Of course, now that one of the two parties has started to act much more like the disciplined parliamentary caucuses found in Westminster democracies, not everyone is so enamoured of this notion.

But it’s interesting to see a bit of momentum building for a Question Time in the US, which would represent a distinctly different relation between the executive and legislature.

I wonder, though, whether many of its proponents have taken the time to watch Australia’s Question Time, or Britain’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

THE slaughter in Mumbai was a barbaric attack not just on India, but on us. On the West.

Now, I don’t think that the reflex response to the desire to prematurely ascribe blame to Al-Qaeda before the facts are known should be to rush off in the opposite direction. But it did interest me that many of the television reports a few nights ago sought commentary from experts in terror studies, rather than sourcing those who have a deep knowledge of Indian and subcontinental politics and history per se. This in itself ties in with the desire to write one single narrative of international terrorism, as the terrorism experts in question are usually best informed about Middle Eastern and South East Asian affairs. This in turn both ascribes more unity to international terror networks than actually exists, and turns them into an immediate and default suspected cause, no matter what the specificities of the political and social environment in which attacks actually occur.

Anyone with anything more than a passing acquaintance with Indian politics, society and history, though, would know that it’s quite possible, even probable, that the attacks’ causes lie in factors such as the increasingly weak Indian central government’s inability to control its territory and monopolise the use of violence, and the inability of either the justice system or the state (even after the Congress-led coalition defeated the BJP) to prevent inter-communal violence and massacres such as those in Gujarat in 2002 or hold anyone to account for them. Political violence in India recently, it’s also worthy of note, has often been directed as much against Christians as Muslims, and what we may be seeing is the emergence of what are basically pogroms on a much bigger and more organised scale. The role of the Shiv Sena Party in the governance of Mumbai itself, a party which has called for the formation of Hindutva suicide squads and an ethno-religious sectarian neighbourhood cleansing program in the city, may additionally be a factor.

One shouldn’t rush to judgement. And one shouldn’t do that also for reasons of preserving an awareness of the horror of the deaths and injuries that have been inflicted in Mumbai and some more respect and dignity for the victims than instantly transforming them into political footballs. But if causes are to be sought, and they should be, both the Pakistani connections to violence and the emergence of terrorist movements pushing back against the nationalist pogroms may well be found in time – after the facts are in – to have been at work in these tragic events.

Elsewhere: Crooks & Liars, The Independent and Boing Boing.

Update: Shakira Hussein in Crikey.

Update: The Blair/Bolt Watch Project, Guy Beres and a roundup of citizen journalism at The Guardian.

scatterplot:

…the last time Democrats won 50%+ of the House popular vote: November 4. The last time the Republicans did? 1946. The graph of the House popular vote is rather telling… Yes, the policies of each of these parties are shifting/emergent. But I must confess that I read this chart with a degree of naive hope: that our brief experiment with conservatism is over. I can even imagine the tombstone:

Conservatism
1992-2004

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/house-1942-date.jpg"

red state blue state rich state poor state:

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/democrats-house-vote.png"

Myth #1: The Obama turnout meant that Prop 8 won in California.

But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters — the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) — voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin

- Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com

Myth #2: The Democrats’ victory wasn’t comprehensive.

What happened? Overall, the Democrats gained a bit in 2004, a lot in 2006, and some in 2008. But we knew that (see the time series plot in the blog entry linked above). We also see a bit of scatter. Beyond this, yes, there are some patterns. In 2006, the Democrats particularly gained in Republican areas–see how those dots in the lower left of the second graph are way above the 45-degree line? In 2008, the swing is more uniform… Returning to the “How well did the Democrats actually do in 2008? question, I think that one problem is that people are comparing Obama’s vote to Kerry’s vote but then comparing the congressional Democrats in 2008 to the congressional Democrats in 2006. I think it’s more appropriate to compare 2008 to 2004 in both cases. As Paul Krugman put it, “Maybe the reason people don’t see this is that the Democratic House gains were spread over two elections.”

- Andrew Gelman.

Myth #3: Obama would be politically sensible to govern as a moderate gradualist.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn’t listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself.

- Paul Krugman.

