There’s much to be said about the election of Obama as President; there is the racial milestone, the end of the Bush era, the stopping of a McCain/Palin administration, and so on.  One of the most disconcerting phenomena since the election is the incessant praise for Obama (who has done little but win the election) and the oft-verbalized sentiment that “everything’s going to be okay”.

At the risk of appearing cynical, the election of any U.S. President (or any election) has never ensured a prosperous future.  On the contrary, politicians (and people in general) tend to do what they’re paid to do – and Obama’s $640,000,000 bankroll from the campaign means that there’s some rich folks who are expecting him to do things that will help them out.  Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Time Warner were not in the Top 10 of  Obama’s contributors because they believed that he would redistribute their wealth or give alms to the poor.  This is not a surprising expectation.  After all, sister Goldman once remarked, “Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.”

Even if Obama were an anti-war socialist with an agenda of ending world hunger (he’s not, and he doesn’t), he still faces a rather conservative Democrat majority and a reactionary Republican minority.  The machinations of the U.S. government are not easily pushed in the direction of change – even the tepid and abstract changes to which Obama has alluded.  The status quo tends to remain the status quo – and that does not bode well for most of the folks in the country (and the world).  For instance, even after populist uproar over the Wall-Street bailout/giveaway, AIG is getting another bailout of an additional $40 billion ($40,000,000,000) and this has evoked little response from Washington.

The fundamental question is whether we believe that we are sheep to be herded by a shepherd, or whether we are all shepherds of our own future.  Is what “democracy” means that once in a few years we choose one of two narrowly-chosen candidates and expect him to lead us to redemption?  Is being a citizen a spectator sport, in other words?  Or are we to understand that if we wish to control our own destiny, that we will have to get up and do just that?

What the Obama victory means, among other things, is that unlike a McCain/Palin administration, the new president might be responsive to popular organizations and movements calling for reform.  Real change (i.e. revolution) is not likely an option.  The problems that face us are unparalleled in human history: climate change, ongoing war and occupation, nuclear proliferation – the list goes on.  Despite the accolades on Obama, the belief that he’s “going to cure everything, make everything perfect“, it is going to take a great gathering of the people of good will and intention of this country to sway him.  He’s not (and maybe cannot) do it by himself.

Posted under Culture, Politics

Taking a break from the recent election madness, I’ve decided to dedicate a post to an entirely different subject (almost) : music.  So I ask the question: What are the top 10 (unranked – that’s just too difficult) political songs in recent history?  And I’m not talking about “of all time” – I’m looking for recent (within the last decade) of songwriting (So “Las Barricadas” from the Spanish Civil War and all your favorite Dylan songs don’t count)

I’ll leave readers to suggest the other 7, but I think deserving to be in at least three spots are the following:

(1 of 10)
The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), “Road I Must Travel”:

Read More…

Posted under Culture, music

CNN covered this here: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/04/mccain-claims-obama-will-be-like-castro/

In a very, desparate, last-minute appeal to the most stereotypically knee-jerk issue of Cuban Americans, John McCain is making robo-calls that suggest insist that Castro has endorsed Barack Obama in the election.  The content of the call has a misleading tone of “breaking news” to it, in which a slew of Latin American pariahs (supposedly in the eyes of Cuban-Americans) are associated with Obama.  Perhaps most ludicrous of all is the appeal:

Don’t give Castro what he wants. Go vote right now for John McCain and avoid establishing in the United States political policies like those of Cuba.

“Don’t give Castro what he wants”?  Are they serious? Do they truly believe the people they are targeting are idiots?  After calling Obama a left-wing radical (he isn’t, unfortunately), a socialist (nope, sorry), a “redistributionist” (we wish!) and a host of other presumed political epithets, this is what’s thrown at Obama in the final hour of the campaign?  Message to the GOP: McCarthyism is so 1950′s.

The McCain/Palin camp has spent the last 2-3 months making Barack Obama look good – which, as he is a lukewarm, center-right candidate, is pretty hard to do – because Obama has insisted on talking about actual “issues”, even if it is in the non-specific, abstract fashion that has made him famous.  And Obama’s vague politicking, in comparison with a GOP ticket that does virtually nothing other than mud-slinging, has won the day (barring a massive election theft) in this climate of extraordinary political and economic peril.

