Jim Poniewozik and I are going to try it again for tonight's vice presidential debate, and this time, our colleague Michael Grunwald will be with us as well. I will be blogging from a special screening that has been set up at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in Carlsbad, California. To join us, just click here.

We've asked the High Sheriffs to fix the technical glitches we experienced last week (and just as a precaution, this time, I've asked JP to lock up their Jim Beam). The three of us will be blogging as a single thread, with a single comments section.

A senior Democrat House aide in a position to know tells me they are still short on GOP votes on the bailout, er, rescue plan. Unless more names of Republicans committed to switching their votes are produced by tomorrow the vote will be postponed till the weekend to give Bush and the GOP more time to convince their members to vote for the deal. Fearful of a Monday repeat, Dems are refusing to bring the bill to the floor unless the have the actual GOP whip counts - including names - showing they have enough votes, the aide said. This is what Pelosi said earlier today:

We want to see if we still have the 141 votes we had before. And that seems to be coming in pretty well. But we haven't -- you know, what you have to remember is members like to see the bill before they give you an answer. And they saw what happened in the Senate last night. But now they're getting a closer look. And as they review it, then we can go forward to see what the vote will be. And we're not going to take a bill to the floor that doesn't have the votes. I'm optimistic that we will take a bill to the floor.

The question is: when?

Update: Another senior Democratic House aide tells me that they are still pushing like mad to get this thing done tomorrow. At a 6pm caucus meeting tonight, Pelosi underlined to House Democrats the importantance of voting on this bill tomorrow. "The concensus of the caucus is to move tomorrow," the aide said. "Many Dem supporters spoke in favor of bill." So, now question is: does this mean the Dems would be willing to make up any GOP shortfall with votes of their own?

Update2: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer puts out this below statement. Seems the show will go on.

"The House will consider the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act tomorrow morning.

"I am hopeful that there will be bipartisan, majority support for this bill that is critical to stabilizing our nation's economy for all working Americans."

From TIME's Amy Sullivan:

Sarah Palin's handling of Roe v. Wade questions last night is getting all the attention. But Katie Couric asked another question of both running mates: Why do you think it's important to have a wall separating church and state?

Each of them got half of the answer, but in doing so reflected the instincts of Republicans and Democrats to see only one side of the issue. Palin said Jefferson meant that the state could not deny religious freedom and expression, while Biden said the wall was intended "to keep government out of religion." In fact, Jefferson's writing on the matter--both in the letter to Danbury Baptists that first used the phrase "wall of separation" and elsewhere--made clear that he thought it was necessary to protect the state from the undue influence of the church and protect the church from the undue influence of the state.

But while Palin's answer was only half-right and a bit meandering, Biden's response was actually wrong. Here's how he started off: "The best way to look at it is to look at every state where the wall's not built. Look at every country in the world where religion is able to impact the governance. Almost every one of those countries are in real turmoil."

Biden is obviously referring to countries where religious fundamentalists control part or all of the government. But those aren't the only countries with established religions. Having a wall between church and state actually puts the United States in the minority of countries around the world. Look at Denmark, Greece, Costa Rica, Thailand, England. All have established religions and far fewer protections in place for religious freedom and expression.

And, interestingly, it's led to the opposite of what Biden warns about--a hyper-religious society. In many countries with official religions, rates of religious attendance and belief are actually quite low, certainly lower than in the U.S. One popular theory about the flourishing of religious belief and diversity in the U.S. is that by not being able to rely on government support and funding, American churches and denominations have had to compete in a religious marketplace to gain followers and resources.

Several Republicans--Reagan Administration sorts--have said to me in the past few days, "It's over. McCain blew it." I dunno. We have a month left--and all sorts of things can happen. Here's a list of some of them, in order of likelihood:

1. McCain finds a gut-bucket issue that works--my personal suspicion is that it will be immigration demagoguery, even though he wrote the comprehensive bill. Obama's position in favor of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants is an area of legitimate disagreement between the candidates and an obvious target.

2.Osama Bin Laden weighs in: He did it last time, releasing a tape hammering Bush on the last weekend of the campaign. The CIA assessment was that bin Laden wanted Bush--whose policies had brought many new recruits--reelected. This time, you could see Osama "endorsing" Obama...

3. McCain does better in the next two debates--one of them is a town meeting, his favorite format. Another possible opportunity for McCain is that the first debate was watched by a mere 50 million, probably because it was held on Friday night. The town hall debate audience will be much larger, I suspect, giving McCain a second chance to make first impressions.

4. Obama screws up somehow--yeah, yeah, highly unlikely. But not impossible. After all, he did make the
"cling to religion and guns" comment. More likely, will be a revisitation of a past screwup--Jeremiah Wright inserts his humble presence into the campaign. Some youthful political indiscretion is unearthed.

5. The economic issue recedes and national security comes to the fore. Iraq blows up again (the Shi'ites diss the Sunni Awakening), Pakistan disintegrates and the disposition of the nukes is unclear--and then there's always the not-so-unthinkable...another terrorist strike. (Although given McCain's erratic behavior in the past month, I'm not so sure this would be an advantage for him.)

Finally, I've watched a parade of talking heads--politicians and journalists--solemnly announce that the only path to success for John McCain now is to go negative. Given McCain's combative nature, it's probably a safe assumption.Then again, McCain has been relentlessly negative since mid-summer and it hasn't worked very well for him--and also, McCain has a natural tendency to confound the conventional wisdom. So he could shock us all...and go positive. He could sign on to Senator Ron Wyden's Universal Health Care bill, which is getting support from the business community. He could come up with a really great alternative energy idea. He could--well, on second thought, there's been so little creative policy thinking in McCain's campaign that I'm not even going to put this on the list.

