We just had round 1 of the battle to reform the banks, and we couldn't even begin debate on it. Yay Senate rules! Now I don't want to talk about what's in the bill or anything like that -- I just want to cover how the major players are covering this story.
CNN: The graphic pretty well describes what happened, but the lead paragraph:
Senate Democrats failed to muster enough votes Monday to take up Wall Street reform, with a key Democrat voting with Republicans against the push to get the debate started.screams "Dems suck!" more than "Republicans are obstructionists!"
At the New York Times the headline is "G.O.P. Blocks Debate on Financial Oversight Bill" but again: "Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to cut off a filibuster of the motion to proceed to the bill."
As long as everyone knows that the Democrats want to reform Wall Street and the Republicans don't, we're in business. I just hope this doesn't come off as "Dems are incapable of governing."
2 comments:
If the GOP blocks all reform efforts, Dems will hammer them for it in the Fall - and they know it.
Bell Curve has a point about how the coverage breaks down though. More often than not, Republican obstructionism is framed in terms of Democratic failures rather than Republican contrarianism.
This is a particularly shameless case of contrarianism because the Tea Party crowd HATES Wall Street. If this story is framed - accurately - as Republicans defending Big Banking, then they could alienate their biggest electoral advantage this cycle.
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