Cornel West put it quite succinctly in the below recent clip from the show “Real Time with Bill Maher” (minute 0:50)

Well, for me, it’s just an exciting moment to be alive, when you see that kind of desperation.  It really is.  That’s what it is – it’s the last gasp of the conservative era where the economics of greed, the culture of indifference, and the politics of fear have been brought together in such a way that it hides and conceals the plight of poor people and working people.

Now, Brother West suggests that Barack Obama is at the heart of reversing this trend, which is an extraordinary exaggeration – if not wishful thinking.  Obama has ignored the mudslinging, to his credit and to his advantage.  But just as West tells us that popular movements have to come together to compel Obama to live up to much of his rhetoric (a non-trivial task, to be sure) let us not forget that Senator/President-elect Obama is not a champion of the poor nor the working-class. If there is one glimmer of hope in the future of an Obama presidency, it is that perhaps he can be pushed in that direction.

Posted under Politics

Vote No on Prop 8!

Political battles are often nuanced fights, in which an issue is wrapped up with personal history, racism, sexism, mysterious backstories, internal power struggles, party politics, and more.  “Sides” are seldom clearly distinguishable as purely right or wrong, true or false.  Politics is a muddled business in this way.

But one fight going on in the U.S. – most notably in California – is really quite simple.

Proposition 8 is a constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that, if passed, “eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry”.  Voters of that state will cast ballots on November 4th to determine whether they wish to revoke a right for a segment of the population.

There is little nuanced about California’s Proposition 8 (and Florida’s Proposition 2 and Arizona’s Proposition 102).  These are refreshingly clear fights for full human rights of folks who happen to belong to the GLBTQ community.
Read More…

Posted under Politics, Religion, Sexuality

I received a chain letter recently, entitled “What if things were changed around …“, analyzing the insidious and implicit ways racism has shaped the race between Obama and McCain. However, limiting the comparison between these two candidates represents a terribly small spectrum in political discourse.  So below is the same comparison between Obama and Ralph Nader:

If Things Were Switched …

What if Obama hadn’t supported immunity for the Bush administration?

What if Nader’s top contributors had been Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Microsoft, JP Morgan, General Electric, and others?

What if Obama supported equal rights, instead of opposing gay marriage?

What if Nader proposed escalating U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan?

What if Obama was demonized and criticized for demanding that the country could do better than George Bush and Al Gore?

What if Nader claimed to be a liberal while at the same time embracing the death penalty – even for those not guilty of murder?

What if Obama was a crusader against nuclear power and the corporate welfare nuclear energy industry?

What if Nader supported environmental degradation, such as the fallacious “Clean Coal” campaign?

What if Obama were white and had declared in a Black church, “Too many fathers also are missing… they have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men… You and I know how true this is in the African-American community.”

What if Nader had called for increasing George Bush’s federal faith-based funding, in violation of the separation of Church and State?

What if Obama wasn’t as eloquent, as good-looking, as athletic?

What if Nader had been allowed on the debate stage, alone – no wife, no children – a picture of professionalism and dedication to his life’s work that precluded having a family?

What if Obama had spent his life challenging, instead of joining, the political establishment in the U.S.?

What if Nader had used his office to support Joe Lieberman over anti-war Ned Lamont in 2006?

What if Obama was responsible for establishing standards for consumer protection, environmentalism, and civic life for the last 40+ years?

What if Nader’s political career was bolstered by folks like Tony Rezko and Richard Daley?

What if Obama had started the Citizen Advocacy Center, Citizens Utility Boards, Congress Accountability Project, Corporate Accountability Research Project, Disability Rights Center, Equal Justice Foundation, Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights, Center for Women’s Policy Studies, Clean Water Action Project, and many more?

What if Nader had broken a promise to reject private donors and campaign on public funding based on campaign finance reform?

What if Obama had taken on corporate interests in Washington,  and acknowledged the “one-sided class war” in this country, instead of being funded by huge corporate powers?

