I said some of this in updates to an earlier post, but it bears repeating right now as Republicans desperately try to spin the defeat of the financial bailout bill in the House on Democrats. That’s not terribly surprising, since as of 4:40 p.m. eastern time, the Dow had dropped 777 points, the largest single-day loss in history.
Just to recapitulate: the bill was sponsored, nay demanded by the Republican president of the United States (who just this morning went on the airwaves to threaten economic catastrophe if the bill was defeated) and the Republican Secretary of the Treasury. The specifics were endorsed by the Republican leadership of the House (and the Senate), and by the Republican candidate for president, who as recently as yesterday was bragging about how he had brought House Republicans back into line. It has been understood all along that the legislation needed roughly equal support from both caucuses to survive through the Senate intact.
On the vote, 140 Democrats voted “yea,” and 95 voted “nay,” for a ratio of just under 60%. House Republicans voted 65 “yea” and 133 “nay,” for a ratio of just under 33%. Looks pretty clear that House Republicans killed this bill.
Yet House Republicans held a press conference wherein several of their leaders blamed their own caucus’s overwhelming failure to support the bill on a partisan speech made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And John McCain’s chief economic advisor blamed Barack Obama, as well as Pelosi, for the Republican votes against the bill.
Amazingly, if somewhat predictably, a lot of the initial MSM reporting on the fiasco reports the ludicrous GOP spin as part of a welter of “politicians pointing fingers.”
But if you want to see how well this spin is wearing over time, look no further than The Corner at National Review, where any GOP-friendly interpretation of today’s events would normally be welcomed.
Here’s Jim Manzi, shortly after the vote:

Well, apparently the House Republicans have decided to run a neat little experiment to test the actual odds of the current financial crisis turning into another Depression in the absence of a bailout plan. What alternative do they propose that could realistically be enacted? How long do they think this would take, and what risks would we run during the period of uncertainty, even if it were successful?
I have no visibility into the current machinations on Capitol Hill, but I’m with Noah Millman: as far as I can see, if I were a senior Democrat right now, I’d introduce a Democratic alternative tomorrow and pass it on a party line vote.

Here’s Ramesh Ponnuru, four minutes later:

Not that it’s the most important fallout, but this vote is very bad for McCain. He was trying to get House Republicans on board, after all, and he failed. Blaming the Democrats for the failure will not and should not work, given the ratios on both sides.
But several conservatives voted for the bill, including Blunt, Boehner, Camp, Cantor, Kline, Lungren, McCrery, Putnam, (Paul) Ryan, Tancredo, Weldon, (Joe) Wilson. I think they made the right call.

Then NR editor Rich Lowry reports on an email from a Republican staffer about the “blame Pelosi” argument and Barney Frank’s mocking response:

E-mail:
Rich – I’m afraid Rep. Frank has a point on this one. Some feelings on the GOP side were hurt, so they voted against the economic well-being of the country?
Sincerely,
A very concerned GOP staffer.

Then even K-Lo (Kathryn Jean Lopez) herself, who earlier kept arguing that Democrats should have been able to pass a bill without any Republican votes since they control the House, passed along this damning email from a “Western bank president”:

The failure of the House to pass the bill – combined with the resulting bickering – will likely lead to a substantial market sell-off. We’re seeing part of that occur right now, but we may well see much worse over the coming days as the inevitable sell-off hits overseas markets, followed up by another collapse at home as forced selling really kicks in and many institutional investors are required to liquidate their leveraged positions. While it would be nice if all this was confined to a few select Wall Street bad apples, the reality is ordinary people will be hurt very badly as their investments deteriorate and the economic environment turns even more negative. Unemployment will likely spike sharply from here, and the lack of available credit will impair many small businesses that rely on credit lines to finance their operations.
How any of this could possibly be construed as a positive for either McCain or the Republican Party is beyond me (and I say this as a life-long Republican)? In fact, it would seem much more likely to me that the House Republicans just handed the election to Obama on a silver platter. Blaming the vote on Pelosi’s antagonistic remarks seems especially dumb, and I expect to see Barney Frank-type comments all over the MSM tonight and throughout the week.

Sure, there are a couple of posts reporting happiness with the defeat of the bill, but mainly on grounds that “free-market principles” are worth a very deep recession, and presumably, a Democratic victory in November. Nobody much was buying the idea that the defeat could really be blamed on Democrats.
Let’s hope the MSM treatment of the Republican spin can at least become as skeptical as National Review‘s.

