The Democrats and Detroit

I think I finally figured out the enigma of the democrats going through a fruitless and inane exercise last week re Detroit. Their attempt at aiding Detroit is obviously a required payback for union help in the last election; that I figured out a while ago. But I couldn't understand why they'd be attempting political suicide; polls show roughly 75% or more of the electorate opposed to a Detroit bailout. Then the light bulb went off in my head. By going through this charade now, with no chance of success given the position of Bush and the republicans, they can say to the unions "well, we tried our best, but we couldn't pull it off." Then come January, GM will have gone bankrupt or other events will have transpired that will let the democrats off the hook with the unions. So they're not as dumb politically as I had thought.