You could easily add to this list.  If this were a real democracy, do you really believe that the only two valid candidates would be members of the Democrat and Republican parties?

Racism is very real and degrades the fabric of our society.  But if racism was the only barrier to democratic leadership, surely Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney would be a much preferable candidate for progressive voters.  When our only real choice on election day is a candidate who embraces the escalation of foreign war and occupation, who has been bought and sold by corporations his entire career, who supports widespread use of the death penalty, who refuses to impeach or hold the Bush administration accountable; then maybe racism isn’t the biggest problem we face in this country today.

Educational Background:

Barack Obama:
Columbia University – B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard Law School- Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

vs.

Ralph Nader:
Princeton University – Magna Cum Laude in Public and International Affairs
Harvard Law School – Juris Doctor (J.D.)
University of Hartford - Professor of History and Government
American University Washington College of Law – Faculty Member
(Served in the U.S. Army)

Education isn’t everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world.

There has to be a reason that, in spite of the above, we are where we are today.  Racism is one of the keys.  Another is the fact that our politicians are bought and sold by corporate power, and money is everything.  Our government is up for grabs by the best spokesman who can convince us they offer change while maintaining the status quo at the same time.  Of course, there is a generous dosage of country-wide stupidity too.

Posted under Culture, Politics

Many (most?) folks on the left agree that Obama is the more sensible (or “less crazy”) candidate than McCain, but that Obama is clearly not a leftist candidate.  Faced with the choice of Obama versus McCain, rational people will choose Obama, but what is the extent should that be taken?  Should rational people campaign for the Democrat candidate (who will always be slightly less destructive than the Republican candidate) every  election?  Isn’t this at some point perpetuating and enabling a system of the “slightly lesser evil”, thus ensuring that evil continues?  Are folks willing to defend themselves to an Aghani who has lost her family due to Obama’s proposed escalation of the occupation there, if he were to become president?

Posted under Politics

Please take the time to watch the above video. It was taken at a McCain/Palin rally in Bethelem, PA. You can find similar videos of part one and part two of a rally in Strongsville, OH. They offer a glimpse into U.S. culture not covered by mainstream media (but should).

It would be impossible to deny that the vitriol of these supporters have not been increased by the recent shift of the McCain/Palin campaign to focus almost exclusively on Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers, the former Weatherman. Instead of even rhetorically addressing any issue or policy, the McCain/Palin campaign has gone for broke in their attempt to take the lead solely by making this association. Whether it works or not will likely decide the outcome of the race, but it has clearly exacerbated the overt hatred of these rally participants.

In the above video, Obama is being called a “Muslim” in a “terrorist cell”. In one of the videos from Ohio, a woman who refers to Obama as a “terrorist” has a child with her, who says, “You need gloves to touch him.” In another, a woman refuses to admit that she believes Obama is a terrorist, but he “has the bloodlines” for it. That such racism and repugnance exists in the United States is not a surprise; however, that it has revealed itself so publicly, so proudly, so defiantly in such a mainstream forum as a presidential campaign is especially disgusting. And very, very dangerous for the fabric of our society.

Particularly striking is the difference between rallies of the Democrat and Republican campaigns. Whereas one might be hesitant to proclaim fundamental differences between the people supporting either McCain or Obama, I have never seen participants of an Obama rally call for the death of McCain, or referring to him (or Republicans) as “terrorists”. Obama rally attendees do not refer to hecklers in their midst as “faggots”. Much can be criticized of Obama rallies (such as their lack of any real substance), but the sentiment is one of hope and positive change – raising Obama/Biden up as a turning point in U.S. politics. I believe that this sentiment is misplaced in the Democrat ticket, but the McCain/Palin platform has become about tearing down and demonizing their opponent. This is the current dichotomy of mainstream U.S. politics, and only one is going to win on election day. Despite either campaign being devoid of real solutions for national and global woes, one cannot help but desire that the campaign of hope beats out the campaign of hate.

Update (10/10 @ 10:45): Apparently even John McCain can’t control the hatred he’s stoked.  He’s being booed at his own rallies for suggesting Obama is “decent citizen”.  This can’t end well.

