No matter how much Democrats scream about GOP obstructionism, the jury is still out on whether Republicans will take any blame for its consequences. Democrats run Congress, and the public may tune out arguments over Senate procedure as Beltway noise. On Thursday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to create a $30 billion fund to enable community banks to boost lending to small businesses. Republicans decried the move as another bailout. It is unlikely the bill will pass before the August congressional recess. How will this story play? Take, for example, the Associated Press's account, which noted that the GOP blocked the bill but summed up the standoff's significance this way: 'Congressional Democrats started the year with ambitious plans to pass a series of bills designed to create jobs. But if negotiations on the small business lending bill fail, they will have little to show for it just a few months before midterm elections that will determine whether Democrats keep their majorities in the House and Senate.' Is this how the story will be understood by the American people? Quite possibly. Republican lawmakers claimed that Democrats blocked votes on the amendments the GOP wanted. Democrats countered that they agreed to votes on the GOP amendments only to have the Republicans demand more votes. In other words: The larger story is getting subsumed in a bunch of Beltway bickering and white noise. So what story line will the American people take away from all this? Whatever their substantive objections to this bill, it appears that Republicans have calculated that the failure of Democratic legislation, and Democratic griping about the Republican role in blocking such legislation, will feed a sense that government is broken and/or has failed to deliver. The GOP is betting that the failure and the griping will reflect badly on the ruling party. And if that AP paragraph captures the way the story line is understood by the American people, Democrats are in serious trouble. Excerpts from Greg Sargent's blog on domestic politics and debate on the Hill: voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line 