In the midst of Washington’s madding crowd during Economic Chaos Week, I neglected yesterday to link to the new report by The Sentencing Project about reform pertaining to voting rights for felons. If you click here, you can see it. (I blogged on this subject on Tuesday.) In the meantime, tonight is the long-planned kickoff—at 9 p.m. Eastern time in Oxford, Mississippi—of the first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.

As everyone knows, McCain spent the last couple days holding tonight’s debate hostage pending the current economic crisis. Word was, as of a few minutes ago, that he's heading to Mississippi, but the Arizona Republican clearly threw Democrats (although, notably, not the Top Democrat), into fits of, well, I don’t know what…rage? frustration? envy that they didn’t think of this gambit themselves? After “suspending” his campaign earlier this week, McCain suggested that it’s more important for him to stay in Washington and play a role in the federal government’s proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Ah, congressional Democrats, fumed, we had a deal before you butted in, McCain! Maybe so, but Democratic leaders seem to have forgotten about  House Republicans as well as the American people—many of whom remained unconvinced (call them crazy) that Washington can fix the entire U.S. economy in seven days. Congressional leaders know they have a problem selling this thing to the public—that’s one reason they want to jam it through today or this weekend: Opposition to it is building in the grassroots.

As far as presidential machinations, Loose Cannon knows as well as anyone else that Johnny Mac sometimes fits Winston Churchill’s famous description of John Foster Dulles (as not only a bull in a China shop, but a bull who carries his China shop around with him), but…McCain was hardly the only Senator playing politics. In the middle of yesterday’s negotiations on the bailout bill, here is the press release issued by Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office:

Washington, DC—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd today unveiled a $56.2 billion economic recovery package that will help middle-class families struggling in the weakening Bush-McCain economy. 

The “Bush-McCain” economy—that’s rich. While McCain is acting as though he’s already president, the Democrats are claiming he’s been president for the last eight years. Confirmation, I guess, of my theory that practicing too much partisanship actually lowers one’s I.Q. In the meantime, the largest bank failure in U.S. history took place yesterday and President Bush reiterated his view this morning that quick action on his “rescue plan” is needed. It’s a lot of money, the president acknowledged, but the ripple effects of letting Wall Street seize up would be felt by every American. “Our proposal is a big proposal. And the reason it’s big and substantial,” the Prez said, “is because we’ve got a big problem.”

Be that as it may, 40 days from now we should know the identity of the 44^th president of the United States. As anyone who has read Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life knows, 40 days is a significant number. Well, this is a purpose-driven blog, so I’ll try and post every day between now and the morning after Election Day.