I continue to believe that voting for or against the bailout plan won't help or hurt Congressional candidates very much in November. A new Democracy Corps poll shows a small plurality in of voters in key districts favoring the bailout. An earlier ABC poll showed a small plurality of voters opposing it.
On the other hand, the financial crisis is a huge issue. Polls have shifted by about five points in favor of Democrats across the board -- in House, Senate, and presidential races -- since the crisis became apparent a few weeks ago.
So to make this simple: voters blame Republicans for causing the crisis but not necessarily for their reaction to it.
Randy Kuhl's sponsorship of an amendment that would have allowed hedge funds to take larger positions in pensions is typical of the kind of willy-nilly deregulation that helped lead to this disaster. If the DCCC has any sense, they will run ads against Kuhl about this.
We can expect McCain's role as one of the so-called Keating Five (the five Senators who were said to have been improperly influenced by Keating) to become an important issue in the last few weeks of this campaign. It certainly should. A new documentary about this will reportedly appear at the site Keating Economics tomorrow. Here's a trailer for it.
