Nine Democratic House moderates are threatening to withhold their support for their party’s must-pass budget resolution until Speaker Nancy Pelosi changes course and instead allows their chamber to first vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan the Senate approved this week.
The threat, outlined in a letter provided to CNN, could put Pelosi’s plans in jeopardy to advance the budget resolution later this month since she can only afford to lose three votes from her caucus in the chamber that they narrowly control.
“We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law,” the letter to Pelosi said. […]
Now the new letter – led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, the Democratic co-chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus – could throw Pelosi’s strategy into flux and underscores the complex balancing act that the White House and Democratic leaders must perform to keep their fragile coalition together. […]
A senior Democratic aide told CNN “there are not sufficient votes to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill this month. This is 9. There are dozens upon dozens who will vote against the BIF unless it’s after the Senate passes reconciliation.”
I’d love to be a fly on the wall when Pelosi meets with this confederacy of dunces, if she bothers.
Anyway, this just emphasizes the point that the DC media world is wired to give attention to people who stop shit rather than get shit done. This is a subplot in the overarching DC narrative, which is that Republicans’ role is to break everything and Democrats’ role is to fix everything. Some Democrats see the Republicans getting attention for being adult babies, and they want some of it, so they start breaking things, too. Breaking things makes lots of noise, and it’s easy to cover (“look at that broken thing, there’s who broke it”), so it gets a lot of attention.
Also, we need to bring back earmarks. Then these toddlers would have something to brag about during the August recess, rather than their earnest, serious centrism. (Oops, as pointed out in the comments, I guess they did, and these assholes must not have gotten any.)
.Edited to add: If you live in one of the districts represented by this group, feel free to call and give them a piece of your mind:
Reps. Gottheimer, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Filemon Vela of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jim Costa of California and Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia.
Anonymous At Work
They did bring back earmarks. “Problem Solvers” are having their cake and eating it took.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Anonymous At Work: Thanks.
So why are these maroons whining? They’re gonna get a helluva lot more earmarks in the big bill than in this tiny one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Joe Manchin has an aide text him the amount of the national debt every morning. I suspect Gottheimer is his brother from another mother, Dorgan-Conrad Democrats for whom it is always 1995
guachi
Clowns. Clowns, all of them. What a bunch of morons.
bbleh
Republicans’ role is to break everything AND then loot the wreckage, because that’s “business” and business is Good and Democrats’ role is to fix everything which OMG taxes! deficit! AIYEEEEE!!
dr. bloor
I can’t imagine being dumb enough to play Chicken with Pelosi, particularly since Smilin’ Joe has
an interest in this matter as well…
patrick Il
Mc Connell was betting on this happening. It is why he let 19 repubs vote for the bill. Let Dems kill both halves of the bill and let them – and Biden – take responsibility .
Another Scott
From the WaPo link downstairs:
As I said down there, I don’t see why the reconciliation bill would take “months” in the House. It’s the actual appropriations bills that take all the time. This $3.5T bill just sets the topline numbers. The Senate did it less than a day after passing the “bipartisan” bill.
Like Sinema’s “I will not vote for $3.5T” before she voted for $3.5T, it seems like this is preening – trying to make it sound like a hard line, when it’s not.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Another Scott:
I think everyone’s favorite Instagram influencer voted for the resolution that lets them start debating, not for the final bill. It will be $3.45T after she’s done removing what she’ll represent as “wasteful”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is this a real parliamentary Thing, or this week’s One Weird Trick? Basically combining both bills into one vote? Beutler is smart, but has got caught up in Do Something Emo Twitter in the last year
germy
Let’s use this thread as an opportunity to criticize AOC, Omar, and Bernie.
/
WereBear
Some of this is because there’s a DC disease which distorts their brains and hearts: Republicans are the winners.
They get more press, more money, more devoted voters. They are feted with expensive bottles of wine and lark’s tongues in aspic. They misbehave with impunity. It’s an asshole paradise!
Somewhere, deep in their shriveled raisin souls, they want to go R…
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
My take is these folks are trying to swim in the same lane as Susan Collins does on the other side…like perpetually concerned Susan they’ll eventually vote the way party leaders want them too but will milk every drop of attention they can get out of “I might not because I’m concerned, just look at my furrowed brow!” which is a lot.
MattF
‘Moderates’ are very irked that the leftward wing of the D party is getting positive ink. So, they are stamping their feet and not peepeeing and holding their breath until they turn blue. Nana Pelosi knows how to deal with that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
From the article….
burnspbesq
Gottheimer represents the town I grew up in. Pretty much everybody I know considers him an ass, but he’s an upgrade over the last Republican to represent the district, and probably the best you can hope for.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yeah, let’s risk the much bigger bill to get the smaller amount of money from the much smaller bill into people’s hands. Groan.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Looks like it’s a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-executing_rule
I assume that Pelosi and her leadership will do that or something similar to make sure everyone’s on board.
@germy: I’ll take this opportunity to praise Bernie for leading the budget committee and getting two reconciliations through in one year, without pulling an Mancinema, and the Squad for being part of Pelosi’s conference that won’t vote on the bipartisan bill alone. All these supposed purity pony people know a win when they see it and aren’t going to obstruct like the problem makers caucus.
Another Scott
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: No, the Senate passed it.
CNN:
If that is right, then the House will start voting on it before the end of the month.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, this “deem and pass” (which the Repubs labeled “Demon Pass” when the Dems used it back in 2010) is a thing. They used it to pass the ACA fixes (getting rid of the ‘Cornhusker kickback,’ etc.) at the same time as passing the ACA back in early 2010.
Geminid
@germy: Sure. AOC, Ohmar, and Sanders have done the same thing, just not in a letter.
This matter is a tempest in a teapot.
Ohio Mom
I know none of this has anything to do with me personally but if it did I’d say, Roads and bridges, feh, my family really needs the budget resolution. Especially the increase in funding for home and community-based services. I want to know there’s money to pay someone to keep tabs on Ohio Son after I shuffle off this mortal coil.
Also, I think earmarks might have been restored (hooray!) but they are too new to have done any of their magic. IIRC, it was that rotten drunk John Boehner who banned them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq:
sounds familiar….
Golden is one of a half dozen or so Dems who holds a district trump won (also, one of those “the Squad” used to make their convoluted argument that M4A was a winning stance in swing districts). Cuellar was an early target of K-Dos back in the early Bush years. He was the dragon to Ciro Rodgriguez’s St George, IIRC.– I bought in to all that, some of my first campaign donations. The dragon won. Rodriguez now holds a different district and I’m surprised he didn’t sign this letter. Boudreaux won I believe an upset win in GA last cycle.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Another Scott: It’s confusing but the resolution is not the reconciliation bill:
Source: https://budget.house.gov/publications/fact-sheet/budget-reconciliation-basics
So what’s insidious and dumb about their request is that they want to get the bipartisan bill put into law before the reconciliation bill is passed. The deal was bipartisan bill plus reconciliation at the same time so preening “problem solvers” couldn’t torpedo reconciliation.
Van Buren
Did none of these assholes play sports in HS? Did they not learn to be team players?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
ah, thanks. If this somehow brings back Demon Sheep, then we’ll be having some fun.
ETA: Also, can we stop calling these conservatives “moderates”?
Chief Oshkosh
Don’t know if it’s happening everywhere, but some of these nine are having TV ads run against them (more-or-less), telling the viewer that the commies are comin’ ta take your healthcare away and raise your taxes and it’s all be cause of Nancy and Congressperson ____. Don’t you think that’s wrong? Please, fo’ duh lub of da Baby Jesus, call Congressperson_____ raht now and yell at whoever picks up the phone!
Possibly this is why the nine are doing this. Of course, it’s stupid. It’s not like the morans aren’t going to call to bitch to the local office.
Citizen_X
*sigh* Sometimes, when a Republican defects to the Dems, you get a John Cole. And sometimes you get a Henry Fucking Cuellar.
PsiFighter37
Not surprised by the list, but I am pleasantly surprised to see other folks who will have tough races (like Spanberger or Davids) not signing onto dumb posturing like this.
That said, moderates do hold the leverage here. They know that between getting nothing and something, Democrats will be convinced to do something every time. I say – sign the Senate bill, then start fighting over reconciliation. Sinema and Manchin would still take hostages even if their bipartisan bill was in limbo…so let’s just get on with it. Wasting precious calendar time bickering and having standoffs within our own party does no good.
SiubhanDuinne
Disappointed, but not unduly surprised, to see Carolyn Bourdeaux’ name on the list.
Sigh.
I’ll call her office.
lowtechcyclist
Some of these members of the Monkeywrench Gang (apologies to the late, great Edward Abbey) are in R-leaning districts, or just-barely-Dem ones. But Costa’s in a D+9 district, and Ed Case is in solidly Dem Hawaii, and his district is D+14. Their asses should be primaried.
