Auto Bail Out Cloture Vote

The Los Angeles Times and Rachel Maddow from MSNBC have both said that the auto bail out bill was killed by the Republicans in the senate. That is a bald faced lie. If one examines the senate record of the vote it is obvious that the Democrats could have won the cloture vote if they had wanted to do so. There were 52 votes in favor of cloture. Four of those voting against were Democrats, including their leader Harry Reid.
Another 4 Democrats did not even vote, including vice president elect Joe Biden (though he might have been busy selling his senate seat to the highest bidder). So, if all of the Democrats had voted for cloture they would have had the necessary 60 votes to bring the legislation up for a vote.
I have a strong suspicion about what was actually happening. American citizens are passionately against the auto bail out in large numbers. The Democrats do not want to take the chance that this will come back and bite them on the ass. So they failed to do all they could to win a fight they claim to believe in so as to not take the political flack.
In spite of the plain math of the situation the LAT blamed the Republicans. I've noticed that it has been years since the LAT has had a relationship with the truth. The severe financial problems of the Times indicates that local former readers feel the same.
Rachel Maddow said that the senate Republicans defeated the bill because they do not want American workers making decent wages. But RM is lying since the Republicans could not have defeated the bill without support from the senate Democrats.