After Great Hopes for New Congress, Reality Falls Short

[Purveyor]

For years, Senator Dianne Feinstein has earned failing grades from the National Rifle Association and the American Conservative Union. But when the California Democrat unexpectedly helped her Republican colleagues approve a controversial judicial nominee last week, she gained a new, somewhat more unlikely, adversary: liberal advocate Sammie Moshenberg.

“I don’t know what she was thinking,” said Moshenberg, who heads the Washington office of the National Council of Jewish Women. “It was a shock and quite appalling that she would vote to send such an extreme nominee on to the full Senate.”

Clearly, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. Back in November, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1995, Moshenberg and Washington’s cadre of mostly left-leaning Jewish lobbyists had high hopes for the new leadership. Nine months later, they are confronting a more checkered reality.

Faced with razor-thin majorities and a veto-wielding executive, as well as the looming shadows of the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential race, congressional Democrats have found themselves compromising on a number of fronts. They head into the August recess this week with early defeats on major policy issues such as immigration reform, but also several modest wins on domestic issues championed by Jewish groups, including the raising of the federal minimum wage and the expansion of a federal program for children’s health insurance.

---EOE---

http://www.forward.com/articles/11356/

[tularetom]

1. I have no personal knowledge of this but my guess is

that Feinstein has personally profited from the Iraq war and related military misadventures of the bush maladministration, more than any other member of either house of congress. She and her husband are extremely wealthy and heavily invested in defense industry securities. I have wondered for years where her loyalties really lie. On the other hand her office was instrumental in securing federal funding for several flood control projects I was involved in back in the day. So in terms of constituent responsiveness I'd give her an A, in terms of progressive voting record probably a D. She's far behind Boxer in this regard.