Mind you, I can’t see personally how anyone would be scared of Harry Reid, or why he’s some ultra-liberal commie pinko. And Nancy Pelosi and “San Francisco values”? Well, look what happened in ’06. In the House, the Democrats are hunting deep in red state territory and in the Republican suburbs and exurbs, actively campaigning in over 60 GOP held districts, while the Republicans play defence. Gains of 20-30 seats are expected.

But there’s probably more interest in the Senate contest. The Senators up for election this time around were elected in 2002 – a good year for Republicans. There’s some hope that the Democrats will increase their current majority from 51, perhaps reaching 60 – a point at which the minority can no longer hold legislation hostage through filibuster threats. (Note, though, that party discipline is nowhere near as tight as it is in parliamentary systems, though it’s much tighter among the Republicans than it used to be since they became more ideologically unified.) The Dems now include among their wafer thin majority two independents – Socialist (more like European style social democrat) Bernie Sanders of Vermont and “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman may well lose his committee chair after the election, but in terms of his re-election prospects, he’s still got some incentive to caucus with the majority.

Nate Silver has all the good oil on which races to watch. Stirling Newberry also has a worthwhile analysis of the contests in the South – Virginia, where former Governor Mark Warner (D) (and former 08 presidential hopeful) should easily take Richard Lugar’s seat after retirement, Georgia, where Jim Martin (D) looks good against Saxy Chambliss (R) (and where there might be a runoff under state law if the Libertarian candidate can prevent either the Dem or Repub from getting 50%), and North Carolina where Elizabeth Dole (R) looks to be in trouble. Longer shots are one of the two races in Mississippi (to fill the unexpired part of Trent Lott’s term), and Kentucky where GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is vulnerable. John Cormyn’s seat in Texas is a really long shot, but turnout – if it’s big and big for Obama – may well be a factor in making a lot of the races tighter than they appear to be.

In Alaska, Ted Stevens (R) (he who put the “tubes” in the intertubes) looks like he’s finished after his corruption conviction last week, but stranger things have happened. Comedian Al Franken (D) in Minnesota may pick up the seat, though there’s a wildcard with a strong independent, and Franken hasn’t been the strongest candidate. There’s been some talk that moderate Republican Susan Collins might be in trouble in Maine, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

But the two big unknown knowns are Obama’s coat-tails (and the turnout factor) and state by state idiosyncracies. 58 would seem to be a safe number for the Democrats to aspire to, but it may be higher, and there may be states that produce surprises.

Update: Nate Silver on the final Senate polls:

A clear favorite has been established in all but one of the 34 senate races on the ballot today. Although the Democrats remain in as strong a position in the aggregate as they have been all year, their odds of emerging with a 60-seat caucus now appear fairly long — no better than about 15 percent.

The race where there’s no favourite is Minnesota.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. But you can follow what’s going on via this liveblog from Catherine Rampell at the NYT’s Economix.

NB: Previous discussion and commentary at LP on the bailout, the financial markets crisis and the ramifications can be accessed here.

Update: via danny in comments -

1:25 p.m. | Bill passes: The bill passed 263 to 171. The vast majority of Democrats voted in favor (172 yeas to 63 nays), while a slighter majority of Republicans voted against (91 yeas to 108 nays).

Reaction and commentary over the fold.

Dollars and Sense explains why the Dow nevertheless fell:

it is becoming clear that investors are more concerned about the the breakdown of the commercial paper and interbank markets than they are about the various fixes proposed to get them going again. As well they might be.

Needless to say, the, the bill’s passage didn’t do much to sooth the CP market, or the interbank market (which deals with banks lending amongst themselves)–the latter rate actually rose. The markets clearly think the TARP package is too little, too late, at least right now: we’ll see what happens next week.

This thing has taken on a life of its own, like the proverbial monster.

Ian Welsh skewers the “government will make a profit” talking point, arguing that the bill is a “huge giveaway of money to private interests”. Mike Madden looks at what changed politically to get the bill passed. Jill at Feministe links to some alternative policy suggestions, while Larry Elliott in The Guardian favours learning some lesson from the early 90s Swedish bank crash, but warns that the crisis may turn into something that “drags on for years” as with the Japanese deflation of the same time period.