Posted under Culture, News, Politics

What is the Question?

The question has been raised (obviously elsewhere, but particularly in this forum) about who should should get the vote of undecided voters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.  What I believe to be the Implicit underlying question is whether to vote for a 3rd-party candidate whose policies are more aligned with popular opinion, such as Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney.  The question should be somewhat more nuanced – not “Who should undecided voters vote for?”, but “Where should voters cast their ballot for a 3rd-party?”.  (For those who are having difficulty deciding between Obama or McCain, this response will likely not be helpful.)

Fellow contributor Uri Strauss continues to make the pitch to vote for Ralph Nader, based on the popularity of his platform and the agreement on “virtually everything” of the Democrat and Republican presidential platforms.  There is no question for him, and for many others, as to who to vote for – the two major parties offer few, if any, differences in policy, and therefore we should choose a 3rd-party candidate.

There is a critical assertion made in this argument which should be repudiated because, once repudiated, it would lead to more effective strategies for enacting popular policies in the country, and the world (by virtue of U.S. power).  That assertion is that the U.S. government is a constitutional democracy.  This assertion is false, both in theory and in practice, and left unrecognized, popular movements will face little, if any, electoral success.

Not Exactly a Democracy

The United States, institutionally, is a democratic representative government – not a democracy.  The difference is stark: a democracy is one in which the population decides policy.  A representative government is one in which (in theory) the population selects representatives to decide policy.  The historical necessities or difficulties of either form of government can be debated, but that there is a significant difference cannot, as it is a matter of fact.

The United States, in practice, is an undemocratic form of government, with representatives of the population beholden to the business/ownership class of the country on all significant policy issues.  This is almost indisputable to a majority of the population, as reflected in disapproval ratings of 75% for Congress, and a 27% approval rating for the President.  Overall trust in government is tied with the lowest point, measured in 1973, with only 26% of the population answering the question “are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed” in the affirmative.   Yet another Gallup poll has the satisfaction with the current course of the country at 17%. These are not new (as the source graphs will show) and in a true democracy, would not be tolerated, and certainly not for such a long time.

Trust in US government at 26%

Our Elections are Rigged

Additionally and unsurprisingly, elections for representatives are not free and democratic.  The Supreme Court has ruled that not only are wealthier citizens entitled to more “free speech”, but that corporations, the largest concentrations of wealth in the country, are allowed to use that wealth to influence elections.  That wealth is perhaps the most dominant factor in elections has been true for some time, however these decisions codified that truth.  Other non-legal forms of exclusion of potentially popular candidates compound the difficulty of being a valid candidate.   Because democracy depends on the exchange of information, and because the ability to convey information (via mail, radio, television) costs vast sums of money, it is self-evident that only candidates with money are able to viably compete in elections.  These facts are so uncontroversial that this year’s record projected costs of $1.2 billion for the presidential campaigns and $1.16 billion for congressional races merely underscore the point.

Elections for political offices in the U.S. are not about who is the best candidate – it is about avoiding the lesser of two evils.  Large legal and class forces push elections in that direction, as does the actual voting mechanism: 1 vote for 1 candidate.  The latter could easily be addressed with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is in use in parts of the U.S. and around the world, but for obvious reasons faces great difficulty for adoption in higher political office elections.

So the situation that we are in is one in which tremendous legal and institutional forces, in combination with large concentrations of wealth, shape for us an election in which there are only two viable candidates.  The question then arises: are there significant differences between the two?

Are There Significant Differences?

I’ll leave the discussion as to differences in past elections (Gore vs. Bush, Kerry vs. Bush), but for the current election, I certainly agree that Barack Obama and John McCain are almost on par with the destruction they will wreak in foreign policy, environmental policy, criminal justice policy, drug policy, and many more issues in which they truly are in agreement on “virtually everything”.  However, there are at least three issues which they have nearly oppositional policies which are of great significance to many, if not all, people in this country (and elsewhere).  While this is not a comprehensive description of their differences, those differences are:

