The Dim Prospects for Meaningful Financial Reform

Well, the Senate just spent a year trying and failing to pass a moderate, compromised-to-hell health reform plan.  Which, incidentally, if that is comprehensive reform I’m not really sure I’d like to see their “tinkering around the edges”.  However, the important thing is that they managed to defuse special interest anger by buying them off with legislative goodies.  Wait, that’s not right.  Regardless, at least they passed something.  Er. I don’t remember how that worked out.  Whatever.  That was resolved one way or another, it’s time for another glorious legislative battle!
The Democratic reform proposal was mild, to say the least.  Regulations aren’t going to be strengthened that much, and the Senate is now out to remove the only comprehensible and popular part of the bill, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  No one understands derivatives trading regulation, not the public and certainly not the Senate.  However, an agency which will make sure banks don’t screw you over?  That’s easy to understand and polls well.  So naturally centrist Democrats are out to kill it.  Chris Dodd, head of the Banking Committee and thus for these purposes far more powerful than President Obama, also wants to make sure the bill is “bipartisan”. That worked out well for health care.  Oh, and the new Senator from Massachusetts is bought-and-paid-for by the financial industry.  While I’m guessing that the Congress is more likely to pass something called “Financial Regulatory Reform” than “Health Care Reform”, there really doesn’t seem any way that anything with teeth passes. After all, there’s really nothing in the House bill which would prevent more bailouts, and it’s likely to be totally rewritten to banks’ specifications in the Senate.
Long story short, this is just another part of the Democratic Congress’s very visible and baffling determination to commit political suicide.  They’ve had a year with nominal total control and haven’t managed to do anything popular.  The stimulus was watered down so far that unemployment hit 10% AND as a bonus completely discredited the idea of fiscal stimulus.  Health care is probably dead, happy-talk notwithstanding, and will be remembered as a fiasco.  Beyond these obvious policy failures, the Congress has spent the entire year giving the finger to the Democratic base.
While centrist Democrats like to talk all the time about how the Democratic Party is overreaching, speaking as a bona fide member of the far-left base I can tell you that this Congress has done nothing large to appease us.  There are a number of things Obama or Congress could have done to throw the base a bone. A single one of these would fit the bill: Close Guantanamo, stop domestic spying, restore some measure of civil liberties, make meaningful contributions to peace in the Middle East, withdraw from Iraq, reform health care, reform immigration, repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, reform the financial industry, cap carbon emissions, all things he promised on the campaign trail. There are more.  Both Obama and Congress have conspicuously failed to do a single thing that would motivate the base to vote in November or indeed to significantly distinguish them from the last two years of the Bush Administration.  Sure, Republicans have no platform or plan other than slashing the deficit while cutting taxes and not cutting any spending; the prospect of them holding power is terrifying.  But at this point, what exactly have the Democrats done that justifies them continuing to hold power? If the last year is to be believed, Congressional Democrats’ ideal situation is to continue to indefinitely hold the majority and indefinitely do nothing with it.
“At least we’re not Bush” is starting to wear extremely thin.