The Obama Administration is panicked over the possibility that the Senate financial reform bill might get out of hand and actually, uh, reform the financial industry. So they’ve called out the troops to encourage a cloture vote before there’s any assurance that important amendments to strengthen the bill will be brought to a vote.

In its emergency plans in the event of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP made clear it knows how to save “seals, sea otters, and walruses” in the Gulf waters. The only problem is, no such animals live in the Gulf.

Indeed, it appears BP literally copied and pasted emergency response plans to apply to any spill in the world, regardless of the reality of the local ecosystems. While “seals, sea otters, and walruses” are a concern for oil spills in colder waters, there are none of those animals in the Gulf.

Senate Democrats are seriously unhappy with how Wall Street reform has unfolded. The unkempt nature of the amendments process virtually assured this. After a lot of twists and turns, it’s it’s chaos. It’s Lord of the Flies on the Senate floor right now. I don’t think anyone knows how this will turn out.

When asked about about the latest twist in the financial regulatory reform, where Lincoln’s “tough” derivatives bill got targeted for watering down on the night of her election, AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman replied, “Her timing is fascinating…She came to her position on this in the midst of a primary fight.”

Yes, what a coincidence.

If Blanche Lincoln thinks she can rally in three weeks and win a runoff election against Bill Halter, she simply is blind to the import of what happened last night in the US Senate. The narrative of the race is now about Blanche Lincoln trying to snooker Arkansas voters into thinking she was a crusading Wall Street reformer — but the voters don’t like to be lied to.

Republican Senators support bailouts, handouts and state-provided insurance–for big oil companies. Senators from Oklahoma and Alaska are fighting the effort to lift the puny corporate liability cap of $75 million for disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil explosion.

Yesterday’s results in the election showed what has now become conventional wisdom: an “anti-incumbent mood,” something the media will parrot from now to November. They can find the reason by looking no further than what they ignored during election coverage – last night’s debacle in the Senate on financial regulation reform.

I do loves me some wingnut pundit fail.

The progressive movement showed they can still be a force in elections, if not in governing. Across the country, real Democrats were chosen over corrupt elites or conservative Democrats. This really ends up being a game of inches – but I still believe it matters who gets these politicians into office.

People aren’t stupid. They understand what’s happening. Yesterday the House of Lords got a giant kick in the teeth from a public hungry for accountability. Contrary to the wisdom of the punditocracy, the country isn’t moving to the right. It’s the corporatists who are going down.