Of course, I’m speculating a bit about how it unfolded, but the highest figure on Republican votes for this bill I have seen in any reporting has been 75, and that was the number that the minority whip said that they could get. If Boehner promised Pelosi more than that, he was exaggerating the level of support; my guess is that it was never really as high as 75. If the whip thought that it was, I am guessing members who said they would back it ended up flipping at the last minute. In any case, 75 doesn’t get the job done if the Democrats are delivering 140. It could be that the earlier reports of a lower number were wrong and more members signed on over the weekend, but it seems to me that if I was aware of these stories in The Hill and elsewhere the people whose job it was to tally votes and make sure the thing passed should have known it, too.

If you are right that the Republican leaders knew they didn’t have the votes, and knowingly lied to Pelosi that they did, doesn’t that mean it was all a setup? That the Republican leadeship decided to lie to Pelosi, lead her to think she had enough votes to pass the bill, and then pull the rug out from under her in order to embarrass the Democrats and create a giant national emergency? I’m not sure how else to interpret it, if you are right about the underlying facts.

Also, it’s kind of interesting that you think Pelosi should consider the opinions of bloggers about the number of votes available for the bailout as more reliable than the Republican leadership of the house. What does that say about the Republican leadership?

I’m not sure what the leadership thought, but when you have news reports in The Hill with opponents of the bill saying on the record that the leadership doesn’t have the votes that should have set off alarms that whatever the leaders thought they knew may have been wrong. Did members of both conferences lie to their leaders, say that they would support the measure and then back away at the last minute? Maybe, but the more straightforward explanation seems to me to be that the leaders didn’t really believe that their members would vote against something that was, at least according to them, going to save the country from doom. They may have thought that putting it to a vote would put people on the spot and force them to set aside their objections. If so, they were clearly wrong.

Sometimes there just isn’t a deal to be done, and that’s obvious. And I’ve been involved in handshake agreements where someone takes the deal back and is told “no, I can’t agree to that” by higher authority.

But this wasn’t a deal where the Democrats were desperate to get it done because it was their deepest, most cherished wish, and they fooled themselves into thinking they’d get what they wanted.

The argument that “it was well known that Republican support was below 60 votes” would have meant that the leaders introduced the bill in the near certainty that it would fail. I doubt that Pelosi/Hoyer and Boehner/Blunt thought this – I think the GOP leaders suggested that they had 80 or so they could count on, and might get it to 90. I don’t know that they’d have shared the names, but the Democrats would have thought (a) their counterparts can count heads and (b) if it’s close some arms can be twisted or side deals done. I guess both were surprised at how few House Republicans were prepared to hold their noses.

But, yes, in answer to the question, Pelosi was foolish for believing Boehner if he told her that he could get 80 votes. Bloggers and journalists were reporting all weekend that Republican support for the bill was below 60 votes. I didn’t dig up a link for this because I assumed that was more or less well known at this point. They were lucky to have gotten it to the number that they did. The whining about Pelosi’s “partisan” speech is a way to cover up for their own failure in getting enough votes. It is transparently false, and we all know that, which confirms the earlier reporting that Republican support was always going to be weak. They didn’t bolt at the last minute. Most of them were always against it.

Anyone who finds the posts here unreadable should save themselves the trouble of commenting on things they can’t bear to read.

Pelosi could have delivered over 220 votes for a red meat Democratic wish list, a Christmas tree to satisfy every member of their caucus. Damn the minority party! Of course, it wouldn’t have passed the Senate or gotten a Presidential signature, but I’m sure the votes were there in the House for a bill promising Democrats blood in response for the bailout.

But nope, this was a political compromise, built on a foundation laid by the Administration, with very little time for amendment. They thought they had a deal on Thursday, but the House Republicans said no, so the Democrats in the Senate and House went back and renegotiated. And the House Democrats told Boehner and Blunt they might get 125-140 votes, and exceeded that at 145: if the House Republicans had 85, less than half their caucus, the bill would pass.

But the House leadership, and the Republican nominee (a Senator) and the President (a Republican) couldn’t persuade half their caucus to support a bill that the Republican leadership attested was vital. Why is this Nancy Pelosi’s fault?

It was one of the bedrock principles of the deal that it had to be bipartisan in both Houses of Congress. I have no reason to believe the Republican leadership of both Houses of Congress did not act in good faith. Acting in good faith, they told the Democrats “we can deliver a sufficient number of our members with this deal. We may not like it, you may not like it, but we agree it’s the best we can do.” Yet when push came to shove, the Republican leadership in the House of representatives found that its members would not follow their leaders.

Why is that Nancy Pelosi’s and Steny Hoyer’s fault?

It’s also right to blame/credit the public for this, because their support was not behind the bill. However, that has been changing, and I wonder what the polls will say by the end of the week with the DOW plunging and wiping out their retirements. Oh, right, “comfortable” retirements don’t matter to freedom-loving Republicans anymore. Let’s see how popular that program is come Nov. 4.

No matter what Congress does at this point, it will be unpopular. If any bailout plan averts catastrophe, we’ll have no way of knowing how bad it could have been, and probably the best case scenario at this point is a slow, grinding recession.

I thought Pelosi’s speech was obviously driven by this fact, and I wonder if the Democratic party’s actions weren’t as well.

Actually, yes. That really is the main reason the bill failed. It’s good to note that House members in close races voted overwhelmingly against the bill, but the reason they did so is that the bill was overwhelmingly unpopular. That’s why so many safe-seat members also voted against it.

Oh, who am I kidding?

It wasn’t whether the (running for reelection) congressprimate was from a swing state, it was whether they were in a seriously contested race (many of them are not in swing states, just as the swing states contain many safe districts). But again, I found most interesting the retiring ones, who not only don’t face the voters next month but also don’t have to fear a primary challenge in 2010 (it will be _very_ interesting to see who the Club for Growth in particular targets).

But I agree completely with Klein (didn’t see that remark; thanks!). Why people even bother with Politico.com’s projections when we have Nate and Sean I don’t know.

(my main political blog rotation for months has been Eunomia, Fivethirtyeight, Obsidian Wings, and Samefacts – guess I must be an elitist; ’s OK with me).