The Obama Bankruptcy Bill Myth

by: Chris Bowers

Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 13:58


I am not exactly sure how this all got started, but today Harold Meyerson repeats a blogosphere rumor that never entirely goes away. Even though Obama voted against the bankruptcy bill, once again he is accused of voting in favor of it:

The Democrats, by contrast, are on matters of economics the party of -- well, not labor, as such. Not consumers, as such. The younger masters of the universe who work on Wall Street like as not are liberal on cultural issues and appalled at Republican foreign policy, though they're no fans of regulating capitalism. They give big-time to such Democrats as Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer (who has opposed a fairer tax rate for hedge fund operators). The Democratic Party is their political home -- just as it is labor's.

This is a major gaffe from Meyerson to try and tie Obama to a bill that he voted against both in its final version (see here) and when it came to the cloture vote. The Obama campaign is rightfully pushing back hard against this. As I said before, I don't know exactly how the "Obama voted for the Bankruptcy Bill" rumor got started, but it might have been Obama's vote on the class action lawsuit bill at roughly the same time.  No matter what it was, popping up in Daily Kos comments and diaries for a few years. Even though I can't find the link, earlier this year it even resulted in a dairy moving to the top of the Daily Kos recommended list with a title along the lines of "BREAKING: Obama did not vote for the Bankruptcy Bill."

As much as blogs are dumped on for not being accurate news sources, this incident actually demonstrates one superiority between prominent and semi-prominent progressive bloggers to opinion columnists in other media. Specifically, there is no way anyone among the 100 or so progressive bloggers with the most traffic could have gotten away with making a factually incorrect claim like this without being instantly bombarded by their commenters. Whenever prominent bloggers make claims about how someone voted, they are required to provide hyperlinks to the vote, or else face the wrath of their readers. The lag time for someone like Meyerson is far longer. Now, it will be difficult for the Obama campaign to ever thoroughly beat down this falsehood about his voting record.

In the interest of holding the media more accountable, I think it would be a useful exercise for every article that is published online to add hyperlinks that provide access source material whenever factual claims are made. This is what we have to do in the blogosphere, and it helps keep us honest. If other media were forced to do the same thing, it might help them out quite a bit, as well.

Chris Bowers :: The Obama Bankruptcy Bill Myth

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The Obama Bankruptcy Bill Myth | 15 comments
Nice (0.00 / 0)
I especially like how, instead of picking a more suitable Democrat for his tirades, Meyerson comes up with a different reason to criticize Obama.  Sounds like he has an agenda rather than a thesis.
Obama Voted to Allow Loan Sharking (4.00 / 1)
Obama may have voted against the final bankruptcy bill and Meyerson may have technically been wrong, but Obama did vote to permit loan sharking in a HUGE way. Here are the details.
Eh, that vote doesn't look like a good indicator of much. (0.00 / 0)
One, you have an amendment that was clearly going down to defeat, so the voting is just less significant than the clutch voting on an amendment with real legislative implications.

Two, while Senate Democrats split 50-50 on that vote, the split wasn't terribly ideological, so it's hard to argue that there was a side of angels and a side of devils.

Voting nay (with Obama) you have Leahy, Durbin, Reed, Kerry, Sarbanes, Wyden, Bingaman... all pretty credible and reasonably trustworthy liberals.

Voting aye (against Obama) you have a bunch of liberals, true (Harkin, Corzine, Boxer, Dorgan, Kennedy) but also a bunch of conservatives (Lieberman, Pryor, Salazar, Bayh, Feinstein) as well as the finance experts, Conrad Dodd and Schumer.

So if the vote doesn't split the caucus along the obvious ideological lines that we all know so well, then does it really indicate much?  There's little reason to think that Leahy Durbin or Kerry were positioning themselves for anything, trying to earn points with right-wing interests, or anything like that.  So it doesn't automatically follow that whatever their reasons were for voting nay (and I don't know what they were) weren't also Obama's reasons.

Anyway, it might have been a bad vote, but the rollcall doesn't really suggest that.  I assume that people like Leahy Durbin Reed Wyden Kerry Sarbanes had a credible reason for their vote, and once the existence of a credible reason is presumed, then you need a specific argument for why Obama had a defective reason for his vote rather than a credible one.

[Just as a disclaimer, I generally support the populist economics you're advancing.]

[ Parent ]
Ah, I see (0.00 / 0)
So if a bunch of Dems vote one way that's awful, that is a good excuse for other Dems to vote that way. Makes a lot of sense.

What a wonderful "progressive" movement.

[ Parent ]
Your ability to engage in black and white thinking is truly astonishing. (0.00 / 0)
I just made an argument that maybe this vote wasn't quite as simple as angels and devils, noble and awful, given some of the people that we see appearing on the "awful" side.  I argued that these people have built up enough personal credibility over their 30 year public careers that their presence on the "awful" side suggests that maybe there was a legitimate reason to vote that way in this case, that maybe the amendment was more complex or flawed than it seems at first blush, and that maybe it's possible to vote this way in this case for reasons that aren't awful, malign, spineless, or sinister, since none of the accused have significant reputations for acting in that way.  I said that the specific presence of specific people suggests that this specific amendment may have had specific problems.

And to that, I get a bunch of sarcasm about "progressives" in scare-quotes, and more black-and-white verdicts about "awfulness."

Nice.

[ Parent ]
The article cites (0.00 / 0)
his support of the class action lawsuit, not the bankruptcy bill. Has the article changed?
Yes. (4.00 / 1)
There's a correction at the top of the current article: "The original version of this column incorrectly said that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted for 2005 legislation making it more difficult for Americans to declare bankruptcy. "
[ Parent ]
And even that's unfair (0.00 / 0)
Part of what CAFA did was force corporate defendants to pay out real damages to victims in class action settlements, as opposed to paying off the lawyers' fees and offering the victims meaningless coupon settlements.
[ Parent ]
Are you seriously defending the class action bill? (0.00 / 0)
Really? Now that is pretty damn shocking.
[ Parent ]
On balance, it's a good bill (0.00 / 0)
Seriously curtailed on venue shopping, ended these nonsense coupon settlements.  Having litigated on both sides of the class action divide (and I'm now on the plaintiffs' side), I have some basis for what I'm talking about.  Helped plaintiffs; hurt plaintiffs' lawyers, but no one's gone out of business in the past four years because of CAFA.
[ Parent ]
Truly telling (0.00 / 0)
Your comments are truly, truly telling.
[ Parent ]
In the interest (4.00 / 1)
of showing off: http://www.dailykos....
Damn you suck (0.00 / 0)
I was just about to post the link myself... ;-)

And fwiw, I found it by doing a search for "Stories and Diaries", selecting "Search Archive", setting the date range to "1 year" to "Now", and making "obama + bankruptcy" the search term. Only took a few seconds to run.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
Well done (0.00 / 0)
I bow to your search engine skills!
[ Parent ]
Newsweek or time (0.00 / 0)
I remember reading an article about Barak Obama that talked about how he sided with the class action lawsuit, and implied that he was no against the bankruptcy bill's ideas. I don't remember where I read it, I'll look for it and get back to you.
The Obama Bankruptcy Bill Myth | 15 comments
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