I’ll let people with better political judgment than me weigh in on whether D+5 is safe enough to primary the asses of Cuellar and Vela.
But the districts of the rest of them are D+3, D+2, R+1, R+2, and R+6. We’re stuck with them.
germy
dr. bloor
@PsiFighter37:
The last time moderates had this much “leverage,” Pelosi told them to pound sand and passed the ACA.
The Thin Black Duke
I’m confident that Nancy, Chuck and Joe won’t let these useful idiots fuck this up.
sab
Thanks for naming names.I am so tired of reading about “nine Dems did or tjreatened to do…” whatever, and then we never know who those nine Dems are.
Matt
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
They’re whining because they don’t _want_ to pass the bill – hippie-punching is worth infinitely more to them than good policy.
Another Scott
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I agree that they’re not the same, but the Senate did pass it. (Maybe we’re talking past each other.)
Unless the House passes the same bill, then the Senate will get another vote, of course. So Sinema could make a final stand there, in principle, I guess, but she won’t.
There may be something I’m missing, but the press was making a big deal about Sinema putting a red line out there, so the expectation was that she was going to prevent the $3.5T thing from passing the Senate. The press was very surprised when it passed the Senate so easily.
Of course, the process isn’t done. The House has to do its thing, then they have to do a Conference or send it back to the Senate for a vote on their version, etc. And once they agree on the top-line numbers, then the Appropriations committees get to work and actually give the final spending numbers.
https://budget.house.gov/publications/fact-sheet/budget-reconciliation-basics
What I haven’t seen discussed is the fact that the House has already passed all its FY22 Appropriations bills (while the Senate, as usual, hasn’t). So it’s not clear to me how the existing Appropriations bills will be affected (if at all – maybe they’ll just say “notwithstanding what xx says, these are the numbers for FY22 for this line of the budget”), or maybe they’ll just tweak the final Senate numbers.
Corrections welcome.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
This. Fortunately, Pelosi isn’t going to let them pass just the bipartisan bill. The only choice she will give them is all or nothing.
hueyplong
It gives the whiny 9 more credit to guess that they’re posturing to keep the House in 2022.
But, again, the desire to watch the sausage be made sure does make it seem less delectable.
guachi
@lowtechcyclist:
All or nothing is really the only way.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
There are two paths here. One is that the Senate can pass the reconciliation bill, then they can work out the differences with the House bills in conference, and send the resulting final bill back to both houses for final passage.
The other is that, after the Senate passes the Senate reconciliation bill, it’s brought to the floor of the House, debated there, and (hopefully) passed. And the appropriations bills they’ve already passed would just get ignored.
There’s nothing that says one house of Congress can’t pass multiple overlapping/contradictory bills dealing with the same issues. If a bill only passes one house of Congress, then isn’t taken up by the other house, it’s just moot.
But I’m sure it’s helpful to the Senate committees charged with turning the budget resolution into nuts and bolts that the appropriations bills have passed the House, because a lot of those nuts and bolts will already be in those appropriations bills, and the Senate can use much of the text of those bills as a first draft for their work.
Kim Walker
I’m wondering if one bill skews toward jobs for men, and the other has more supports for women. Seems like we need both for a better economy and society.
O. Felix Culpa
Breaking news: there’s gamesmanship and posturing in politics!
The bills will pass.
lowtechcyclist
@Kim Walker:
I’m pretty sure that’s the case. The bipartisan bill is, well, not entirely traditional roads-and-bridges infrastructure, but still mostly stuff where you’d expect construction crews to do the real work.
The reconciliation bill has its share of that too, but it also has serious money for things like day care, which will employ mostly women, so that other women can hold regular jobs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is DougJ or somebody, right? This isn’t real
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Caroline Bordeaux ran for the Georgia 7th District in 2018, and came up 433 votes short of unseating Congressman Rob Woodall. She won in 2020, when Joe Biden carried the 7th with 52% of votes. Bordeaux is the first Democrat to represent the 7th since it was created in 1993.
Bordeaux’s win, like that of Lucy McBath in the 6th District the west in 2018, was the result of political realignment in the north Atlanta suburbs. Republicans will now try to gerrymander one or both Congresswomen of their seats.
schrodingers_cat
Meanwhile in the DSA paradise of Denmark.
@germy: Do they deserve praise for voting with the Republicans against increasing funding for the Capitol Police and giving visas to Afghan translators.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I won’t stop. These are moderates, not conservatives. We all know who the real conservatives are, and they are in the Republican party.
Ken
So my main takeaway should be that the revolution has been betrayed again?
Gin & Tonic
@sab: I read who they are, and aside from Cuellar, I don’t think I’ve heard of a single one of them before this.
Betty Cracker
@O. Felix Culpa: Josh Marshall has been super optimistic about the bills passing for weeks too, and he’s not a cheerleader, IMO; when party leaders fuck up, he calls it rather than sugar-coating it.
Marshall’s entry on this news recounts the ACA fight. He expects Pelosi to steamroll the “Problem Solver”* punks and notes that “no Democrat in DC is more determined and indomitable in a clutch.” [TPM: paywalled, I think.]
*That name is about as accurate as “No Labels,” i.e., only accurate on Opposite Day.
Betty
@Chief Oshkosh: So, performative. “We tried, we really did. Don’t blame us.”
schrodingers_cat
Blog favorites are also making noises against the bipartisan bill. But we must always praise them, right?
O. Felix Culpa
@Gin & Tonic: They are mostly backbenchers or newbies from conservative districts. They’ll do what they think they need to do to maintain their moderate cred for the folks back home, and then they’ll vote for the bills. It’s much ado about nothing.
The Thin Black Duke
@Gin & Tonic: I guess that’s the point. Divas.
schrodingers_cat
FWIW I agree with Eugene Robinson
It’s time to entertain the possibility that President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually know what they’re doing and are really good at their jobs,
@Eugene_Robinson
writes
Also, I am not a fan of look-at-me politicians like Sinema and AOC.
O. Felix Culpa
@Betty Cracker:
LOL. Truth. As I posted above, I think that the majority of these folks are trying to maintain their moderate label with the voters back home. They’ll vote for the bill in the end.
azlib
9 against Pelosi. I’ll give the odds to Nancy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, always Dems are in disarray. NO EXCEPTIONS!
But the question remains did the left or the right wing of the Democratic party betray us all.
Also, when will Nacy slam her fist on the table in a totally NOT Alpha douch move and tell everyone to just shut up and do as they are told?
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t care for broad-brush labelling such as “blog favorites.” It’s insulting. Some people here like the squad and their allies, others are more skeptical. Speaking for myself, I don’t agree with AOC on all issues and think she’s smart and has great twitter game. I’ve also been impressed with the clips I’ve seen of the questioning she’s done in congressional investigations: sharp, to the point, and no posturing (unlike so many others). My hope is that she matures into a wiser politician. We’ll see.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@schrodingers_cat: That is absolutely not what that tweet says and you either can’t read or have the reading comprehension of my daughter’s cat. This is exactly right:
schrodingers_cat
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: When are you going to tell me to go back where I came from?
@O. Felix Culpa: She is a blog favorite. Front pagers love her. The opinion among commenters remains divided. Any criticism of her or the sainted Senator Warren brings out the claws. See comment 60.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: 100% endorse.
germy
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Surely you knew any thread criticizing centrist, obstructionist Democrats would unleash a flurry of comments criticizing the progressive wing of the party.
I’m still waiting for some criticism of Katie Porter. It’s sure to arrive.
SFAW
@germy:
OK. I’m pissed that AOC won’t go out with me. No, I haven’t asked her, but she should know, and seek (old, short, fat) me out.
Oops, sorry, I was just reading an incel-related thread on LGM, and there’s some carryover.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: That was mistermix. Not the WHOLE blog.
That said, I agree that there may be preferences and leanings evinced on the blog, but I’m not a fan of universalizing labels, especially when there are demonstrable differences of opinion.
ETA: I see others have joined in. But, you’re here too, right? :)
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@schrodingers_cat: LOL at the faux victimhood. Comparing my pointing out that you are misrepresenting a tweet to what, racism? Are you sure you aren’t a Republican?
Ken
She seems too prepared.
(You’re welcome.)
germy
@SFAW:
Interesting that the incel was a Trump supporter.
These murderous maniacs always leave social media stuff supporting Q, Trump, racism, etc.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@germy:
Katie Porter asks more smart questions per hearing than the numptys who signed that letter have in their entire lives, so I’m sure they will get around to criticizing her for showboating.
O. Felix Culpa
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Disagree with sc all you like, but don’t be an ass.
