From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

Retired New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, writing at The New Republic yesterday, makes a critical point, in a piece entitled “Celebrating the Bailout Bill’s Failure”:

Whether you favor the $700 billion bailout or not, the House vote today should make you cheer — loudly.

Why?

Because the majority vote against it shows that Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class, by which I mean Wall Street and the corporations who rely on it for their financing. These campaign donors, a narrow slice of America, have lobbied and donated their way into a system that stacks the economic rules in their favor. But faced with as many as 200 telephone calls against the bailout for every one in favor, a lot of House members decided to listen to their constituents today instead of their campaign donors.

Johnston’s celebration that “Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class” is probably premature given that Congressional leaders are falling all over themselves to assure everyone that this deal will pass in a few days after it is tinkered with in one direction or the other. I recall all too well celebrating a similar “victory” back in March, when House Democrats astonishingly refused to comply with the demands of the “donor class” — and the entire political establishment — to pass Bush’s FISA bill to grant retroactive amnesty to the entire lawbreaking telecom industry, only to watch them jump into line and do what they were told a few months later. The corporate donor class and political establishment may lose a battle here and there, but they almost never lose the war, since they own and control the political battlefield.

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