Bailout Bill...

This afternoon, representatives from both sides of the aisle reached a ‘fundamental agreement’ on the $700 billion plan to bail out the failed Bush economic programs.

Today’s decision is an unprecedented and somewhat reckless judgement that, coming in the middle of this most critical of election campaigns, has once again shown us the candidates’ policies and personalities in their truest lights and in starkest contrast.

While McCain holds that the economy has been ‘fundamentally strong,’ Barack is running to reverse the Republican tax breaks for the most profitable corporations, in favour of supporting working American families who feel this pinch the hardest.

McCain’s invitation through President Bush to attend bipartisan crisis talks is a clear political stunt, and the Senator from Arizona’s manoeuvring on the first Presidential debate tomorrow night is cowardice posturing as leadership.

But what McCain doesn’t get is that at this time, we need to see our leaders, we need accountability and we need to hear their proposed resolutions to the crisis.

Obama is ready to debate the issues at stake in this election and to tell the country ‘not just what they want to hear, but what they need to know’ tomorrow night.

Drive for Obama has today had the privilege of witnessing the unfurling of this historic electoral and economic high-drama at first hand.

In the Senate chamber, we heard the senior Senator from New York, Charles Schumer, talk of these ‘painful experiences’ are a natural ‘rendezvous with reality’ resulting from the ‘Bush debts,’ and that the failed Republican programs have been ‘not a natural disaster or economic inevitability, [but] a human failure.’

Earlier, we had the opportunity in the rotunda of the Capitol Building to say a brief hello to ‘the other candidate.’

And tomorrow night, following some exciting appointments we have in DC in the afternoon, which we will let you all know about over the weekend, we will be with the Obama campaign’s Richmond, VA, precinct captain, Aaron Aronowicz, and his family at their home to meet local Democrats and discuss what we’re all doing to make sure this election goes the way it must.

Alex