An earlier diary from Kos today got me worrying this afternoon about the bailout becoming the October surprise and Swiftboat campaign turned into one. Forget the populist Democrat vs. corporatist Democrat differences which we smooth over for elections. Getting enough Democrats to support the bailout for country's sake may play into the hands of repugs looking for a way to seem populist, disassociate themselves from Bush, and link mainstream Democrats to "status quo." Certainly most votes against the bailout will come from repugs, especially those up for election.
And what about McSame?
This raises an interesting question for Obama, and it's a dilemma. Does he go populist here, and say "I'm on the side of Main Street, not Wall Street," etc.? Or does he go conventional, following the Bob Rubin model of Democratic politics? There are upsides and downsides either way. Not all of them are clear yet.
And of course it depends on what McCain does. The former McCain would obviously have gone along with the majority view and voted yes on a matter he's never really given a crap about anyway. But Mr. Say Anything Do Anything, who knows? He might vote against on left-wing grounds, trying to out-populist Obama!
Ed Kilgore of the Democratic Strategist in a column entitled "The GOP's Bottomless Crack Pipe" today reprints a post on a repug site that endorses this strategy as the perfect winning one for their party.
Republican incumbents in close races have the easiest vote of their lives coming up this week: No on the Bush-Pelosi Wall Street bailout.
God Himself couldn't have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the Administration. That's why I want to see 40 Republican No votes in the Senate, and 150+ in the House. If a bailout is to pass, let it be with Democratic votes. Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend, and enabled by Pelosi, btw), while principled Republicans say "No" and go to the country with a stinging indictment of the majority in Congress....
In an ideal world, McCain opposes this because of all the Democratic add-ons and shows up to vote Nay while Obama punts.
Kilgore says that Dems should not only demand concessions, but also a minimum amount of GOP support so this can't be labeled a "Democrat" bill.
Ruffini is exactly right about the politics of this issue, especially for Republicans. Think of this as like one of those periodic votes on raising the public debt limit. It has to pass, of course, but there's zero percentage in supporting it for any one individual. The speculative costs of the legislation actually failing are completely intangible and ultimately irrelevant, while the costs it will impose are tangible and controversial from almost every point of view. For McCain and other Republicans, voting "no" on Paulson without accepting the consequences of that vote is the political equivalent of a bottomless crack pipe: it will please the conservative "base," distance them from both Bush and "Washington," and let them indulge in both anti-government and anti-corporate demagoguery, even as Democrats bail out their Wall Street friends and big investors generally. You simply can't imagine a better way for McCain to decisively reinforce his simultaneous efforts to pander to the "base" while posing as a "maverick."
Democrats are right to demand significant substantive concessions before offering their support for the Paulson Plan. But just as importantly, they need to demand Republican votes in Congress, including the vote of John McCain. If this is going to be a "bipartisan" relief plan, it has to be fully bipartisan, not an opportunity for McCain to count on Obama and other Democrats to save the economy while exploiting their sense of responsibility to win the election for the party that let this crisis occur in the first place.
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.o...