SFAW
@germy:
Fixed
germy
@Ken:
I’ve seen criticism in the comments here that her whiteboard stuff is just bullshit, etc.
Give it a few more minutes. She’ll be attacked next.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat: AOC is saying there are two separate bills and the one the Blue Dogs are pushing for is the one compromised to hell and gone one to get it out of the senate.
I am with those who think the Blue Dogs are just grandstanding to sooth the concerns of their conservative voters. They outright said infrastructure is a must have so they will vote for a bill in the end. “We tried, but that radical AOC tied our hands and I know you all need this stuff so I got the best I could folks!” kind of stuff.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this, why can’t she just relax. Cuomo just followed his gut as governor, well okay, maybe he’s not the best example but you get my point
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Did she ever ask herself if endorsing Nina Turner was smart? Or a “numpty” move?
Ken
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I don’t think Cuomo was following his gut…
schrodingers_cat
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: You resort to name-calling and insulting my intelligence and/or reading comprehension at the slightest disagreement from your front pager perch. What I said is the logical conclusion of your highly personal remarks. ( In just in this post:
Reading comprehension of my daughter’s cat
Are you a Republican )
I didn’t call you racist BTW, you put that hat on your own head.
You make it personal, always., all because I don’t agree with your POV. This is not the first time you have made a nasty personal attack.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thank you. I LOVE Katie Porter and think that endorsing Turner was a stunningly numpty move. An awful lot of B/W thinking evinced in this thread, which is supposed to be a feature of the other guys.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@O. Felix Culpa: utterly bewildering that people like Porter and Raskin and Ellison couldn’t see Bowl of Shit for what she was. Self-indulgent foot-shooting. Once again, thank god for James Clyburn
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
With respect, everyone has their buttons – some are more public than others. Recycling old disagreements isn’t productive.
IMHO, of course. Have a nice day.
Cheers,
Scott.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Aren’t most of them relative newbies in Congress? I hope that these were rookie mistakes and not to be repeated.
ETA: Seconded on Clyburn saving our bacon.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I listened to Pod Save America last night and learned about some of the fine print.
The Senate did PASS the resolution, but now they actually have to flesh out the details of the law and then it has to be passed.
So that means that everyone from AOC and Bernie and Joe Manchin etc have to agree on all the details in order to get enough votes in the house and the senate to turn it into law.
WaterGirl
@germy: He just upped the pressure.
Jackie
@Ken: And her whiteboard is too small!?
germy
@WaterGirl:
Yes.
I hope he and his ex-wife get really competitive over who gives away the most money to good causes. (I think Melinda may eventually come out ahead in that competition.)
gvg
@schrodingers_cat: Good grief, she and the others in the squad do some things some of us agree with and other things we dislike intensely. They aren’t favorites. That’s the only part of your statement that is getting pushback. We just don’t hate them, and you seem to, plus you can’t see to stop trying to get us all to hate them. Your unending carping about anyone who says something slightly approving is counterproductive. People don’t like other people saying something is a favorite when we really just think “eh, they are mixed good and bad but they voted for Pelosi as speaker and they mostly vote the way we want”
O. Felix Culpa
@germy:
LOL. I hope you’re right!
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: I have to disagree when you say front-lagers love AOC, as if all of them do. That’s too broad a brush.
First of all, front pagers here have never all agreed on anything, ever!
Second, not all of the front-pagers have weighed in on AOC, and the I think opinions differ even in the ones who have.
Anonymous At Work
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: tl;dr most of the other 84 comments by the time I returned, but “Politics includes posturing” was part of an earlier post (https://twitter.com/GriffTheImpaler/status/1425607979601125379)
This is them posturing to signal to their constituents that they can both bring home the bacon for their district but resist doling out bacon to “others”.
AOC’s letter with 50+ signatories telling these 9 to pound sand is the bigger deal here but won’t see Beltway types covering it.
germy
@O. Felix Culpa:
Imagine them both in ten years, sitting under a bridge, roasting sparrows. “Okay, you win!”
(But they’re the only people under the bridge, which has been rebuilt next to a wind and solar farm)
WaterGirl
News flash: none of our politicians are perfect.
*except maybe Nancy Pelosi
topclimber
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks for the link that shows AOC saying what just about everyone here is saying: no BIFI vote without the one for reconciliation first.
Hang in there on the purity pony patrol.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Cuellar is being primaried, by attorney Jessica Cisneros. She came within 5 points of beating him in 2020. Cuellar knows she’s a threat now and will be ready. This will be a real fight..
O. Felix Culpa
@germy: Hehe. I’m too lazy to calculate the rate of spend that would land them in those circumstances, but they’d have to do some fierce charitable giving to get there. Which I wholeheartedly endorse.
Ruckus
mistermix.
I’ll ask the question.
What else could these people do to be paid $174,000. for spending almost the least amount of time possible actually working, at a job that requires them to spend at least 0% of their time at actual labor, and get press coverage and often 20 or 30 yrs of “work” and have the social prestige of being a public figure? The worst part of the job seems to be having to show up and how often do they actually have do that and get months of vacation time because the job is just so hard? How many of their constituents make that kind of money? A few, many, most? I’m going, in most cases, a few will make far more than them, some in that range and the rest, likely not even close. It doesn’t have the glamor of say driving a garbage truck of course, but still they get attention and money and do what for it, preen and strut? And you expect them to give up all of that for what, actually doing something positive for someone else, which of course is what they get paid for?
Anonymous At Work
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: This dynamic is actually in Chait’s wheelhouse: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/9-moderate-democrats-threaten-to-tank-biden-presidency.html
As long as “privilege” and “teachers’ unions” aren’t in the mix, he’s usually pretty good.
SFAW
@gvg:
Not that it matters, but: co-sign.
ETA: Outside of the Bernie hatred [I don’t like the guy, either, but I’m too old to waste much time thinking about him] there seems to special hate reserved for the rest of the Squad (even though Ayanna Pressley seems to get stuff done without fanfare) and Senator Professor Warren.
germy
@Anonymous At Work:
Chait’s wife does work for charter schools, IIRC. Probably gets paid more than he does, too.
He knows which side his bread is buttered on.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Carolyn Bordeaux is not above criticism, and neither is Katie Porter. I’ll give them both credit, though, for flipping seats long held by Republicans.
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: Find me even a mildly critical post about AOC or Warren. There is plenty of shade of Sinema and Manchin.
@gvg: I don’t hate anyone. Why is it assumed that I can’t have policy differences or a even a difference of opinion on the best way to achieve a certain policy
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat:
You are right, you didn’t literally call mistermix racist, but I don’t see any other way to interpret this statement from you:
“When are you going to tell me to go back where I came from?”
The reply to you from mistermix was dismissive, for sure, but I saw nothing related to racism. mistermix can be scathing at times, which is a different style from my own, but it has nothing to do with race or gender.
Ken
Don’t forget our own Baud. After all, he’s never lost an election, and he’s never voted for a bill that failed nor voted against one that passed.
For that matter, I can’t think of a single vote of his — yea or nay — that wasn’t exactly the way I would have preferred him to vote, and I’d wager everyone here can say the same.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Ruckus: I hear what you’re saying but I have a different take.
I worked in DC for a short while a long time ago. Being a rep in a non-safe seat (which all these problem solvers are) is a hard job. and it’s been getting ever harder. You spend a huge amount of time on the phone kissing donor ass to get relatively small checks. You’re on a plane to your district most weekends. Your committee work can also be taxing if you take it at all seriously.
These numptys/gimbuses (Josh Marshall’s term) have to do a lot more work than safe seat reps.
topclimber
@schrodingers_cat: Life is compromise. How about you start a thread on how much Bernie sucks rather than harp on people’s acceptance of Warren and the squad? The responses you will get should reassure you that folks here aren’t big fans of the leftiest part of our coalition.
Anonymous At Work
@germy: Maybe. Some people get nuts about one topic or another. I just skip their ranting and move on. Chait doesn’t want to own how his white-male-Ivy-League status got him a job at TNR when it was run by a racist, misogynist, Islamaphobe, so I skip him on that topic too.
Thankfully, here, the front-pagers stay in their fortes and away from their sore spots.
Another Scott
@germy: As usual when it comes to Gates’ stuff, there’s less there than meets the eye. The WSJ says the money “could be” up to $X over 3 years.
It’s probably similar to the thing just announced by the European Commission:
Gates gets a lot of press for things like this. It doesn’t say he’s going to be spending the money. One of his investment funds is going to “mobilize” the money. It doesn’t say it’s any change from their existing planned investment strategy. It’s peanuts compared to what he could and should be spending (and the taxes he should be paying). And it’s peanuts compared to the scale of the problem. (A decent sized single demo project can easily cost $1B over 5-6 years. ORNL spent $600M on a new supercomputer (“Frontier”).)
