Email From a Staffer

[EmeraldCityGrl]

"I certainly wouldn't want to indicate I have any unique insight on how everyone feels around this place but I thought you might be interested in how one Senate staffer is feeling.
My background is like probably the majority of staffers I know. I came to DC, from a far superior climate and quality of life, because I wanted to save the world. I arrived, and took a job in the House, at what I still view as the nadir of Congress - in 1996. Republicans had recently taken over Congress and had 230 seats in the House and 52 in the Senate. Democrats were in a state of shock and we watched (because that was essentially all we could do) in horror as they systematically went after nearly every institution of civil governance culminating in nearly removing the President from office via an entirely trumped-up charge. They had destroyed the Democrats in 1994 because they simply couldn't deliver - the BTU tax went down, health care went down, and finally the Crime Bill failed because it had such laughably wacky ideas as "midnight basketball" as a crime prevention measure (something with is widely approved of today and is completely noncontroversial). As a young LA, it was amazingly dispiriting. Literally nothing we proposed could get passed - we couldn't even get votes. Every bill came to the floor under a closed rule so we couldn't propose amendments and our Senate colleagues faced a full amendment tree on every bill such that unless they had Republican patron they couldn't get votes either. Kennedy fought like hell for things like minimum wage and sometimes could arm-wrestle a procedural vote win out of them but things would just die in the hands of the Hammer in the House. Eventually, my boss got fed up and retired and I went over to the Administration where I thought I might be able to get more accomplished."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/relieved.php#more?ref=fpblg


The staffer offers some insight into the mood today. The one thing I didn't expect to hear was "relief."

[Missy Vixen]

1. I hope people read the entire e-mail

We all deserve better than this. The question is, however: How do we get it?

[tblue37]

6. In my post below I excerpt the passages that really struck me the hardest.

Even people who don't go to TPM to read the whole email should at least scroll down and read those excerpts in my post.

[Cant trust em]

2. Great article, but I still don't know what you do about obstructionist republicans

and enabling centrist democrats.

I'm really disheartened right now. It's tough to imagine really progressive legislation happening in the next 10 years.

[roguevalley]

5. you have leadership that takes them behind the curtain -dems- and

threaten their very existence like LBJ did when he got it done, like Sam Rayburn did, like Harry Truman did. You grow a pair, you get a spine, you kick ass and you get it done.

[tblue37]

7. And, to be honest, the way that Tom "The Hammer" Delay did.

That's how he got his nickname--by successfully strong-arming recalcitrant Republican members of the House. They know how to do it--but they don't want to, because it might annoy their corporate paymasters.

[Kalun D]

8. Ding ding ding ding

""because it might annoy their corporate paymasters.""

[Cant trust em]

11. I think that was a lot easier 50 years ago with a much less diverse country

We're a lot more ideologically divided now than we were at that time.

[JHB]

12. You get out the legbreakers.

(figuratively speaking, though sometimes it can be useful to make them wonder)

What to do about obstructionist Republicans? Make an issue out of it! Republicans don't hesitate to call Democrats "obstuctionist" for merely trying to ask pointed questions to nominees.

Sauce for the goose(steppers). Every Dem who gets face time on television should be bringing this up. Point out the contradiction of them trying to show how "independent" they are by toeing the party line at Soviet-grade levels of conformity.

Have a weekly (daily when it's important) feature: "Lockstep Watch" (complete with "the Internationale" and Soviet troops goose-stepping through Red Square on old May Day parade filems), tracking how completely locked together congressional Republican voting is. Glenn Greenwald compiled a list of this sort two years ago. Revive it and run with it.

It's not a magic pill to solve all our problems, but if you kick them in the teeth over their sniveling conformity you will knock some of them out of the herd.

[saracat]

3. no wonder they have reacted the way they have and Axelrod admires Brown while Obama wants to wait

to seat Brown to vote on HCR. BTW, what was the all fire hurry before the election then? Remember, there was an act of the Mass leg to seat Ted's sucessor so they could pass HCR? Times have changed. but then,. Obama also once said any bill he signed must contain a Public Option. Now it doesn't have to contain anything!and apparently it doesn't even have to pass!

[jgraz]

4. Here's the money quote

The worst is that I can't help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They're afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That's the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

Have you ever read anything as pathetic as this?

[nosmokes]

9. nail, meet hammer.

thanks for the post

[cilla4progress]

10. Can't believe, don't accept

that there aren't things the executive CAN do; not presently familiar enough with Constitution to know! But Obama and his team and the majority dems in Congress are going to have to figure out what they CAN do, given the circumstances

oh crap...just heard s. ct. struck down limits on corp contributions to elections...maybe I should rethink the post.

Then there is Edwards. No doubt - bad week for Dems!

Time for revolution...