Maybe it was that Darrell Hammond spoof on Saturday night that did it. The LA Times' Faye Fiore reports from Orlando:

Jeffrey Platt wasn't sure what he was going to hear when he took the afternoon off from his struggling architectural firm to see Bill Clinton make his first campaign stop for Barack Obama.

Since vowing at the Democrats' national convention to do all he could to elect the Illinois senator, the former president has been a study in mixed signals and bridled enthusiasm -- like the hostage who hails his captors while blinking in code: "Not really."

But under a blazing sun at the University of Central Florida on Wednesday, Platt, 52, said he heard what he was hoping for, a full-throated Clinton endorsement of Obama.

"Here's why you ought to be for Barack Obama," Clinton said with a passion some felt had gone missing. "He's got better answers -- better answers for the economy, for energy, for healthcare, for education. He knows what it will take to get this country back on track."

Platt left satisfied. "He finally got aggressive," he said after Clinton's speech in this battleground state where the race for 27 electoral votes is tight. "He made it apparent the country is in trouble and Barack Obama is the help we need."

UPDATE: Commenter Paul-NNTO offers a link, so you can watch it yourself. Bill Clinton's wife smartly used her husband in smaller cities and rural areas, where he really made a difference in her turnout. In fact, Obama campaign folks tell me they think they reason they lost the popular vote in Texas was that the Former President was below their radar, scouring up votes in the eastern and western parts of the state. Obama could do worse than to utilize Bill Clinton the same way.

In October of 2004, the U.S. Congress passed a monstrosity commonly known as the "Corporate Tax Bill." It was a legislative Christmas tree, festooned with ornaments for lobbyists and their high-rolling special interest clients. Anti-pork crusaders like John McCain were outraged. "Disgraceful," he told the Washington Post. "A classic example of the special interests prevailing over the people's interest."

On Thursday, McCain and Barack Obama--two candidates who say at every speech that they will end the special interest domination of Washington--voted for a bill that extended many of those same corporate tax breaks and added more, burdening our grandchildren with hundreds of millions of dollars in new federal debt. Neither one raised a significant protest over the inclusion of these unrelated Christmas ornaments. And today, lobbyists are celebrating with their clients all over Washington.

The reason McCain and Obama's voted for the bill is no secret. Both men care more about the $700 billion bailout of U.S. creditors it was attached to than they do about a few hundred million dollars in tax breaks for arrow manufacturers, racetrack owners, Hollywood film and television studios, or "economic development in American Samoa." And they had to make a choice. To get the bailout bill, Senate leaders forced them to also vote for things like another $400 million in tax breaks for movie makers, because, well, you know, Hollywood hurts too.

My point is not that either McCain or Obama are hypocrites. The nature of the legislative business is compromise, and it is perfectly reasonable for politicians to accept something they don't want, if they feel it will get them something more important. But this entire episode does call into question the grand rhetoric that has become a staple of the campaign trail for both McCain and Obama.

More after the jump. . .

(more...)

Yes, yes, I know I should be in St. Louis. But I'm in Carlsbad, California, thanks to our corporate cousins at FORTUNE, who asked me to do a panel tomorrow at their annual Most Powerful Women Summit. This morning's program included a fascinating conversation between the magnificent Carol Loomis, who has been with FORTUNE now for more than 50 years and remains one of the best journalists on the planet, and her longtime buddy Warren Buffett, who lately has been dropping billions here and there--a $3-billion investment in GE yesterday, which came only eight days after he put $5 billion into Goldman Sachs.

Buffett is convinced this bailout is going to turn out to be a terrific deal for the federal government, assuming it buys these distressed assets at market prices, and quipped, "I would take 1% of the Treasury's action." (In fact, one proposal he made was to have private investors join in as partners in some of these deals, taking their cut only after the feds recoup the taxpayer investment.)

He had high praise for Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and urged whoever gets elected in November to keep him on into the next Administration. Buffett also said one of the unsung heroes of this crisis--which he described as "an economic Pearl Harbor"--has been FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, who has managed to hold the banking system together in recent weeks by helping to engineer a series of takeovers. "In my book, she stands higher than any CEO in America today," Buffett said.

And Buffett had his usual wry commentary on the tax system, noting that he is now paying a lower rate than he ever has, including back when he delivered newspapers, and that it is lower than the tax rate paid by the cleaning lady in his office. "The government looks at me, and says, 'You're like the condor and the spotted owl. We have to protect you,' " Buffett said. And he noted that he is getting this bonanza without the use of any tax shelters, or even a tax planner. But then he quickly corrected himself: "I guess I do have a tax planner. His name is President Bush."

UPDATE: I just found another Buffett gem in my notes. "If each candidate would say who their Treasury Secretary would be, and we could have the Treasury Secretaries debate, we might learn more than having the Vice Presidents debate."

It's an old meme, but tonight an especially tempting one. Asked yesterday about what words I'd choose for Palin, I went with "you know" (seriously, girl, find a new filler word) and, of course, "media":

What words would our commenters claim in the quest to get seriously sloshed?

Here’s the latest from me. John Shadegg’s support should help shore support on the GOP side, but what remains a question is if Pelosi’s center flank, the Blue Dogs, will balk. At least 24 of the 44 Blue Dogs that voted for the bailout bill have previously voted against the tax extenders. A second attempt at a vote is expected Friday in the House.

On Barack Obama's presidential temperament.

Update: The essential point of the column was confirmed on the Senate floor last night, as Barack Obama walked across the floor to shake John McCain's hand--McCain gave him a quick handshake, a frosty look and then turned away.