But, like the billions he was going to spend on COVID vaccine factories, (groucho-roll-eyes.gif), it gets him good press then nobody asks a few years later where all the money he “promised” went.
[/cynic]
YMMV!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Ken: I stand corrected!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Anonymous At Work: Yeah that’s a good piece.
Anyone with a brain not infested by centrist worms can see that what these maroons want — a piddling infrastructure bill — would tank Biden’s presidency. Chait is unpredictable but at least he’s not a “centrist”.
At the end of the day, though, these guys have no real leverage, thanks to the rest of the caucus that won’t be fooled.
Anonymous At Work
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: The issues are:
Now, if they were to say, “My district needs more X and pays too much for Y, let’s work around that”, I suspect that they could get X (or most of it) and bring down the cost of Y, keep the progressives off their heels (and/or be able to ask them favors if they do need campaign cash), etc. The posturing and the petty game-playing are what drives people bonkers about Problem-Causers and the Radical Centrist factions.
Ken
@WaterGirl: Easy mistake, since most people don’t include Baud in discussions of great politicians. I assume this is like the old joke about musicians debating who is the greatest composer: They leave out Mozart, because if you include him, well, what’s to discuss?
Yes, if all our Democratic politicians were of Baud’s caliber, we’d — well, we’d be living in a dystopian hellworld where fascist Republicans used their 100% control of government at all levels to crush all opposition and all hope. Which is maybe an argument that it’s better to have less-than-perfect people on your side than imaginary paragons?
Kelly
Kurt Schrader is my annoying, Blue Dog, Problem Solver, Congressman. He’ll be OK after some pointless posturing. I see he dropped the deficit tally off the home page of his House website. I’ll call his office.
WaterGirl
@Ken: Did you mean Democratic or Republican there?
Ken
@WaterGirl: Which? I used both. I think I have them the right way around — if all our Democrats didn’t hold office (because let us face it, that is one of Baud’s tiny flaws), the Republicans would control everything and we’d be in a mash-up of The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, The Hunger Games, ….
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: M*2 makes personal attacks and insults me to shut me down and this not the first time he has done that.
I usually don’t even respond. And your first instinct is to circle the wagons and defend him.
zhena gogolia
Wow, I see I made the right decision to stay out of this thread.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Anonymous At Work:
Yes. To pick on the Senators, because they actually have way more obstructionist power than the problem havers, I kinda-sorta get what Manchin wants, but what Sinema wants, other than attention, is utterly opaque to me. I wonder if she even knows. Voters hate it: her favorables among Dems in AZ have absolutely tanked, and she’s frittering away the huuge advantage of being up in a Presidential election year by inviting a primary challenge. Also, her opposition of HR1 or whatever we’re calling it nowadays (voting rights) is the biggest self-inflicted wound I’ve ever seen a politician give themselves.
Geminid
@SFAW: I don’t hate the Squad, and I don’t think anyone else here does, even if some have grudges. I am skeptical of them, though, and I think they are overrated, Ocasio-Cortez in particular. But I respect Pressley and Tlaib as experienced politicians who represent their districts well.
Tlaib must be a hardworker; she is a minority in her predominately African American district, and barely squeaked by her first election. I don’t think she got reelected just because she is a “progressive” hero. Tlaib spent three terms effectively representing part of the district in the Michigan legislature before being term limited. I think she is carrying on this hard work now, and I can respect her even if she is in another wing of the party.
O. Felix Culpa
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: My parents live in AZ and were surprised and delighted when Sinema won. Beating the Republican candidate, even a lousy one, was not a given. Now, however, the disaffection I’m hearing from AZ Dems is great and growing. I’m waiting to see if they can throw up a credible primary challenger who can win in the general.
lowtechcyclist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
While I agree with most of what you’re saying, I have to take exception to this. Ed Case is in a D+14 seat, Jim Costa’s in a D+9. Those are extremely safe seats. Cuellar and Vela are both in D+5 seats, which aren’t ironclad secure, but it would probably take either a wave or a scandal to get them to lose. (I’m glad to see Jessica Cisneros is going to take another shot at primarying Henry Cuellar, thanks @Geminid.)
The other five are definitely in non-safe seats – D+3, D+2, R+1, R+2, R+6 – and that’s no easy row to hoe, I’ll agree. But not the four I mentioned.
James E Powell
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
No one understands what Sinema wants or is trying to accomplish. She has never articulated a coherent or rational explanation for her loudly stated, anti-Democratic president & anti-majority positions. This suggests that there is no “there” there.
O. Felix Culpa
@James E Powell: Sinema has earned her status as blog unfavorite.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t disagree that the attack today was personal and dismissive, or that it’s not the first time mistermix has done that. I thought I made that perfectly clear in my comment at #101.
I don’t know how to make it any more clear that I was responding only to your accusation of racism. I do feel the need to defend mistermix against that accusation, which I did.
Some people on BJ have a confrontational style, and they give as good as they get. You and mistermix included. It’s not my style. It works for some people, but not for me.
But accusations of racism, when mistermix wasn’t saying anything to you that he wouldn’t say to someone else here who had written what you did? Yeah, I’m gonna take a stand on that.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@lowtechcyclist:
I should have checked them all. I knew a few by sight and assumed all of them were. Thanks
Also, I hope Cisneros wins this time. Cuellar’s district deserves better.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
This I don’t get. Overrated by whom??
Basically the opinions I see about AOC top out at ‘she’s a better-than-average second-term Congressperson who actually shows up at committee meetings having done the reading.’ And there are plenty of opinions I see about her from people on our side of the political divide that are way more negative than that.
(I rarely come across any opinions about the others, so I’ll stick with her.)
Maybe opinions of her are more inflated on those far-left precincts of Twitter that I never come across, but how many people do those precincts represent?
Ohio Mom
@Kim Walker: Very interesting point! Unconscious sexism continues to rule, sadly and frustratingly.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: Job #1 for Arizona Democrats will be reelecting Mark Kelly next year. Then they’ll turn to the problem of Kyrsten Sinema. Democrats will know by then if the prospective obstruction that is driving people crazy actually results in the blocking of critical legislation. If it does, Sinema will surely have a viable primary challenger. Phoenix Congressman Greg Stanton is a possibility.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: It may be that Ocasio-Cortez is not overrated so much as that her many capable peers are underrated. If you were to research the other members of the House class of 2018, you might find that the NY 14th Congresswoman is nothing special.
schrodingers_ca
@WaterGirl: I didn’t call him a racist that’s the inference both you and he drew. The personal insults and snide and belittling remarks make me feel unwelcome in this space. The message I get is stay out you are not welcome and that’s what I said.
I get the message and I will stay out of this amen chorus.
Ohio Mom
Bill Gates, ugh.
He screwed up a bunch of schools and kids’ lives because he had a hair up his ass about education, and his forays into medicine for the world’s poor (Some kind of vaccine drive? I forget) got panned by experts.
So I’m not exactly sanguine about him trying to save the climate.
This was an easy and fast thread to catch up on, once I realized I could skip all the comments full of squabbles.
O. Felix Culpa
@Geminid: Agreed on job #1. I don’t know enough about Stanton to assess how well he’d do statewide. Even if Sinema eventually votes the “right” way, I don’t think she’s endearing herself to people who otherwise would be her allies.
James E Powell
@lowtechcyclist:
I get that AOC can be an irritant, but she’s attracted more hate from our own team than is warranted. Some people need to check themselves, reflect on what exactly is so bad.
Unlike some others, her positions, irritating and otherwise, are the product of a political worldview. She doesn’t make trouble just to get on camera and she’s not carrying water for some odious industry lobby. More important, in contrast with Sinema (the most glaring example) she doesn’t stop good things from happening.
AOC speaks for and to a fairly large & growing component of the Democratic coalition. If one is not a member of that component, she is going to rankle. But we need more like her. There’s another generation we need to get involved with Democratic politics.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_ca: I don’t see any daylight between “When are you going to tell me to go back where I came from?” and an accusation of racism.
You obviously see it differently.
I don’t see anyone here telling you to stay out, or telling you that you are not welcome. Certainly not me.
You and mistermix both have a confrontational style that is not my own. It’s my opinion that if you do that, you have to be willing to get what you give.
WaterGirl, over and out.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
But whether anyone likes it or not, she is special. She’s a nationally known Democratic member of the house. How many others can say the same?
Twitter is not the world, but it is not nothing either. Katie Porter (Is she a blog favorite? Is there a list? Are there trading cards?) has 1 million followers. AOC has 12.7 million.
That means is that a lot of people are hearing what AOC is saying. That alone means she’s special.
dr. bloor
@Ohio Mom:
Don’t forget about the time he and the other kids in the Billionaires Boys Club were going to save healthcare.
