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Monday, September 29, 2008

Ambivalent

Well, the Bailout proposal has failed -- and to much rejoicing across the Netroots. I'll admit I'm a tad more ambivalent about the outcome myself. I'd like to think that the crappy concessions Democrats made to get the usual lying Republican promises of support will now be junked and a more forcefully progressive and sensible and accountable proposal will be crafted. This even makes strategic sense as a move, since more progressive holdouts would like such a revised proposal and more reactionary holdouts would fear such a direction and might get on the bandwagon before their rich friends missed out on all the goodies. But, I fear, given the history here, the revised version will be far worse than the one the Netroots are cheering the defeat of, and that it will be Democrat who pay for the ways in which it is worse. Not to mention the possibility that this is a real crisis demanding a real solution the delay of a solution for which might prove hideously costly even though Idiot Boy Bush is one of the people saying so. Again, I'll admit I'm ambivalent. Shaken, not stirred. Here's Krugman. Here's Dean Baker. They both seem sensible and rather at odds, which matches my mood perfectly. A noxious cloud of finger-pointing on the part of Republicans jockeying for position in their desperate election-year end-gaming, not to mention a bit of hysterical crowing among otherwise reliable Netroots folks, is obscuring the landscape for the time being as far as I can see. We'll see what emerges next.

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