More evidence of liberal media biasFollow

Ah. So McCain was clearly right to stop the first version of the Bill and insist on something better, right?

How much you want to bet that by tomorrow, those numbers will show even more people supporting passage of the latest version of the bill? It's really meaningless. We can't say whether those numbers are changing because more people support each new version of the bill more than the last one, or if they're just more desperate for "any" bill that might fix things.



Yup. Expect those numbers to shift over time as well. Again. It doesn't tell us how voters will feel about this a month from now. It easy to get those kind of poll results when you're right in the middle of a crisis. It's the "fast sell" writ large. The unpopularity level of anything potentially costing taxpayers 700 Billion dollars will have an effect come election day though. If they think they got shafted because of said fast sell, they'll be out for blood, and the Dems didn't want it to be too clear that they were the prime architects of the shaft if that should happen.

You can quote current poll numbers all you want. The fact that the Dems couldn't/wouldn't pass this all on their own speaks volumes about how they feel it would have been perceived.



Why on them? Don't the Dems have a majority in both houses? How on earth can the Republicans be at fault for this bill failing to pass? If the Dems really felt it was as politically important for this bill to pass as you seem to think, they'd have passed it. Clearly, the fear that taking the sole affirmative position on this bailout would cost them more than it would help them was the key factor here.


The behavior of the House Democrats is basically the best evidence that your assertion is incorrect. If you were right, they would have simply passed the bill and taken credit for saving the economy. Clearly, they don't think that the pro's outweigh the con's of doing that. Which means that even the Dems believe that the public will view taking more time (even at the expense of Wall Street) to pass a bill that both sides can agree on more positively than one party driving the issue on their own. Or, they're just afraid to take a position at all, which is entirely possible.

Either case puts the power of the situation in the GOP's hands. They now know that the Dems wont pass a bill without them, so they can remove any poison pills that the Dems want to stick in. Better yet, down the line, the Republicans can claim credit for making the plan work and saving the taxpayers money, while the Dems will still look like the party that just wanted to throw good money after bad and spend their way out of the problem.



Yeah. His specific words weren't too brilliant IMO. But it fits into the main objective here. They want to get a true bi-partisan solution. It's a bit of rhetoric, but the play by the GOP is that the Dems attempted to ram a bad bill through while playing on the publics fear. That's what the whole meeting collapse bit on Friday was about. This is just the next step in that process. You show that even know, in the midst of an economic crisis, the Democrats are still trying to inject partisan language into the issue. Sure. He's basically trying to score points by bashing Pelosi for trying to score points, but that's politics, right?

The main issue is that the GOP really does have the high hand here and they know it. The Dems were trying to push their ideal bill through before anyone could stop to think. They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and now they're having to pay the piper on it. The US economy will survive long enough for us to implement the right solution and both parties apparently do believe that the voters will care more about that solution being "right" and more importantly "bi-partisan" (so both parties take equal blame really) than they will about it coming quickly.


IMO, the political cost of being perceived as the party that's holding up the bill will be more than outweighed by the benefit of being perceived as the party that made sure that the bill was as well made as possible.

Edited, Sep 29th 2008 5:06pm by gbaji

I'd say the latter. Both sides are going to toss rhetoric out there, but what I've been trying to say all along is that both parties believed that passing that bill in its current form would hurt them more than help them. The time for a rush of the bill has passed. Had the Dems succeeded in getting the first draft pushed through last week, there would not have been much backlash I think. But since the GOP pushed back, now both sides are under pressure to come up with something that the voters are going to view as "better" than the original version (less costly up front at least).


Certainly, the original pressure was most on the GOP, since their supporters are most likely to dislike any form of government bailout. But now, the Dems are pretty much in the hotseat as well. It's why I've referred to the failure to pass today's bill as the Dems "blinking". They were initially trying to just rush the whole thing and give the impression that they were a united front, presumably hoping this would pressure the GOP to go along so as not to be seen as irrelevant to the solution. By failing to pass the bill, it shows that they aren't immune (or don't think they are immune) to negative results from pushing a big bailout bill through. Enough that they don't want to be seen as the sole party doing it.

If they really thought that they'd get more credit than blame, they'd have lept at the opportunity to win on purely partisan lines. Imagine the coup if the Dems used their majority to push it through against GOP opposition and it was viewed as a smashing success that saved the nations economy. They'd be able to ride that to a huge win next month. As I've said repeatedly, the fact that they didn't shows that they know that no matter whether the bill works or not, it will be viewed unfavorably by voters. The only way it works is if both parties are "blamed" for it equally. The Democrats simply wont pass it unless enough Republicans go along to make it appear bi-partisan.

I think it was a combo of both. I think the Republican's who changed their votes were reluctant to vote for the bill in the first place. I don't know if it was her aim or not, but her speech definitley pissed off most of the House Repubs.

I wouldn't put it past her to try and sink the bill in such a way, since now Obama will get to milk the crisis for at least 1 more week AND republicans will get blame from the media.

They failed more than the Democrat leadership did?

I'm not seeing it. They said they'd work out a bi-partisan compromise bill. The one that went before the house clearly wasn't good enough. They'll simply roll up their sleeves and try again. Pelosi's comments were just a bit of icing that made it easier for them to explain why it didn't pass. I suspect that the partisanship went far deeper than just some comments in a speech...



Yes. And how many votes did Pelosi line up?

Let me ask another pointed question: How many Dem votes were shifted from Yay to Nay, one for one as each Gop vote was lined up? And how many of those were in those contested districts?

Stop and think about that and why it's significant. Then go look at the vote totals. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure out what happened to that vote.



*cough* What part of "bi-partisan" makes you blame just one party when it fails Joph? Isn't that the funniest thing? No. Really!



I would assume that Pelosi's speech was just the visible tip of a much larger partisan iceberg that sank that version of the bill.


Look. All the GOP has to do is keep saying that the Democrats are refusing to deal fairly and they win. As you pointed out, they've already laid out the "we're going to reach a bi-partisan agreement" groundwork. So, if any given attempt fails, the assumption is that they failed to reach said "bi-partisan" agreement. Which includes the assumption that Democrats refused to do their part as well.

Pelosi's blatantly partisan comments just made that a much more easy argument to make is all. I'll admit that I would have maybe worded it differently and put more focus on partisan actions of opposition within the house Democrat membership itself instead of just Pelosi, but it's somewhat easy to armchair quarterback after the fact. In any case, in the long run it's still going to look like the GOP is trying to make a deal that the public views very unfavorably "better" and the Democrats are not budging on the very things that the public doesn't like about the deal.


The GOP has already cast itself in the role of the ones protecting the taxpayer here. Each delay only makes the Dems look more like they really just want to take our dollars out of our pockets to pay for the mistakes of others. I just really do think that the Dems are playing a losing hand on this one and it'll only get worse for them the longer this drags out.





Again. See my comment about Dems pulling out one for one. Politics can be a very dirty game...

Edited, Sep 29th 2008 6:45pm by gbaji

I'm fairly sure what they mean is that some representatives are retiring from the house instead of running for another term.

Sadly, I live in a gerrymandered district here in NC that has had a democrat rep since the civil war. BUT Mike McIntyre is one the most conservative, if you can call it that, democrats in washington.

He voted No. I was proud of him for that.

Hmm, how many representatives are up for reelection this year? That's a puzzler!

I would just like to thank Jophiel and Obama, I clicked on his link and registered to vote.

*sigh* but then I'd have to fill out the registration form *again*!

haha, yeah, I know...I was like "never? or only 2 or 3 times a day?"

Nexa