James E Powell
@WaterGirl:
Some time ago, I think it was during the campaign, I suggested we should all try to be nicer to each other. Somebody – don’t remember who – said something like “you and your tone policing can fuck right off.” LOL
Anonymous At Work
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Sinema wants to be a mavericky, independent, both-sides, non-partisan, line-straddling politician that gets a state funeral like McCain and thinks playing these games (like he did) will get her a beloved status.
Oh, and I think she really disdains Democratic leadership and this is what she calculates as her best way to revel in her bitterness. Best explanation of how a progressive Green went to conserva-Dem.
So, what she wants is to stick thumb in eye of Democrats to show she’s “not one of them” without realizing that Republicans will always treat her as “one of them” and lump her with AOCI and Pelosi.
Like I said, best guesses. What advisors she has and what they are thinking and what her internal polling shows, beyond me.
James E Powell
@Ohio Mom:
No shit. Gates dangled enough money to convince Los Angeles schools to totally reorganize their high schools (Small Schools! Learning Communities!). Melinda Gates even came to our school to tell us how great & data-driven their plans were. Then with no warning they abandoned the idea and pulled the funding right in the middle of the financial crisis so that there were massive cutbacks in staff & resources. Assholes. No other word for it.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Geminid:
My MoC is Joe Morelle, Class of ’18 (more-or-less, he won a special election).
He’s a lifelong legislator and therefore approaches his seat in Congress the old-fashioned way, keeping his mouth shut and his bowels open. He was slow to call for impeachment and doesn’t lead on anything that I can tell. He’s simply OK. A solid D vote who he doesn’t engage in any nonsense like the problem makers.
AOC brings more of an activist mentality to her district. One example: she did a lot of census advocacy, and Queens and the Bronx (her districts) were the #1 and #4 growth regions in the US, respectively. Rochester (Morelle’s district) slipped to the #4 city in New York for the first time. We’re pretty chapped about that, let me tell you — maybe Joe could have moved the needle on the census.
Also, she doesn’t filibuster when she asks questions in committee (maybe Morelle doesn’t either, but he hasn’t made the news around here for his committee work) and comes prepared. She communicates her positions clearly, like Kathy Hochul, for example, though their politics are probably different.
So if Morelle is average, and I think he is, she’s above average. Also, it is no fun that Joe replaced someone truly special, Louise Slaughter, who was very progressive, very outspoken and a power in the House (Chair of the Rules Committee). We know what an above-average MoC looks like around here.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: Joe Biden and Mark Kelly got a record Democratic turnout last year. We’ll see in 2022 if that Democratic strength is sustained or even enhanced. If it is, former Phoenix mayor Stanton could be a viable option. Politically, I don’t think he is much different from either Biden or Kelly. If they can win Arizona, it may be that the centrist Sinema is not an indispensable candidate.
WaterGirl
@James E Powell: That’s Balloon Juice! :-)
In many ways, we are like family, and like all families, we sometimes fight.
O. Felix Culpa
@Geminid: Folks are working on ensuring good Democratic turnout and I feel good about their chances.
To me, Sinema is more of a solipsist than a centrist. The latter implies some sort of governing philosophy and I don’t see much evidence of one in her case.
WaterGirl
@O. Felix Culpa: If this partnership between Fair Fight and Four Directions goes well in GA, there’s probably a good chance of a partnership between the two groups in AZ.
So in a few months, I hope there will be an opportunity for another thermometer to help get that off the ground.
GoBlueInOak
@SFAW: The lazy long term incumbent class hates them because they challenge their easy back-bench, corporate funded lifestyles with threats of primary-ing their asses from the Left. They hate reps like AOC because she can’t be bought – she has an online fundraising machine driven by her activist supporters that renders her immune to corporate lobbyists.
Safe Blue-seat House members SHOULD live in constant fear of being primaried from the Left. Entire caucus should fear it same way the GOP fears primaries from the right. Its how the caucus gets dragged into an actual position to change the status quo. Stiffens the spine.
Most of the primary challenges will fail. Some will succeed. Everyone that does is another head on the wall to keep the oily schmucks in DC honest.
Whatever spats in public have occurred over time between Pelosi’s office and the “Squad” are just popcorn for the rubes. A Tea Party of the Left strengthens her hand in dealing with schmoes like Cuellar – one of the most conservative members of the Dem caucus. Justice Dems went after him in last election in primary. He’s a 15 year incumbent, who previously was Texas Sec of State and 14 years in Texas state house. They came within 4 points of knocking him off, with a 26 year old human rights attorney. I hope they keep gunning for his seat.
Geminid
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: What do you think of Lauren Underwood (IL)? Jahana Hayes (CT)? Colin Alredd (TX)? Sean Casten (IL)? These and others of the Class of 2018 Representatives may not get the attention Porter and Ocasio-Cortez do, but that is not because they are not capable or effective. These are not show horses, but workhorses. You seem to think that Morrelle is mediocre, and you could be right, but you may be lumping a lot of good people in with him just because you don’t know about them.
J R in WV
Well, I’m first to admit that even House Reps that I adore often do things that piss me off. I adore Ms Porter for her questioning ability in committee hearings, and oft wonder why committees don’t just give her all the time she can use to grill stupid witnesses attempting to not commit perjury. Yet she supported Turner… so I signed up for regular donations to the real Democratic candidate, who won that race going away. Shontel sends me emails asking for donations, but I just let our regularly scheduled donation ride, thank you ActBlue.
I like AOC a lot too, young, well educated, bright, good intentions, but she too does things I don’t approve of. Bernie Sanders is such a dork, does nothing much constructive, gets too much credit for things other people do, etc, etc. But since Joe Biden won the election, I must confess Bernie has been more helpful than I expected he would.
We’re about to have a run of thunderstorms, which will shut down out internet sat service off and on, so I’ma gonna havta quit now.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: How about a solipsist with a centrist electoral strategy?
sab
I hope the blogfather doesn’t punish us for this thread by withholding Mr. Frog tonight.
O. Felix Culpa
@Geminid: Lol. I’ll take it. Until a better Dem comes along who can take her seat. Good for you for discerning a strategy. :)
O. Felix Culpa
@WaterGirl: Yes, I was thinking of Four Directions among other Democratic activist groups that helped us win in AZ last year.
ETA: Yikes! Has it only been a year? It feels like several lifetimes already.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Geminid: Here’s the thing: I don’t know what I think about them, because they haven’t gotten a lot of press. AOC has. That is a talent. She has it. They don’t. Whether you value that talent or not, it is one that serves most politicians well. She generally uses her ability to get good press to advance an agenda that I agree with. I don’t think she’s always right, but no politician is. She’s also 31 years old and makes smarter political moves than a lot of politicians twice her age. She’s an up-and-comer in the party.
Finally, was Barack Obama better Senator than Ken Salazar? They were both elected in 2004. Maybe, maybe not. But he’s miles ahead of Ken Salazar as a politician.
sab
@Ohio Mom: Thanks for pointing this out. Billionaires keeping trotting into school districts and promising all kinds of support, and then reneging when miracles don’t happen overnight, leaving everyone much worse off. And nobody ever says anything.
That’s why I am so impressed with LeBron James’s people and the I Promise Academy. It works within she public school district without trying to remake the whole school system. It started small and keeps plugging away year after year and growing incrementally. It is focused on the kids that most need the help, not the gifted that make the school district look good by helping kids who would have done well anyway. And it is showing pretty dramatic results with these kids that nobody except their teachers expected anything from
ETA And all pretty much within the framework of tge existing publuc school system.
topclimber
@WaterGirl: Perhaps questioning the reading skills of someone not born in the USA (as I get it) could appear to be racist, but clearly there is a long history here.
WaterGirl
@topclimber: I don’t know… I’m pretty sure mistermix would question my reading skills if he thought I had completely missed the boat in my interpretation!
Yutsano
@sab:
We all know Cole doesn’t read his own blog. If he did he wouldn’t be redundant with his topics.
WaterGirl
@O. Felix Culpa: I introduced the partnership with Fair Fight as strategy + opportunity.
We get to help with the native vote in two states where most excellent senators were just elected in 2020 and come up for election again in 2022.
Two key states + 2 key senate elections + key native vote = the perfect focus for us, in every way.
Another Scott
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: The 3 WV US House districts are each R+25 or more, IIRC. I think that explains why Manchin behaves the way he does pretty well.
Sinema seems to me to be wanting to be a reincarnated Maverick (“don’t call me a maverick”) St. John McCain. Maybe, based on what Suzanne has said about the state of politics in AZ, that’s a winning strategy for her. Maybe. I don’t much care as long as she votes Team D when it matters, and so far it looks like she has.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: Cole gets a bad rap for not reading the blog. He most surely doesn’t read every post and every comment, but he definitely reads it.
