With the pending collapse of the bailout deal, we've suddenly found ourselves out of position, fighting on unfamiliar ground, with a jack ass on a white painted mule wearing a coffee can on his head on our flanks. This whole crisis and resolution is looking to be a wonderfully time, if not purposely setup, way to lure the Democratic Party into a trap. We'd normally be the last party stepping up to give hand-outs to Wall Street or unchecked power to the cronies at this White House.
John McCain and the Bush White House lured us perfectly, as they did on every other sneaky major change they've needed. Its the Shock Doctrine with a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan movie. We now find ourselves either falling over to follow McCain's "brave" lead on this issue, or we are the ones that will stand up and defend a $700 BILLION bailout of Wall Street to the American People. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't.
So my question to all the smart Kossacks out there: Now what?
Where we're at now, I see a few choices:
-Push to get the compromise that we had up for a vote, let Bush and the Republicans take the blame if votes fail.
-Scrap everything and let McCain claim credit for a new plan. Vote on it and pass it. Hope it doesn't swing momentum too much.
-Say, "Screw it, you don't like how we're fixing it, you fix it." and let any bailout die on the vine. Scream to high heaven that McCain nixed what could've avoided a crisis, then call their bluff and see if a crisis really happens or if this was just a smash and grab job on the Federal budget.
Obama is especially out of place now. If the American people are paying attention and are halfway intelligent, they will see that this is precisely the reason Obama didn't want to inject Presidential politics into this process. I'm banking however that the traditional media will do its "balanced" best and report that the deal was never as solid as we were lead to believe and the Republicans never really were going for it. Obama will either look like he didn't do enough to hold the deal together, or that he's playing "Me too!" to McCain's lead on the issue.
This is my opinion on our playbook from here:
Come out tomorrow as a unified party. Say "we were trying to meet the administration and our Republican counter-parts half way, but they were not negotiating in good faith. We're starting over again from scratch."
Our proposal:
-The program is strictly voluntary but the terms are not negotiable.
-$100 Billion available now, with future sums available by a full vote of both Houses.
-The government gets equity in each company that participates. CEO pay is capped and any money above the cap goes directly towards paying the government back.
-There will be full transparency into the last 8 years of the corporate books. We will find out where all this money went.
Bipartisan committees in both Houses to investigate when the problem should've been apparent, and why nothing was done.
-Mortgage assistance language similar to what was in the draft agreement from today.
-Firms books stay open to government investigators until they have cleared the program.
If McCain and the Republican's want to fight this, let them. But don't let them look like the cavalry. Make them stop US. Make them fight for benefits for the firms, and for Wall Street. They had a honey of a deal and they blew it. Its our game now.
I really don't have any answers except my own pathetic analysis. The strength of this site is in the brain-storming collective power of the users. Please use the comments below to let me know where I'm wrong or talk about our strategies going forward.
UPDATED: Poor title choice on my part to spark civil discussion. I'm still new at this. I'm interested in hearing reasoned arguments why this is all a good thing for us. I don't think we've lost, I don't think its hopeless. As a Democrat I just find it odd and uncomfortable to be fighting FOR a deal that spends this kind of money to bail out a rogue industry that got itself into this mess.
Can we at least all agree this should be a lesson to not let any company get so big that we can't afford for it to fail?