“If the Democrats actually stood for anything other than sounding as progressive as possible without offending their financial backers, then they would do what Republicans always do in these situations: force a shutdown to save their legislation. How many times did Republicans hold the budget hostage to rescue the Bush tax cuts?
But the Democrats won’t do that here, because they’re not a real party. They’re a marketing phenomenon, a big chunk of oligarchical Blob cleverly sold to voters as the more reasonable and less nakedly corrupt wing of a two-headed political establishment.
So they’ll punt on this issue in the name of “maturity” or “bipartisanship,” Wall Street will get a nice win, and Hillary Clinton or whoever else is being set up as the Blob candidate on the Democratic side will receive an avalanche of Financial Services donations to stave off Warren (who will begin appearing in the press as an unhinged combination of Lev Trotsky and Spartacus). A neat little piece of business all around. I don’t know whether to applaud or throw up.”
Matt Taibbi on Wall Street shifting trillion of future losses to the taxpayer
The truth is never more fun than when Matt Taibbi tells it. Wish he’d write a book about the cartoon character in the W.H.