odd sort of reaction. But I suppose you have to take hope where you can get it.