The final vote was 205 in favor, 228 against. This is a huge failure. A revolt of the incumbents. More Republicans voted to kill the bill than did Democrats, but not by that much. The leadership of both parties were whipping in the bills favor. The president backed the legislation as did the two candidates. But the votes weren't there. Presumably, leadership thought they would be. Congressional sources say there was a deal. Democrats would bring 110 votes, and so would Republicans. Democrats brought 140. But the Republican whip operation fell apart, or never engaged. The votes weren't there. And as that reality crystallized, some of the votes that were there vanished. Boehner apparently choked up on the floor. "Think about what happens to your friends, your neighbors, your constituents," he begged. "These are the votes that separate the men from the boys and the girls from the women — these are the votes your constituents sent you here to vote for on their behalf — these are the kind of votes where we have to look into our souls." With leadership -- and elites -- so aggressively behind the bill, the massive defections suggest that congressmen are sensing a towering populist outrage. Like on the immigration bill, the opposition did not fear their party but their voters. The implication here is that the politics of the bailout are much more intense than most currently recognize. The question is what comes next. The Dow has plummeted. It's lost 700 (Update -- now back to 600 800) points in a single day. It's the sort of freefall that suggests the markets may well begin to lock, that the continually available credit that oils the economy may dry up, with catastrophic consequences. The pressure from the market collapse could sober some congressmen into voting for the next iteration of the bill after having extracted some quick and cosmetic changes. Few want to be judged, either by their constituents or by history, for crushing the American economy beneath their own political cowardice. Alternatively, House Democrats could construct a new strategy: Rather than looking for bipartisan agreement on a muddled bill, they could take full ownership and seek partisan agreement on aggressive bill. They could move away from the bailout model and towards outright nationalization. Only Pelosi knows if she's got the votes for that. Above all, though, this is a failure of politics. Like with global warming, with health care, with the national debt, with immigration. It is further proof that we have a calcified political system incapable of responding to either long-term threats or short-term crises. The electoral and partisan incentives have made actual action too dangerous and rendered obstruction everyone's easy second choice. And in politics, you just about never get your first choice. And so the Republicans killed this bill. Without their cover, the Democrats couldn't save it, because politically, they couldn't take ownership of it. It's easy enough to imagine a society running atop a stable economy even when it has an unhealthy politics. And it's simple enough to see how an unstable economy can be calmed through concerted action by an effective political structure. But an economy in chaos and a political system in paralysis? What happens then?
