The markets wave goodbye to GM. Now what?

This is the basic situation that the fall of GM is quickly bringing to a head. Whichever candidate comes into office in a few months—and it is increasingly likely that it will be Barack Obama—will have a mandate that rests in meaningful part on the ballots and the aspirations of those voters.

A collapse of the automakers will give that mandate a very specific meaning. The problems of the old industrial core have been ignored in part because they have proven themselves so intractable. As long as GM, Ford, and Chrysler sputtered along, however, we could convince ourselves that we could let a good portion of the country sputter along with them. Politically and psychologically, a bankruptcy, shrinking, and restructuring of the remaining Big Two will make that idea much harder to maintain. What form a new industrial plan—or bailout, if you will—of the Midwest and its failing industries will take is yet to be determined. But together with rescuing the financial industries, it will have to be right near the top of the agenda of a president who does not want the padlocked gates of abandoned factories to serve as the backdrop to his term.