Err...there were only 65 Republican votes in favor, so i'm not sure how they can lose 90.

This scenario - where the failure of this bill leads to a more progressive one - contradicts everything we have learned about congressional Democrats. After everything we have seen over the last eight years, people really expect the Democratic leadership to suddenly spine up?

The bill that passes will pass because it is more GOP-friendly, not less.

Kinda hard to believe. I think Pelosi could have secured passage of this bill with some arm-twisting, but didn't bother if Repubs were 2-1 against. And it will take something relatively major to move 40 of those Republicans into YEA votes.

If that doesn't happen, then either there will be a liberal bill written only by Dems, or no bill at all (given your opinion that blue dogs need bipartisan cover).

Until they can come up with a bill that will help real people and not Paulson's Pals -- and which can be explained to the taxpayers -- the bill should go down, and I hope it will.

We don't need a "more liberal" bill. We need a straightforward Swedish--style (passed in that country by a CENTER-RIGHT government)nationalize/ wipe out the gamblers / re-privatize sequence that doesn't help Wall Street fatcats make their payments on their third yacht AND doesn't make the taxpayers eat garbage. If framed properly there's no reason why this couldn't be popular and the Blue Dogs couldn't support it.

Mindless "left-right" framing and mindless Broderesque yearning for "bipartisanship" are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

As bad as the market it today, it's not as bad as it could be. I think Wall St. is expecting some alternative from Washington.

As Ezra notes, that might not be coming. Not from Congress anyway. It remains to be seen if regulatory measures (FDIC guarantees for full deposits, etc.) will make much of a difference.

We live in interesting times.

BTW, non Blue dogs, CBC, hispanics who voted against -

Abercrombie
Berkley
Blumenauer
Braley
Castor
Costello
Courtney
DeFazio
Delahunt
Doggett
Filner
Green, G.
Hinchey
Hirono
Hodes
Inslee
Kagen
Kaptur
Kucinich
Pascrell
Rothman
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Stark
Stupak
Tierney
Udall, M.
Udall, T.
Visclosky
Walz
Welch
Wu
Yarmuth
Sutton
Woolsey

That's 33 of the 95 Democrats who voted against.

Can't get to House.gov to verify, but the roll call listed at DailyKos shows that my old, rather vulnerable, Blue Dog rep in KS, Dennis Moore, voted for the bailout. Yay sanity, there.

We live in interesting times.

I remember, when I was younger, wishing that I lived in more interesting times.

I would very much like to go back to the boring old days.

There's a great breakdown of the votes at 538.com. Essentially, conservatives weren't voting against the bill as conservatives, but as vulnerable Congressmen, which in this election cycle happens to mean conservatives. The point about how retiring Congressmen voted 23-2 in favor, even though the retiring class in '08 is dominantly Republican, especially caught my attention.

In short: the bill doesn't need to be more conservative to win over votes -- it needs to be more popular with swing voters.

If the political problem of a more liberal bill passing along party lines is that the Blue Dogs won't support it, can someone explain to me why they wouldn't?

Also, what do we mean by a 'more liberal' bill? I'm continuing to interpret that as one that restructures mortgages, passes the SCHIP expansion, includes the 'second stimulus' package - stuff like that. Are the Blue Dogs against all that?

Fuck the Bush Dogs.

Heath Shuler voted no. His GOP opponent this year in a conservative district has no money, no support, no hope. He's going to dance through the hardest re-election campaign he's likely to face -- the first one -- and can look to climb the greasy pole of seniority. An aggressively populist bill ought to get him onside, and if not, fuck him.

I just did a quick count of how the membership of the Blue Dogs and (for contrast) the Progressive Caucus voted, and it looks like they were both pretty evenly split:

Blue Dogs AYE: 25
Blue Dogs NAY: 22

Progressive Caucus AYE: 35
Progressive Caucus NAY: 32

So it doesn't look to me like the opposition (at least among Democrats) was particularly ideological -- since both Blue Dogs and Progressives split down the middle, with slight tilts toward passage.

Good work, Lefkowitz.

What's worth noting there is that both Blue Dogs and Progressives voted against the bill at rates greater than the overall Democratic caucus.

Overall - 59.57% in favor
Blue Dogs - 53.19% in favor
Progressives - 52.24% in favor
Neither Progressives nor Blue Dogs - 66.12% in favor

For good measure:

The Congressional Black Caucus actually split almost evenly, but slightly against - 46.18% in favor (18 in favor, 21 opposed)

The Hispanic Caucus (including the Sanchez sisters, who left due to personal problems with Joe Baca): 9-13 against - 40.9% in favor.

It's clear that the opposition to the bill for many Republican members was due to its perception as a use of taxpayer money to bail out fat cats on Wall Street - that is, it was populist in nature. If a more populist bill is constructed, that didn't add on stuff like schip and foreclosure help, etc. but instead structured the bailout differently (either with nationalization or wall street tax)in a more populist direction, perhaps both Republican and Democratic no votes could be switched. What's needed is a popular bill, not a liberal one. Now, maybe there is no way for any bailout bill to be popular in these quarters, but it's worth finding out.