While McCain Was Busy Gimmicking, Congress Derails Bailout For Time Being

While most of the candidates were out campaigning, John McCain stayed behind at his Arlington headquarters so he could pretend he was in Congress being a bi-partisan maverick, or something like that. In fact, he had his whole brigade claiming that he was there to bring the bill in and get passed, when in reality we saw a majority of Republicans and some Democrats opposing it. The defeated bill then caused the largest drop in the Dow ever recorded, nearly a seven percent loss of the total value. There were many reasons to vote against it for Democrats and Republicans and in the end the American people were saved from the largest legit robbery of the poor to pay the rich. And to top it off, the media is now blaming McCain for coming in and screwing everything up.

From Crooks and Liars:

Chris Matthews cuts through the spin and pins the blame squarely where it should be: On House Republicans and John McCain who promised to deliver their vote.

“McCain said he was going to lead the Republican charge, he was going to make sure that this was a bipartisan success. He called charge, and the Republican retreated. That’s what happened here. “

Politico’s Mike Allen writes:

McCain takes credit for bill before it loses

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.

Think about how bad this is for McCain. He “suspended” his campaign last week and promised to get the House GOP on board. The bill failed today because those very same Republicans bailed once Pelosi hurt their feelings. McCain put his leadership credentials on the line and failed. Not a little fail, but an Epic Fail. And the worst part about it is he and his campaign have been claiming for the past 48 hours that it was McCain’s leadership that got the bill passed.

So John, when will we see the humble side of you and admit that your intervention helped make this mess even larger? Oh, that's right, never. McCain's leadership skills are in the gutter, proven by his inability to rein in his party after saying repeatedly that he would. John may have acted heroic in Vietnam, but as a Senator and Presidential nominee, he is clearly anything but.