• Employee Free Choice Act: Obama is a co-sponsor of this legislation, which would make unionization orders of magnitude easier than current labor law.  With the EFCA, up to 57 million working Americans could form unions, which has historically shown to be tremendous engines of democracy in society.  John McCain opposes this legislation, and would almost certainly veto it.
• Supreme Court and federal courts: The federal courthouses of the U.S. have been filled with extraordinarily right-wing judicial appointments by the Bush administration, as have two seats on the Supreme Court.  The next president will likely nominate between one and three Supreme Court Justices with the three most liberal justices being replace.  Obama has stated that he would replace these judges with ones like them, whereas McCain has stated he would nominate judges similar to the most reactionary Justices on the court now (and in recent history).  These are the highest courts in the land, and no one can reasonably argue that an Obama administration’s choices would be more humane and less rabidly ideological than a McCain administration.
• “Roe v. Wade” and other reproductive rights:  Implicit in the decisions each respective candidate would make regarding the Supreme Court is whether Roe v. Wade will stand another challenge.  In addition, the policies of Obama and McCain regarding other reproductive rights are oppositional on virtually every issue – McCain even continues to support the scientifically-proven fallacy of “abstinence-only education”.  A McCain administration presents a clear danger to women’s civil rights and the basic sexual health of every citizen.

If we are to be rational voters with an interest in doing the least harm to the country, then we must recognize the inconvenient truth that who is elected President will at least have this significant impact on the country.  And if we care about that impact, then we have to do what we reasonably can to get the better candidate elected (Obama, in this case).

This does not apply, of course, if there is a viable 3rd-party candidate.  But, for the reasons given above, and several more, there is not.  Even Ralph Nader does not dispute that he will not win this election.  So we have to consider either Obama or McCain.

Therefore, in states where the election is going to be close (and there’s many this election cycle), “progressives” and everyone else should vote for Obama, and encourage others to do so.  However, in states – such as Massachusetts, with a 55-39% Obama lead – where the vote will likely not be close, folks with an interest in supporting 3rd-party candidates getting a little more even playing field (through access to public funds if they receive 5% of the popular vote) should vote for the Nader/Gonzalez ticket (McKinney/Clemente is not polling anywhere near 5%).

What Really Matters

The real issue at hand is not a single presidential election – it’s what happens in between elections, and far from Washington D.C., that is important.  Real change, rather than silly electoral campaign slogans, come from engaging and changing the hearts and minds of the population.  The U.S. is a fertile ground for grassroots organizing and massive, truly democratic movements.  We should be spending our time and resources (and far less posts debating Obama v. McCain) focusing on coordinating our friends and neighbors to address the issues that face us and the world.  Howard Zinn recently wrote, more eloquently than I, that:

Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes-the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

…None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.

So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the entire society, including the left.

Yes, two minutes. Before that, and after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Posted under Discussion Question, Politics

Reject Subsidization of the Rich
The bailout plan, both Treasury Secretary Paulson’s original draft and the version Congress tried to pass yesterday, is a massive blank check to the wealthiest, privileged and non-productive members of our society.  It is corporate welfare at an unprecedented scale, effectively rewarding years of financial gambling and a housing bubble. Handing hundreds of billions of dollars to the same folks who have weakened our economy would be something bordering insanity, for the following reasons (and others).

Key problems with the bailout are:

• Despite rumors to the contrary, the revised bailout bill (which failed yesterday) does not put restrictions on CEO pay. And even if it did, restricting the salaries of a handful of executives in a handful of firms is not going to make this bill more accountable nor going to prevent any of this from happening again. (How much of a punishment is it to pay someone $400,000 a year?).
• Oversight of the bailout is unclear at best, and effectively absent at worst.
• Henry Paulson, the same man who insists that our economy is on the edge of collapse, whose plan included giving him unprecedented, non-reviewable power to distribute $700,000,000,000 with full immunity, was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs just a few years ago – one of the same institutions that he’s proposing giving billions of dollars to. Even if he has the best of intentions, despite having the very definition of a conflict of interests, he’s the same guy that said in early August that “We have the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime,” How is this not a case of the crazy people running the asylum?
• The drumbeat of disaster and economic ruin if we do not immediately give a third of the U.S. annual budget to banks is eerily reminiscent of the passage of the PATRIOT Act and the vote on the war on Iraq.
• There’s no guarantee that the huge bailout will actually fix the problem!
• In the past week, we’ve seen false reporting from NPR to the New York Times to columnists like David Brooks. It is not possible to make a rational, appropriate decision in such a short period of time in such a misleading and frenetic environment.
• There’s much more to comment on (keeping this short in the interest of getting this post published).