Ian Welsh reads the tea leaves of the economic consequences, and is not sanguine that Obama will pop up in January and fix everything:

And there are some ways this could be fixed. A lot of economists, like Stiglitz, are betting that Obama will eventually do a real bailout bill. We’ll see. He made no real push to fix this bill at all that I am aware of and his various economic policies have long indicated to me that he is essentially a gentler kinder Reaganite in economic terms, so I’m not so sure. Still, there are solutions, and I’ll talk about some of them in future, as I have in the past. The question is whether there will be any political will to do them. When you can pass a 700 billion bailout for the rich, but putting in real changes in bankruptcy laws to allow folks to keep their houses is unthinkable, it’s clear that the elite consensus is still that the little people are always to be made to pay to clean up their betters mistakes. Until that attitude changes, very little useful is likely to get through Congress.

And thanks to tigtog for pointing to the Money Meltdown site which has a lot of useful info and links.

Update: If you believe Nouriel Roubini is right about what’s going on, it gets even scarier. Hilzoy summarises at Obsidian Wings:

This is indeed a cardiac arrest for the shadow and non-shadow banking system and for the system of financing of the corporate sector. The shutdown of financing for the corporate system is particularly scary: solvent but illiquid corporations that cannot roll over their maturing debt may now face massive defaults due to this illiquidity. And if the financing of the corporate sectors shuts down and remains shut down the risk of an economic collapse similar to the Great Depression becomes highly likely.

I’m not sure, though, how “market sentiment” of “it’s 700 billion or the apocalypse” will deal with this development.

More at OpenLeft.

Ps: Paul Keating on Lateline last night made some very instructive points about why pumping liquidity into markets isn’t working and why Malcolm Turnbull is playing a populist game on interest rates.

Update: The Senate’s lone socialist, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, reflects on the TARP bill’s Senate passage:

This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I’m the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Now, maybe I’m the only person in America who thinks that’s a little bit weird, but that is what I think.

And Glenn Greenwald saw the bill’s rejection in the House as a victory for democracy. Which it sorta is… but perhaps only because the imminence of the election is concentrating Congressional minds. But the fact that substantive alternatives to the bill – or amendments – which seek to modify its nature such that it’s not just a bailout are unlikely to go anywhere should also concentrate the mind.

This is a plan that assumes that the government can buy enough bad debt at above market prices to bail out the banking system. Since as long as the government is willing to spend above market prices (and by market I mean “what other banks would pay for this cr*p”) banks won’t sell it to each other, the government has taken on an open ended obligation. If the pile isn’t that large, then a trillion or so may be enough. But if the pile is much larger than that, and it is, then the government will have to keep ponying up money over and over again. It won’t be limited to the original 700 billion, or trillion, or whatever. It will be an ongoing program that the market will become dependent on. Since the fundamental problems of securitization, over-leverage and declining housing prices haven’t been fixed, there’s little reason to believe that the government could get to the bottom of the pile, since, in fact, it will still be growing. (Especially as the economy gets worse and housing prices continue to drop. And they will, since this provides no floor price for real estate.)

In short, while this plan is an improvement on the original Paulson plan, which is saying, well, almost nothing. It’s still a plan that, at the end of the day, won’t work. That doesn’t mean we won’t see some short term benefits. Throw 700 billion bucks at the economy and the financial sector and it will do something. That’s still a ton of money. But it won’t fix the problem permanently, it will only patch it for a time and even during that time, things will continue to get worse. (For example, expect this to cause oil inflation.)

It’s a bad plan that won’t fix the economy or the financial sector. So we’ll be revisiting this issue in 6 to 9 months or so when it becomes clear that the problem hasn’t been solved, and that not solving it is costing a hell of a lot of money which could have been used to actually fix things.

Elsewhere: Hoyden, Obsidian Wings, Feministe, and more at Firedoglake.

Public Opinion:

The US plan does not reduce across the board the debt burden of the distressed household sector. Does that mean that without such a component the debt overhang of the household sector will continue to depress consumption spending and will exacerbate the current economic recession?

Will purchasing toxic/illiquid assets of the financial system be an effective and efficient way to recapitalize the banking system? It would appear that the plan does not address the need to recapitalize those financial institutions that are badly undercapitalized. It looks to be a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors. Bailing out wealthy bankers when the millions of families losing their homes get little direct help is not going to play well in Main Street America, which has seen factory after factory close and jobs move overseas. What has happened to fairness in the US?