All the fanciful tales that Ellen Tauscher’s flak Jonathan Kaplan has been selling to bloggers all week, which we all laughed about but nobody believed, seem to finally have found a home. Maybe it’s just a happy coincidence, but an anonymous source in Elana Schor’s TPM article weirdly echoes a trollish piece of email Kaplan sent out to Chris Bowers.

Schor:

"This is not an ideological fight for them," one aide to a New Democrat told me, adding that members of the coalition "have worked closely with Democratic leaders to improve the bill, make it more expansive and push it in the direction of President Obama’s housing plan by including a loan modification plan."

Kaplan to Bowers:

Congresswoman Tauscher has worked hard during the past few weeks to improve HR 1106 by making it more progressive, more comprehensive and more effective. Bankruptcy is not a solution to the enormous foreclosure crisis. Congresswoman Tauscher has worked with Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Zoe Lofgren to include a central tenet of President Obama’s housing plan – a loan modification program – in the bill. They agreed.

Kaplan made similar comments (on the record) to an appropriately skeptical Ryan Grim:

Rep. Tauscher has worked to find a way to make the bill more comprehensive and push it closer to President Obama’s housing plan. She voted for the rule, she encouraged her fellow New Dems to vote for the rule, and she will vote to approve the bill. The goal is to make the bill more comprehensive and to give people a real opportunity to avoid bankruptcy through a loan modification plan."

As Bowers said, "Worked with Pelosi? More like made her buckle, and then bragged about it to The Concern Troll, I mean, The Politco."

The point of all this seems to be to promote a kinder, gentler New Dems who aren’t rabid conservatives like the Blue Dogs, but rather sensible moderates and reasonable stewards of the public trust. Says Schor:

My response to any progressives who’d love to lump the New Dems in with the Blue Dogs: Direct that ire at the Senate, where cramdowns were negotiated with the help of Citigroup.

Her article is entitled "Bankruptcy Compromise Draws Clear Line Between New Dems & Blue Dogs." I know that’s a theme Kaplan has been pushing, but if you are looking for daylight between the New Dems and the Blue Dogs, you won’t find it here. From Politico:

Tauscher’s New Democrat Coalition teamed with their natural allies in the Blue Dog Coalition to impose 10 significant changes, including requirements that bankruptcy judges use federal guidelines to determine the fair market value of a home and that modified loans must be "unaffordable and not just underwater" to prevent wealthy homeowners from taking advantage of the process, according to a widely distributed e-mail from Adam Pase, executive director of the New Democrat Coalition.

I’m afraid I have to come down with Bowers: "When a former lobbyist for the banking industry is distributing memos from your office about the concessions New Democrats and Blue Dogs won after delaying the legislation, don’t tell me that you are working with Speaker Pelosi, without any input from the banking industry, to make a piece of legislation more progressive."

I don’t even know what to say about the Citi comment. They dropped their opposition to mortgage write-down in early January (from when her link is dated), which was considered a real breakthrough at the time. Then JP Morgan and BofA felt like Citi betrayed them and got all cranky:

Apart from Citi, "the industry remains united in that bankruptcy cramdown would destabilize the market" by creating widespread uncertainty about the value of numerous troubled mortgages, says Steve O’Connor, senior vice-president for government relations at the Mortgage Bankers Assn. His group is distributing talking points to key congressional aides laying out reasons why "Congress should defeat bankruptcy reform legislation."

I’m fully prepared to be pissed at Citi, I’m just not sure why I should be.

Kaplan ends his missive to Bowers:

You’re picking the wrong fight with the wrong woman.

Then he slowly pulls a cigarette from behind his ear, strikes a match on the bottom of his boot, straps on his six shooter and makes that lonely walk to the town square for a rendezvous with destiny.

I mean what are we here, six?

The New Dems tried to "flex" — and failed. It doesn’t mean they weren’t trying to jam everything into the bill that the banks wanted, it just means they weren’t very good at it. They stopped the bill in its tracks last Wednesday, and yesterday they were brought to heel. The fact that everything they fought for in order to "make the bill better" tracked perfectly with what the financial services industry had lobbied for is just another happy coincidence, I guess.

As Atrios noted in 2005 when the banks were ramming bankruptcy legislation through, the idea that these self-proclaimed "moderates" were operating out of some grand principle was risible. Things have not changed. Up and down the halls of Congress, people are thoroughly disgusted at the way this battle is still being directed by the Financial Services Roundtable, the American Bankers Association and other industry lobbyists who issue absurd warnings about how the market will be "destabilized" by "widespread uncertainty" about housing values. I mean, someone actually says that.

Maybe there’s some "aide to a New Democrat" who just happens to track perfectly with Kaplan’s incoherent defense. But he immediately sent the TPM article to me, so he seems to be quite proud of it. Why anyone deserved anonymity here I don’t know quite know. If he’s her source, he ought to at least let her use his name. Let’s stop pretending there’s some widespread principled opposition at work and call it what it is.