Why would he punish us for this one?
Geminid
@James E Powell: I know Ocasio-Cortez is a media star. I meant special as in, “capable legislator.”
sab
@topclimber: Give me a break. She is highly educated from India. Her English has probably been better than most of ours since she started school, and I am sure she knows that. Have you ever seen her make so much as a spelling or grammar mistake?
I do think there was a bit of one-sided piling on here. Which was odd, since both sc and mister-mix are more than capable of holding their own in a fight.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@topclimber: Dude, I can’t keep the bios of B-J commenters in my head. Hell, I sometimes don’t have time to read all the comments on posts. I’m making an exception for this thread.
My general approach is calling out bullshit no matter who wrote it.
sab
@WaterGirl: I think Yutsano forgot the “//”s.
Geminid
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Most of the members of thd House class of 2018 don’t get a lot of national attention and they don’t try to. If you want to learn about Representatives like Jahana Hayes or Sharice Davids you just have to look up state and local media coverage. This is not hard to do, though, and if you are interested in the Democratic Party on a national level it’s worth it.
jnfr
My faith is in Nancy. She’s got this.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Another Scott: I give Manchin more of a break because he’s the last of a long line of Democratic Senators doing things to get elected in states where, by PVI, they should have no chance. Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson are just a few examples.
Sinema has no such excuse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell:
“special”? Okay. An asset? highly debatable.
J R in WV
Thunder still all around, nothing right on top of us yet!
I forgot to mention, AOC also gets a small monthly donation via Act Blue, along with Four Directions and Fair Fight…. just because she works hard!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Geminid: Agree with that. I like to look up local media coverage where I can.
Another factor: as a New Yorker, I have more of an interest in AOC than the others, though she doesn’t rep my district.
topclimber
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I think s-cat’s biography is pretty well known, unlike Baud, for instance, who for all those Presidential campaigns doesn’t really reveal much except an aversion to pants. (Thankfully not demonstrated by a photo).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Does she advance an agenda? Bernie Sanders and “Our Revolution” have both abandoned, or at least ratcheted back, their stance on “Medicare For All”, which is what Herself talks about the most, as near as I can tell.
Is promoting Nina “Bowl Of Shit” Turner a smarter move than promoting Shontel Brown? I don’t know how anyone who knows anything about the two candidates, and the political world outside of left twitter, can possibly think so.
Cutesy-cutesy “look at me! I’m a socialist! Isn’t that bold and daring?” may get retweets. Is it helpful? Just to remind everybody: That was in Kansas.
What’s vaccination rate in her district?
sab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I had the impression that Nina Turner was possibly helpful in her first run for Congress, so AOC repaid a favor. Plus nobody actually follows Ohio urban politics much. Raskin and Porter are inexplicable to me, but that is between them and their constituents. But outsiders coming in wasn’t likely to change much much if they didn’t bring big checks
James E Powell
@Geminid:
She is much more than a media star. The press/media only pay attention to her when she criticizes another D or says something that gives the Rs a hate orgasm.
How many members of the house are “capable legislators” in their second terms?
She has a following and she is doing more to get those people to identify as Democrats, to vote for Democrats, and become more involved in politics than any “quietly effective” legislator.
A governing party needs the backroom deal makers, but we have plenty of them. What we have a shortage of is people who are talking to the next generation, who are convincing them that politics generally and the Democratic Party specifically are things that ought to be part of their lives.
Geminid
@James E Powell: Lauren Underwood is in her second term, and she has proven herself a very capable legislator. She gets maybe a tenth of the attention Ocasio-Cortez does, but Underwood is the real deal.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I posted a specific thing she did (census) above in my comparison to my MoC, Joe Morelle. She was also part of the successful push for continuing the eviction moratorium via executive action, and she was good about educating folks that there is assistance for landlords as well as tenants.
As for her endorsements, I don’t agree with all the endorsements of anyone. Nina Turner had a lot of endorsements from big name progressive Dems. https://ninaturner.com/endorsements/
She has a platform, she uses it, and it sure as hell isn’t “cutesy, cutesy”. That’s just condescending and shows a kind of contempt for someone who actually gets things done.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell:
Literally the first thing she did after being sworn in was join the little Sunrise Idiots in a sit-in in Nancy Pelosi’s office. Do you think that’s a good use of activists’ time and energy? She wanted people to vote for Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee. Thank god most people didn’t listen to her. After Biden was elected, she called him a “corporate-consensus neoliberal who’s not socially regressive”; that’s twitter gibberish, but I don’t think it was meant as a compliment. A couple of months ago she said that “progressives” (scare quotes because she and I don’t agree on the meaning of that term) “saved Biden’s ass”; does that sound like someone who understands the coalition-building and art of persuasion that makes for successful politics?
And, once again, her most recent media appearance was promoting Nina Turner, who actively campaigned against Hillary Clinton and called Joe Biden, two months before Election Day, a bowl of shit, and effectively said there’s no meaningful difference between Biden and trump. Unless the CNN interview, where she expressed hurt confusion that her colleagues were “cold” to her. (See above)
This is someone people think is good at politics?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Morons.
What has she actually gotten done?
schrodingers_cat
Ah the good old both sides do it. And yet you inserted yourself in the debate, took sides and started arguing with me.
BTW I have never once questioned Mr. Mix’s intelligence or the lack there of. Which is the first insult in his quiver.
He has called me whiny and many other epithets too. I think that’s because he can’t argue on substance. Is name calling what people of supposedly high intellect do when their opinions are questioned?
germy
According to the link mistermix provided of people who endorsed Turner:
Ted Lieu
Cori Bush
Katie Porter
Ayanna Pressley
Jamie Raskin
Jamaal Bowman
Pramila Jayapal
are all idiots?
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ah the Sunrise Movement, who gave Biden an F on environmental issues, they were in news yesterday.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: you and me too sister…
WaterGirl
@sab: I wasn’t piling on. I only said that mistermix wasn’t being racist. He was just being mistermix.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t keep close tabs on AOC’s media appearances but here’s one at the end of June where she’s promoting the Biden/Democratic agenda quite capably, to Chuck Toddler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9xJC7BexTo
This is someone good at politics. She’s a second term MoC on MTP, and she does an excellent job.
If you want to regurg all of her primary talk supporting her chosen candidate (Bernie) and consider those sins against the Democratic Party, feel free, but she’s on board now. Far more on board than the preeners who signed the letter that’s the subject of the post.
I’d suggest that you adjust your frame of reference to 2021. It’s very telling that you aren’t spouting off about Jamie Raskin the same way you spouted off about her. He supported Nina Turner, too, which is apparently an unforgivable sin
Also, don’t expect respectful replies when I tell you specifically a couple of things she’s done and you just ignore it to call pretty much the whole progressive caucus morons.
WaterGirl
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Some of those names are very surprising.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@WaterGirl: Maybe because a politician isn’t defined by one dumb remark? I really don’t know the reason.
I carry no water for Nina Turner, but maybe these Dems, who are mostly reasonable, met with her and thought she was overall a better candidate than her opponent.
Ksmiami
@James E Powell: Because real progress is slow and mundane and many of the billionaire set want immediate results and press and statues dedicated to their awesomeness. In actuality we should tax the fuck out of them and their heirs.
O. Felix Culpa
@germy:
Clearly not, but they all exhibited poor judgement in this instance. Which doesn’t doom them as human beings or politicians if they learn from their mistakes.
E.
SC is right. There is a power differential at play that front pagers sometimes forget. For the sake of the blog (which has pretty much succeeded in running me off btw) they should try to exercise restraint until they are 100 percent positive going nuclear is the appropriate option. Much as I disagree with her and as much as MM is nearly the only front pager I will read any more, it never helps to outright attack someone who may not have the ability or power in the limited comments environment to fully express their views. Or maybe they read too hastily. Maybe they misunderstood something. “You are an unregenerate asshole” should not be an early conclusion.
germy
People always ask why she gets so much more attention than others like Underwood (for example). I think it’s because AOC is an object of obsessive hate from MAGA country. And since the mainstream, beltway or whatever you want to call them media uses MAGA country as its assignment editor, we hear more about AOC.
And then the hate trickles down into comments here, because centrists often don’t know when they’re being played.
The hatred reminds me of all the mysterious accusations against HRC that persisted for decades, and led to people being suspicious of her. (Not here, fortunately)
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@E.:
Appreciate your readership, sincerely. I think most here will agree that this isn’t my normal way of interacting in the comments, but I hear what you’re saying.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
If you review the comments in this thread, you will see that you are wrong, Ocasio-Cortez is not a blog favorite.
sab
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: All politics is local. I don’t know how they could have met with them both and thought Turner was the better candidate. She has been gone from Ohio for years. And in the years when she was still here she was pretty fucking disloyal to the Democratic Party, even when she was a high ranking official in it. And Ohio is a two party state. Greens and Libertarians can barely get on the ballot.
