Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
I find it very hard to believe that Pelosi's speech had a major imapact on the vote. As I pointed out earlier in the thread, the big dividing line was between people who are up for re-election in tough districts and those who aren't. This was all about Congresscritters who were more afraid of you and me than they were of their own leadership. Which is as it should be.

Here's what kills me — it's possible that the bailout was a good plan. But nobody made a case for it. If we had a President whom more than 15% of the population trusted, it might be a different story. But hey, if you want us to fork over a sum of cash equal to the Gross National Product of the Netherlands, you have to make a case. You have to sway us.

Nobody did that, so tough on them.
the case made for the bailout was astonishingly bad. your average cable news financial guru could have made a strong case in about 2 minutes of airtime (most of them did), but no one seemed to notice in congress that 80% of america 'don't want no bailout for wallstreet!'. the white house's only attempt, beyond having public enemy #1 get on tv, was to ask the news networks to stop calling it a "bailout" and start calling it a "rescue plan". can't blame them for thinking simple semantic tomfoolery would work, though.