Obama won, sort of….
I don’t think this was a great bill, but now at least the battle lines are drawn and we know who can be called on for support and who the leaders of the opposition are.
And in a weird way, I think that was the actual goal of the bill. Other things can be passed later on, as the situation gets more desperate (and it will, sorry people…)
I’m actually really encouraged by how well this went, all things considered. Paul Krugman is becoming a powerful outside voice for the Obama camp and did some great work on this one, yet still criticizes the effort as being too small. He’s going to be the voice to listen to going forward, maintaining his outsider status but criticizing the opposition very powerfully. Obama did an excellent job of reaching out to the American people and going over the talking heads of the right wing media.
As for Geithner, I am really unimpressed. I hope the wonks can win him over eventually, but his Wall Street ties are still far too strong. And obviously, Wall Street wasn’t happy with him today anyway. (Down 300 points right now). Geithner is going to have to choose a real side to be on soon, and Obama better convince him to be on the people’s side. I hope Obama can start letting others have the influence and take over for the lack of leadership that Geithner and Summers are showing right now. It’s quite disturbing to see them continue the failed Bush bailouts with no real new plan to improve things at all.
I really think Obama and Geithner need to start reading some economics blogs. And Barry at the Big Picture, who sends us this today:
One Response
Now comes the telling reconciliation battle. It will be interesting watch it play out. I just hope Obama and his team are actually listening to what Krugman and the other economists are saying.
The GOP want it to fail in the worst way and this should be in the mind of everybody on the Dem side. The GOP knows that if Obama is not successful then they have a chance of regaining some seats in 2010 and that will be a bad thing.