When the White House met with bankers after the AIG scandal and they said they didn't want to be criticized for getting huge bonuses paid for by taxpayers, the White House complied and "cooled their rhetoric." The President told the public that Timothy Geithner had been instructed to do everything in his power to claw back those bonuses, and the House passed a bill doing just that. But it died in the Senate.
You remember all those campaigns by the unions, by the online groups, by liberal economics and finance organizations pushing the Senate to take it up?
Yeah, me either.
Which means that the teabaggers were in perfect position to harvest all of the discontent over the bank bailout, and no coherent liberal critique was offered. I heard it over and over again -- if you wanted to criticize the White House on financial issues, your institutional funding would dry up instantly.
We had a great opportunity to turn this discontent with the bailouts into support for a progressive agenda but it's gone now.
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