Nina Turner has good connections with national cable news people. Shontel Brown does not. That’s my cynical take on the out of state endorsements.
sab
@E.: Agree here.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
What’s a “capable legislator”? Neither one is leading on any pending legislation. That’s not what back benchers do.
Some people just decided at some point that they don’t like Ocasio-Cortez. You may or may not be one such person and either way is okay with me. But our party needs a lot of different kinds of people.
Like I said in another comment, we do not have a shortage of the deal makers. We have a shortage of people who can & do take a progressive message to a part of the population that is either not interested in or alienated from politics. Getting millions of people to listen to what you are saying is a political skill. Even if half of her 12 million twitter followers are hate-following, that’s 6 million people. Rachel Maddow’s audience last month average 2.5 million.
O. Felix Culpa
@James E Powell:
Do you have data to support your assertion that she is leading lots of new people to the Democratic Party? I’m not saying this to knock AOC, but I don’t see that connection in my corner of the political world. What I do see–admittedly anecdata–is self-appointed “progressives” using AOC quotes to attack the Democratic Party. That may or may not be what she intended, but I have seen this happen repeatedly.
James E Powell
@Ksmiami:
You’re too kind. I was thinking of arrests, seizure of assets, and forcing them serve in camps where immigrant children are housed in comfort & safety.
But seriously, you’re right. They want the plaque and the honors for the private sector silver bullet solution to problems that people have been struggling to solve since forever. I guess everyone who has been working in education for the last 50 years is just incompetent or corrupt.
I was bitter at the time because the small learning community program was starting to show positive results in student engagement, significant decreases in behavior issues, etc. It was just that the effing test scores didn’t sky-rocket, so the canned the whole thing. Did I was I was bitter?
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: You did pile on. You jumped to his defense. How dare you stand up for yourself was your not so subtle message.
James E Powell
@germy:
Agreed. I’ve also noticed (not here, ever) the same steady stream of negative against Kamala Harris. Her laugh, her voice, her clothes, some shit from her days as a DA, the repetition of negative views like “the most unpopular vice-president in history” or the like. The Republican campaign never ends.
James E Powell
@O. Felix Culpa:
Why would you?
I don’t see it in my corner of the political world because I’m a 66 year old white liberal. But in the high school classes where I teach – anecdata for sure – AOC & Kamala Harris are the only politicians other than Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Biden whose name they know.
ETA – Holy shit! I’m totally killing a thread.
O. Felix Culpa
@James E Powell:
Because I’m a local Democratic organizer, that’s why. :-P
ETA: And I was asking a serious question. Name recognition does not necessarily => becoming Democrats or even voters. To go back to the original question, do you have data to support your assertion? I’d love it if it were true.
the pollyanna from hell
I like to hear what aoc has done right. I like to hear what aoc has done wrong. I don’t like to hear blog history and personalities and unprovable generalizations. I read through all of it because I was here for the history and I love all of you and I can’t look away. Be more clever, or more generous, or… something?
PST
@sab:
Being the Sanders co-chair and frequent surrogate made Turner a national figure. Her willingness to drop controversial remarks reinforces her national press appeal. Brown is an establishment Democrat well connected in her community — a normal background for the pool from which candidates arise. I would imagine that many of the out-of-state endorsements were from folks with a large following in the Bernie wing of the party for whom this was an almost costless gesture that will be understood by Brown herself and everyone else and dismissed as one of those things working politicians have to do sometimes. I doubt that many Democratic representatives really wanted a colleague who ostentatiously refused to endorse either Clinton or Biden in 2016 and 2020, only the party platform.
sab
@WaterGirl: My point was he can defend himself. Two front pagers against one commenter, and one of those front pagers a remarkably kind and inclusive front pager. Sc and mister-mix are both very scrappy. I know you meant well, but I think you should have left them to defend themselves.
I also don’t think for a second that mister-mix is racist. But sc is an immigrant and I think the comment was a fair one. My immediate family has been here almost since the Mayflower. We have immigrant in-laws, and the next generation down is always anxious to point out when we are inadvertently or intentionally insensitive or insulting. How comments are felt on the receiving end as well as the delivered end is a valid issue.
sab
@PST: Maybe don’t endorse at the primary level until you’ve done your homework.
Another Scott
@sab: Turner also raised 2-3x as much money as Brown. While money is important, Democratic Party leaders (including Pelosi (e.g. Kennedy v. Markey), IIRC) sometimes make more of it than they should.
I’m very happy that Brown won. I think she’ll be a credit to the district in the House.
Cheers,
Scott.
Yutsano
@sab: Yes, that was sarcasm.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
I mentioned Raskin upthread. So what’s actually “very telling” is your need, and willingness to go to such a cheap, and dishonest, deflection. But you do you.
Also “very telling”, that when I ask you what Herself has actually accomplished, you have one media appearance in which she did not, according to you, actively undermine the Democrats’ agenda. Well…. Stand back, World!
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
“One dumb remark”? It strains credulity that you really know nothing of Bowl Of Shit’s five year history of anti-Democratic activism, under the trump era. But if that’s what you want to go with, that for most of this thread you have no idea what you’re talking about and are just typing out of your ass, I’ll allow it.
Then, it also wouldn’t really surprise me to find out you voted for Jill Stein. “To send a message!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
sorry, could you link those again?
germy
My prediction (comment #11) came true!
EDIT: and comment #63, partially. I’m still waiting for some zesty Porter bashing.
sab
@germy: Yep. I like AOC but no way could she be elected anywhere in Ohio. I think she is bright, very hard-working and always learning. Ditto Ilhan (plus I think she makes my ex’s-from-Minneapolis-head explode, which makes my not nice side happy.) Bernie is Bernie, but he seems to be doing better when the party treats him as an important person and not just a gadfly.
( To clarify:Only one ex. He was from Minneapolis.)
Ksmiami
@James E Powell: Tis true that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Look I’m a liberal capitalist but extreme wealth inequality is incompatible with a healthy functioning Democracy. Not to mention that overall we don’t spend enough money or effort in childhood development even though that is the National future…
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: I think these endorsements might be explained by internal Democratic Caucus politics. The Progressive Caucus and the moderate New Democrat Coalition are evenly matched at about 95 members each. Turner would have been an addition for the Progressive Caucus. She also apparently has a big following, 500,000 on Twitter compared to Shontel Brown’s measly 20,000. But Turner would have been bad news for the Democratic caucus, and I would not be surprised if Raskin, Lieu, and Porter were relieved when she lost.
Personally, I think Turner would have used the OH-11 seat as a stepping stone for a Presidential run in 2024, on the People’s Party ticket. Turner was a headline speaker at their organizing convention last September. The selection of Marcia Fudge as HUD Secretary last winter was unexpected. Turner executed a quick pivot and tried to present her self as a committed Democrat and a warm, congenial person. This did not seem to come naturally, though, and Turner’s history of intemperate anti-party rhetoric found her out.
Turner’s run finished with a scorched earth campaign against Shontel Brown and her supporters. Turner and her sore-loser adherents have continued to try and dirty up Brown since the primary.To their credit, most of Turner’s Congressional supporters have not joined in this discreditable effort. The exceptions are Rho Khanna and whoever writes Bernie Sanders’ tweets.
Old School
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I should probably let Mistermix do this, but…
…
germy
@sab:
Bernie is someone whose ideas sound great to me, but I understand he has no ability whatsoever to turn those ideas into reality. I’m glad he’s inside the tent pissing out.
James E Powell
@O. Felix Culpa:
I would guess that the people who AOC has the most impact on are not yet to the stage where they are going to be interacting with Democratic Party organizers. We’re still at the get them registered to vote and paying attention to politics stage.
I don’t have time to search for anything recent, but this old stuff shows her popularity with younger voters in 2019. I’m haven’t heard any suggestion that she is less so now.
You want hard data? People who have stated that they became more active in D politics because of AOC? I’m not aware of any such data for any person. What would it consist of? Does anyone collect such information? Where would it be?
I get that she says things that annoy people, I get that a lot of people feel she gets more attention than she merits. But the constant picking at her every flaw, real or imagined, the constant reference to shit she said or did two years ago that turned out not to matter, and the constant negative comments to diminish her instead of promoting the idea that someone like her can get involved and make a difference is not going to make anything better. I can tell you for sure that is not what Republicans do with their outspoken up & coming prospects.
Every day 12 million people are reading what she says about politics. That’s one million more than the Vice-President Harris and about a million less than President Biden. Is that nothing?
