No Deal

Bailout fails. House GOP says they lost about a dozen votes because of Speaker Pelosi's partisan closing remarks. Me, I think with these guys it's just business, nothing personal. You don't spend fifteen years building a political career to make your biggest vote on one speech. If the congressmen thought they had a deal to keep this issue out of the November election, maybe then
the Speaker disabused them of an already silly illusion.

What's next? They need about twenty votes. They could try to get them with amendments, but it seems the problems are first fundamental and then political. If folks don't think this enormous project will work, what can you offer on the margin to bring them on board? The Dems could probably pass it on their own if they added in the bankruptcy stuff or the housing slush fund, but they can't go too far or they lose the 60 votes they need in the Senate.

The twenty votes might emerge if the markets blow up entirely, or if members here from their business constituents that they have to do something. Absent that they may need a new idea, or a new Treasury Secretary.

But it's been ten days since Secretary Paulson said we must have this. If the world keeps turning as we go through these gyrations, that assertion might begin to accumulate a discount.

ADDED: A lot will also depend on feedback from the districts. A lot could depend on the constituency condemnation / congratulation of the "no" votes, and what heat the "yes" votes take. The next few days could show some political price discovery.