So if you’re online you probably know the House defeated the financial bailout bill by 23 votes. I just saw a floor trader on CNN predict a drop in the Dow of somewhere between 1000 and 1500 points.
There will presumably be some consideration of a second vote on the same bill in hopes that enough Members who hoped to vote “no” while the package passed will reconsider; a net flip of 12 would be necessary. If that doesn’t work, then it’s back to the drawing board, though it’s hard to imagine a new compromise that would attract both Democratic and Republican votes.
One straw in the wind is talk about Democrats putting their own package together that could pass with little other than Democratic votes (95 Dems voted “no”).
Any way you slice it, this is an astounding repudiation of George W. Bush and John McCain by their own party. Better than two-thirds of House Republicans voted against the bill.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist
UPDATE II: With Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) beginning at sundown today, it’s unlikely anything can happen in Congress until Wednesday. House Democrats just held a press conference to rebut the silly idea that the defeat was attributable to hurt Republican feelings about a floor speech made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Barney Frank commented that if House Republicans could produce twelve members who voted against the bill on these grounds, he’d personally go spend time with them and “tell them how great they are” if it would convince them to reverse their votes.
So there you have it: more than two-thirds of House Republicans voted against a bill their own leaders had signed off on, sponsored by their own president, and endorsed by their presidential candidate as a matter of urgent national importance, and even of patriotism. Yet it’s the fault of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi! Gaze in awe.

As we all await the House vote on the financial bailout legislation, there was some other interesting political news over the weekend beyond the bailout negotiations and the debate: 33 ministers used their pulpits Sunday to demand votes for John McCain as part of an organized effort to defy IRS regulations against tax-exempt religious organizations expressing candidate preferences.
I wrote about this over at BeliefNet. I won’t cross-post it, because I was speaking from a religious perspective, but here’s a link if you are interested.

Today will be another crazy day in Washington and on Wall Street, as the House prepares for what everyone expects to be a close vote on the financial bailout deal put together over the weekend.
The bailout legislation survived a close procedural vote in the House this morning, but that may not be a true measure of how many Members will ultimately vote “no.” The bill remains vulnerable among Democrats on grounds that it represents armed-robbery-by-extortion; among Republicans who are hearing from conservative activists that it’s all socialism; and among politically vulnerable incumbents in both parties who naturally want to vote against it without actually suffering the consequences of finding out what would happen if it fails.
Prospects for the passage of the legislation aren’t being helped by the negative reactions of the market this morning, which seem to be less about fears that it will be defeated than about disappointment that the bailout won’t be as fast and as large as originally advertised by Paulson. Why rush to the rescue when the rescuee is already complaining?

I happen to be a boxing fan and have watched TV with great appreciation for many years as a succession of pudgy guys with Brooklyn accents fired off incredibly rapid-fire barstool-type commentary about “working the body”, “landing more punches”, “getting ahead on points but not scoring the knockout”, “dominating the ring” and so on.
This very distinctive and utterly American mode of sports analysis has evolved gradually over the years in close connection to the evolving rules by which professional boxing matches are conducted and scored. It is intimately tied to the unique way in which strategy, cunning, speed, power, physical endurance and willpower are combined in professional boxing. One can see the unique aspects of professional boxing as a sport and martial art simply by comparing it other martial arts like Muay Tai or MMA that have significantly different techniques and rules.
But what in blazes does any of this have to do with judging a presidential debate? The objective is entirely different – it is to convince viewers that a candidate will do a better job of running the county than his opponent, not that he is superior in a contest of verbal bullying and aggression that metaphorically mirrors physical combat.
Case in point – the notion that Obama’s willingness to say “I agree with you, John” on a number of points represented weakness on his part while McCain’s repeated use of the phrase “what Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand” should be tallied up as points for his side in exactly the same way as points are scored on a scorecard in a Las Vegas middleweight championship.
Usually, there is not enough data to show that this boxing match metaphor misconstrues what ordinary viewers are looking for when they watch a debate. Last night, however, a number of polls and focus groups all converged in their reactions to the debate (see the post below) and clearly indicated that they saw Obama’s refusal to do a “Rush Limbaugh/barroom loudmouth” imitation as positive thing and not negative one.
After all, don’t we really want our candidate to have the self-confidence and the character to calmly agree with the opposition when they happen to be right on an issue rather than insisting that every single word out of an opponent’s mouth must necessarily be boneheaded idiocy? Don’t most middle of the road voters want that too?
So enough with the bad Howard Cosell-Lennix Lewis imitations already. A debate is not a boxing match. It should not be scored as one.
A matter a fact, I gotta tell you Howard, if these commentators guys keep this up, they’re gonna run outta gas in the championship rounds. They’re behind on points and you can see their punches just don’t have any real power behind them any more. The body work they took in the early rounds has done its job and they are starting let their guard fall. They got a big swelling over the left eye that’s probably gonna open up soon and could stop the fight. They are going to have to go for a knockout early in the tenth or the judges are going to take it away from them.

Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld of TPM ElectionCentral have early poll numbers from CNN and CBS polls, both of which indicate a big win for Obama.’ (CNN wrap-up here)
Brian Montopoli reports that a CBS News and Knowledge Networks poll of 500 uncommitted voters indicates that 39 percent said Obama won the debate, with 24 percent favoring McCain and 37 seeing a tie. In addition, 46 percent of uncommitted voters say their opinion of Obama improved, compared to 32 for McCain.
On ongoing poll of Wall St. Journal readers (over 55,000 thus far) has Obama ahead by 53 to 38 percent as we go to press.
Amy Sullivan of Time’s ‘Swampland’ has a report on Stan Greenberg’s focus group of 45 undecided voters, 38 percent of whom said Obama won the debate, with 27 percent giving the advantage to McCain and 36% saying that neither candidate had a clear win.
Daily Kos has a video clip on Frank Luntz’s focus group of Nevada undecideds, who gave Obama a 27-17 edge.
Looking ahead, Palin goes into Thursday’s debate with lowered expectations, as a result of the Couric and Gibson interviews. Conservatives are very worried, and National Review columnist Kathleen Parker has called on her to step down. Another conservative writer, The American Spectator‘s Phillip Klein, says “Palin is not ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

Here’s the link

The very funny (if not always family-friendly) sports blog Every Day Should Be Saturday has a fake wire story up entitled: “Feds call for 38 point bailout of USC,” suggesting that a retroactive allocation of points to the once-invincible Southern Cal Trojans is necessary to stabilize college football after last night’s shocking loss to Oregon State. There’s lots of hilarious stuff in the comments thread, too, about the costs and moral hazards involved, including a particularly incoherent take from someone posting as “Sarah Palin.”
Given the vast and ancient prevalence of sports metaphors in politics, it’s appropriate to run the metaphors in the other direction now and then.

Over at The Nation, Chris Hayes very nicely sums up the perspective of many individual members of Congress, Democratic and Republican, towards the bailout negotiations:

1) The bailout is unpopular: The polling on this is muddled, but the polling is completely dependent on the wording. Every single lawmaker is getting barraged with hundreds of calls a day from constituents, and no one is saying: “Please give lots of money to Wall Street!”
2) The crisis is terrifying to lawmakers: They’re getting insanely heavy pressure from the vulturous Wall St lobbyists buzzing around the Hill (“there’s a gazillion of ’em!” a staffer told me earlier in the week) and also, dire and sober warnings from Bernanke and Paulson behind closed doors. Basically, if you don’t pass this, they’re being told, you’ll have the blood of another Great Depression on your hands.
3) Ergo: The optimal outcome for all lawmkers is to vote against the bill and still have it pass. That way you get to have your cake and eat it, too. But what we’re dealing with is something akin to a massive prisoner’s dilemma. Everyone wants to get into the decision quadrant of voting against the bill and having it pass, but of course if everyone rushes for that quadrant, then the bill doesn’t pass and therefore, no one ends up in that quadrant. If you’re Pelosi and the Democrats you can’t allow the Republican wingnuts off the hook by creating the space for them to crowd into the sweet spot, and then use the bill to run against you. That’s why things are so tenuous and difficult to game out.

This is pretty much what Ed Kilgore was warning about earlier this week. If the bailout passes, the consequences will be bad and very tangible, particularly since nobody’s under the illusion that a bailout will prevent a recession. Nobody knows how much worse things would actually get if the bailout fails. So if it does pass, you definitely want to be recorded as voting against it, particularly if you are vulnerable Republican.
The “prisoner’s dilemma” Chris refers to is a famous game theory conundrum in which it will always be in the selfish interest of one accomplice to a crime to betray the other, even though cooperation would produce a better overall result.

As we continue to await news of the latest round of negotiations on the financial bailout, John McCain has already taken credit for saving the day, and is now unsuspending his campaign and headed to Oxford, MS, for the presidential debate he tried to delay.
The evidence his campaign offers for this astonishing claim is that House Republicans are now represented in the negotiations.
Since said House Republicans object to the basic structure of the agreement reached yesterday by a bipartisan group of House and Senate banking committee members, it’s a little strange to suggest that enabling them to blackmail their way into the negotiations represented some sort of breakthrough. And if they somehow do succeed in driving the “deal” in their favored direction of capital gains cuts and deregulation, and away from Democratic demands that taxpayers secure an equity position in bailed-out companies, along with limits on executive pay, then you can confidently expect a revolt among congressional Democrats that will be larger and more significant than the McCain-assisted hissy fit from the Right yesterday.
Any way you want to slice it, the idea that Washington is closer to a consensus deal than it was the moment John McCain suspended his campaign on Wednesday and went blundering into the bailout negotiations is ridiculous. McCain did indeed get his photo op, and probably got some brownie points from conservatives for implicitly backing their point of view. But it’s quite clear that people in Congress today are not watching him ride off in triumph and gratefully saying to each other: “Who was that masked man?” More likely, they’re happy to see the back of him.