Where do the Democrats stand on this?
Obama, unbelievably, has privately urged the Democrats to not support bankruptcy reform. This is the most fundamental component of any economic stability package, would affect the folks trying to pay their mortgages, and according to Dennis Kucinich, the Democrat Presidential candidate is opposed to it. Given that Obama’s top contributor is Goldman Sachs, with JP Morgan, Citigroup, UBS, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley in his top 16, we should not be surprised.

Some folks are bringing some perspective and courage to the debate. Marcy Kaptur (D, Ohio) gave this revealing and measured response before she cast her “No” vote. Sheila Jackson also delivered some words of wisdom on the floor of the House: “America has been diagnosed, but we need a second opinion”. And recall it was mostly Republicans which stopped the bailout from being passed. What we’re witnessing is the tug of war on politicians between the people who fund them and the people who vote for them.

What to Do!
1.) Call Your Congressperson!
This is a list of how every House Representative voted for the bailout – how did yours vote? Call your House Representative (find them here) and tell them not to pass the bailout – tell them the current bailout bill is unacceptable, and anything that they pass to address the situation must include comprehensive and wide-ranging relief for those who are paying off home mortgages.
2.) Join organizations like CODEPINK and United for a Fair Economy in calling for alternatives to the bailout, like a Bailout for Main Street.
3.) Read more, get informed, know what’s going on. The greatest problem we have right now is a dearth of information and understanding. This is not a topic that’s going to go away soon, so we better know what we’re all getting (or are being put!) into.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman offered a framework to understand the current financial breakdown on Wall Street:

1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.

2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.

3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.

4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”

Posted under Economy, Politics

In a big surprise this afternoon, the Wall Street bail-out package that has been the subject of such scrutiny since originally introduced by the Bush administration (re: Secretary of the Treasury Paulson), has been shot down by the House of Representatives, in a narrow vote of 206-227 (Note: different reports have the vote at “207-226, 205-228“).  This has caused a shakeup within the ranks of the Republican party, and caused headlines like “U.S. stocks plunge as global credit crisis spreads” to start showing up on the news wire.

Now, the leadership who brought this bill are likely going to urge people that all is not lost – another bill can be reconsidered, and even this particular bill can be re-voted on.  But that’s not going to come for at least a couple of days, and we don’t know whether legislators are going to (1) succumb to their voters and further distance themselves away from a bailout or (2) come together after having made a poignant political point.

As just reported on CBS news (a special televised report), the bottom fell out when House Republicans, supposedly upset at being kept out of high-level negotiations (mostly done by the Senate) largely voted against the bill, with 67%  of those Republicans casting ballots opposed.  House Democrats, on the other hand, were recorded as voting only 40% opposed, with 60% of Democrat members of the House voting in favor of the plan.

Was this a political opportunity for House Republicans, in a very bad election environment for them, to strike a blow against Bush and the Democrats to distinguish themselves as being “for the average citizen”?  The financial crisis on Wall Street certainly presents an opportunity to take the populist road and, incidentally, the right thing in refusing to issue a blank check to Wall Street.  The question is: will Democrats follow suit and listen to their constituents, leading to a bail-out that nationalizes the banks or protects homeowners, or is this just a temporary ploy on party of the electorally-starved Republican party?

UPDATE (2:49pm EST): As news of the defeat of the bailout plan spreads, the stock market has begun to plummet, with the Dow falling 600 points in course of 30 minutes (including falling an additional 200 points when I began updating this post).  Stories such as “Stocks Tumble as Bailout Plan Fails in House” are beginning to crop up on major news outlets, and many more are likely to come. The question is: How low will it go?

Posted under Discussion Question, Economy, People, Politics