Politics of the bailout
Sunday, September 28, 2008 at 08:46AM All indications point to some kind of bailout compromise being announced today.
Congress will probably vote on the plan early in the week, and barring some kind of serious miscalculation by the parties involved, it should pass.
Whether it calms Wall Street and unfreezes the credit markets is an entirely different story; it may be weeks or months before its impact is felt. Most economists seem to think the bailout will provide much needed liquidity to the markets, but it's certainly not written in stone that it will work.
But the politics of it all will play out over the next 30+ days, starting with the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday night. There's little doubt that it provides a huge advantage for Biden -- given his knowledge of the economy and mastery of detail -- and presents a serious challenge to Palin.
Beyond that, the financial chaos of the past two weeks has certainly helped Obama in that it has put the economy front and center and shoved Iraq to the back burner. McCain has done a decent job at trying to inject himself into the bailout talks, and if a compromise bills reflects even a few of his values, he can claim some kind of minor victory. For his part, Obama has stayed clear of the bailout negotiations, mostly because he doesn't need to make up ground at this point in the campaign. It was a cautious move -- but the right one -- for the front-runner.
It will be interesting to see if McCain makes the bailout his primary message once he hits the hustings again, or if he goes back to foreign policy.
Reader Comments (6)
Wow, Nick. You keep talking of Obama as the front-runner. Unfortunately for my own political persuasion, I don't see it that way. Right now I have Obama with 226 electoral votes (I've tentatively moved Iowa into Obama's column) and John McCain with 239. Even if Obama holds all the states Kerry won, and wins some of the states I view as tossups (he needs especially to win New Hampshire, Michigan, and Wisconsin on my tossups list), he will still need to win Ohio--the key state, as I see it--to win the election. All four states are very much in play, and Ohio, despite the fluctuations in the polls, wants to vote Republican. Note that I haven't put Pennsylvania in play: if Obama can't carry it, he probably will have difficulty carrying Michigan, and he won't win the election. That's why Biden's on the ticket and, despite his gaffes (and oh lordy does he make gaffes!), from his own Scranton background he seems to connect with blue collar voters. It's going to be an exciting October.
And don't forget the October surprise. Given what we've had economically up to this point, I can't even begin to imagine what it will be.
-- triton --
I think your states may be a little off. I think several key red states -- Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia are dead heats -- while a few more -- Iowa, Missouri and Ohio and Florida -- are leaning McCain, but certainly in play. If Obama picks off just two of the states, it puts McCain in a really tough spot.
On the other hand, the only three blue states that are really jump balls at this point are Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. I think Michigan is McCain's best shot to pick up a blue state, while Pennsylvania is leaning Obama. I think Wisconsin and Minnesota are also leaning Obama, and will probably stay Blue.
Bottom line is that Obama is going to win a few red states (which ones, who knows), so McCain will have to win Michigan (and maybe New Hampshire) to offset the losses (and maybe that won't even be enough). I think the math still works against McCain.
You have a lot more faith in the accuracy of the polls than I do. Several of the pollsters are concerned that latent racism is masked by "Undecided," in which case all bets are off.
But if we do accept the polls, five of them have Obama ahead in Iowa by five to nine points (a sufficient margn that I've included Iowa in my Obama list, as I've also included New Mexico); Michigan is currently listed as "safely Obama," though I doubt it while hoping that it's true; McCain is ahead in Florida in all but one of the polls; McCain is ahead in Nevada in most of the polls. I can't find a poll that lists numbers on Colorado.
Ohio is the key. In that state, if the election included only McCain and Obama, McCain's ahead. If it includes Nader and Barr, Obama has a tiny lead. That's a change from two weeks ago where, with just the two major candidates, it was a tie, and with the four candidates Obama was four points ahead. That sounds to me as if a fair number (that should read "an unfair number") of Ohioans just don't want to vote for Obama, but would prefer a third or fourth party candidate to McCain.
Of course this could all change tomorrow, when the feds announce that John McCain has brokered an agreement to bail out all the banks with his wife's money and the taxpayers won't be on the hook for anything.
my bad. -- triton --
Thank you for your sharing!
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