A few hours from now, the Senate will pass the Paulson Plan by a landslide margin. Our nominee campaigned for its passage today, and he will be coming to the floor tonight to speak and to vote for it. As Kagro notes, Dodd has obtained time for Obama to be one of the Senators to speak on the bill, and we know why Dodd did so.
Even a casual reader of this site knows that the Paulson Plan is widely disliked here. This site's founder is one of the most vocal critics of that Plan. Before the clock strikes 12 tonight (at least in EDT), accordingly, there will be a serious fissure between our site and our nominee on the most important legislative issue before this Congress.
The stresses will increase in the next day or 2 as the House passes the Plan and it goes to W for his signature. There will, I suspect, be photos of Pelosi, Reid, Frank, et al w/ all of their GOP colleagues arranged around W in a sign of "bipartisanship." To make matters worse, it appears that the Plan that will ultimately pass will contain tax goodies sought by the GOP to peel off enough of them to assure House passage.
No one who has been paying attention should be surprised by these developments. FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) has been mother's milk for Dems for decades. The Street has been bery bery good to the Obama campaign from the start. Most Dems on the Hill (esp on the Senate side) want to risk the health of a golden goose that they're counting on to help build their warchest for their next re-election campaign.
Sen. Obama, furthermore, has touted his bipartisan credentials as a point of pride from day 1. He's never been one to buck Senate consensus, and he sure as hell isn't going to do so here. Forget about the Goopers--he's not going to challenge HRC, Dodd, Casey, Conrad, Mikulski, et al. Biden obviously won't do so, either.
This deal is going down against the express opposition of a sizeable majority of Kossacks, and there's not a thing that any of us can do to stop it. While we can raise plenty, we can't outraise the Street, and we can't do so in the large increments that make life much easier for campaign mgrs. We also can't undo decades of Dem conformity w/ prevailing Beltway orthodoxies.
I will have a hard time w/ this event even though I have decidedly mixed feelings on this issue. I'm more concerned about how and why this Plan will be passed than I am about the Plan itself. I'm equally unhappy about the lack of truth in advertising here. While I understand and appreciate the arguments in support of the Plan, this lofty rhetoric on the subject is very hard to buy:
"Future generations will judge ours by how we respond to this test. Will they say that this was a time when America lost its way and its purpose? When we allowed our own petty differences and broken politics to plunge this country into a dark and painful recession?" Mr. Obama said, steadily drawing his audience into applause. "Or will they say that this was another one of those moments when America overcame? When we battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other’s success?
There's no common stake in each other's success here. There's simply the realization that our 401K and our home equity may be at risk if nothing is done. There's also the realization that the broader economy could ground to a halt if the lubrication supplied by our financial system dries up. We're victims of a holdup here much more than we are willing participants in a common venture. Trying to convince us otherwise only insults our intelligence.
It will be a difficult few days ahead for all of us.