James E Powell
@Geminid:
I am very thankful that my beloved home town had a ready to run candidate with the skills of Shontel Brown. Now the city just needs to pick the right mayor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Old School: Okay, number 1 and informing her constituents on available rent assistance are good, the nuts-and-bolts district-center work of a MoC. The eviction moratorium— smarter people than me think it will be shut down by the courts again, but buying time is good.
OTOH, the long-term damage of encouraging the cult of the presidency, and Green Lanternism, ignoring the other three branches of the federal government, and even more so the state governments, is to the long term detriment of Democrats and progressive goals.
and on balance, do these things outweigh the damage she’s done and does to the national party with attention-seeking vanguardism and anti-Democratic demagoguery (The Sunrise Movement, that Molotov cocktail interview she lobbed into an intra-caucus squabble)?
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
OMG! That amounted to nothing. Like most of AOC’s perceived transgressions.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Yougov has a “most popular Democrats” page (which is hysterical, btw) and AOC is #6.
Obviously associated with fame- these are also the Democrats everyone knows.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I believe Lauren Underwood has already sponsored three pieces of legislation that have passed Congress.
Some fun Lauren Underwood facts: Underwood earned a Master’s Degree in Nursing. She served in the Obama administration, in HHS. She flipped a suburban Chicago seat. Also, Lauren Underwood is 34 years old.
WaterGirl
@germy: Being right isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
sab
@WaterGirl: I tried to stay out of this all day, but I couldn’t.
You are one of the kindest front pagers on BJ.
sc is one of the fiercest commenters. I have told her that I pie her during election season so that she won’t hurt my feelings or enrage me. I still hugely value her input. I expect you do too.
Bad day on the thread. I hope we come back tomorrow back where we used to be, or at least wiser.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Ilhan Omar is more popular than Walter Mondale! But only a teeny bit, and obviously Walter Mondale is no longer alive, which may have hurt his polling some.
O. Felix Culpa
@James E Powell: In other words, you made a sweeping unsubstantiated assertion.
I did not and do not speak from a position of animus against AOC. But, as a grassroots organizer, I value data. I have seen minimal evidence among the high school and college-age youth that I have worked with that she led them to get involved. Some do indeed admire her and find her inspiring. Others, including many of my community college students, are indifferent. It takes something else to motivate them to even vote.
Perhaps you do not understand what organizers do. Among other things, they reach out to and work with underrepresented/less-engaged groups, such as young people. I have developed successful voter outreach strategies to young people. In a pandemic. With actual data to back up my claims.
When I write, I try to differentiate between surmises I might be making and facts. It is possible to cite good things about AOC without making fact-free assertions.
ETA : 12 million followers is indeed not nothing. Where I part ways is the leap to “and she has thereby brought in many new Democratic supporters.” That I am not seeing, although as I said before, it would be great if it were demonstrably true.
topclimber
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Voltaire, maybe).
On the other hand, I am in no big hurry to do so.
Richard Guhl
This is all for show for local consumption. It’s “see how independent we are.” It’s about what they perceive as what they need to do in their CD to get reelected. I’m sure Nancy Pelosi understands what this huffing and puffing is all about. After all, in previous elections she told those in swing districts that she didn’t care if they said mean things about her, just get elected.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell: and I’m very glad it didn’t cause more problems, but it displayed a narcissistic and anti-Democratic leftist mindset of the kind that put first George W Bush then Donald Trump in the White House. I know to a lot of people 2020 is ancient history, much less 2016; to me 2000 was like yesterday, and 2022 is very much tomorrow. To me, Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders and AOC are parts of the same whole.
We didn’t learn from the past. We repeated it. I don’t want that to happen again.
(also the amount of delusion and/or dishonesty (or both) in that interview is just fascinating, electoral politics aside. I’m surprised more people didn’t catch on to it.)
Kay
@James E Powell:
I have this truly horrible coffee mug that someone gave me as a gift – it has poorly-drawn heads of various Democrats – just no order to the thing at all. So Ted Kennedy is just jammed in with the presidents, alongside a generic looking man who must be JFK, just by elimination. I’m fascinated with this cup- that someone, somewhere made more than one of them.
WaterGirl
@sab: Yeah, definitely not the best thread ever. Tomorrow is another day.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: I wonder if Representative Veronica Escobar (D-TX) might interest some of the young people you speak to. Escobar is a neighbor, representing Beto O’Rourke’s old El Paso district.
Veronica Escobar is another member of the talented class of 2018. Her first job in politics was communications director for a liberal El Paso mayor. When he lost his reelection, Escobar and local activists Steven Gomez, Susie Bird, and Beto O’Rourke banded together to strategize economic and political develpment in their hometown. They all eventually won public office, Escobar serving as El Paso County Judge before replacing O’Rouke after his unsuccessful Senate race. According to Wikipedia, the four were known locally as “the Progressives.”
O. Felix Culpa
@Geminid: Escobar is great! I’ve met her. We also have some fine young Hispanic and Native politicians/activists here in New Mexico.
There are several challenges I’ve seen with respect to young people: one is cynicism, that “both parties are the same,” “all politicians are corrupt,” and “my vote doesn’t matter.” Another is indifference/apathy, often due to life circumstances. A lot of my community college students are struggling just to survive and politics dwells in an irrelevant world for them.
What does motivate is issues. Especially topics like climate change, student debt, living wage, and affordable housing, along with demonstrating that Democrats care about them and are in fact making a tangible difference. You’re right that making dynamic politicians directly accessible to young people also helps, plus communicating that their vote does in fact count.
That’s why delivering on promises and making sure folks know what Dems have accomplished for them is so important. But you knew that. :)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@topclimber: I’m sorry, am I supposed to care what you think?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@topclimber: refresh my memory: It was you who once said, Sure Bernie hurt HRC’s candidacy, but that’s okay cause no one was talking about income inequality before Bernie?
James E Powell
@O. Felix Culpa:
Not all that sweeping and not unsubstantiated. As you concede, those 12 million people are not nothing. It’s for sure that they are not following AOC for her travel tips or views on professional sports. She’s got an audience – a political audience – and people who dislike her want to dismiss it or even put it down.
And somehow, AOC has developed & maintained her popularity in the face of pretty much relentless negative messaging, a great deal of which comes from people who identify as Democrats. (See comments above.)
Dismissing or denigrating popularity in politics is not how to win converts or elections. An important component of popularity is trust. Popular people reach people that the quietly effective capable legislators do not. We need both those kinds of people. We probably need two or more other kinds of people (somebody has to get big donors).
And I know what organizers do, I used to do that work. It may just be that you’re not meeting people from AOC’s audience. Do you think that’s possible? You & I both have to live with anecdata until we start making people tell us, presumably in writing and under oath to satisfy your threshold requirements, what got them interested in politics.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: I still have a lot to learn about politics. But your description of young people’s cynicism reminded me of a thought I had long ago, that cynicism and vindictiveness are the biggest problems in politics. I guess the task is to get these cynical young people politically engaged. Then they will have at least a few years before they become vindictive, and join a blog.
O. Felix Culpa
@James E Powell: I have researched what motivates young people to get engaged in politics and to vote. AOC has never come up as a factor. Which is not to say she hasn’t influenced anyone. It does suggest that the effect (actual measurable results) may be less than originally claimed. Or that we don’t know and therefore need to exercise caution in making claims.
@Geminid: Hehe. I hope we can help them–and us–overcome cynicism without slouching into vindictiveness.
mvr
I remember sending Carolyn Bourdeaux’s campaign a reasonable amount of money in 2018 for the midterm election that I believe put her in office. This does not make me happy.
Geminid
@mvr: You helped put Carolyn Bordeaux almost into office in 2018. She lost to Republican incumbent John Woodall by only 433 votes. Woodall then retired, and Bordeaux won the Georgia 7th on her second try. I wouldn’t give up on Ms. Bordeaux, however. In a few months, I suspect both infrastructure bills will be passed and signed, and The Affair of the Nefarious Letter will be forgotten.
I read that Carolyn Bordeaux was born in Roanoke, Virginia. She moved to booming Atlanta as an adult, and taught college before entering politics.
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s her mulligan.
Richard Grant
The August 12, 2021 letter from members of the Watered-Down Solutions Caucus to the Honorable Nancy Pelosi is only five paragraphs long but utters “bipartisan” eight times. Lucky for us that not everything turns into a drinking game.
mvr
@Geminid:
Thanks for the correction! My memory ain’t so good or perhaps I just give money to too many politicians ;-).
Geminid
@mvr: A lot happened in 2018. And the close call you helped fund might have persuaded Woodall to retire. Bordeaux and her neighbor Lucy McBath will be targeted by Georgia Republican gerrymandering. Unless Republicans try to cut their losses and go after just one, the two will have tough reelection races.