Hold Fast

Politico’s Mike Allen: Gibbs, to Meredith Vieira, on ‘Today’: ‘The president believes that somewhere in all of this, we can find common ground. … The American people … didn’t vote in November for gridlock.’ The entire GOP Senate caucus: Senate Republicans intend to block action on virtually all Democratic-backed legislation unrelated to tax cuts and [...]

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This is just great news. Speaker Pelosi has announced that she will run for Minority Leader and, per Greg Sargent, “her candidacy is partly about protecting the legacy of Dem accomplishments, and partly about ensuring that Dems show the fortitude and spine that will be required to resist the GOP urge to repeal them.” Sargent [...]

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Speaker Pelosi says she has no regrets from the last Congress, including the passage of “healthcare reform, student lending reform, financial regulatory reform, credit card reform and the stimulus, even if it meant losing their House majority.” I think we’ll see how all their hard work plays out in the long term. Jonathan Singer is [...]

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Dave Weigel makes a very solid and under-made observation that the consequences of Al Franken not being seated in January 2009 were dramatic on the ability of Democrats to pass their agenda in a timely and effective fashion. If Franken had eked out another 1000 votes in Minnesota, or if Republicans simply decided not to [...]

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Greg Sargent is right: All I’m saying is that raging against successful Republican efforts to block individual Dem initiatives isn’t enough. Raging about GOP obstructionism in general isn’t enough, either. The point is that Dems need to build an effective larger case that transcends individual issues and reckons more directly with the strategy underlying all [...]

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Chris Bowers is doing really interesting work tracking votes in the Senate for meaningful filibuster reform. The post he has up today looks at the appearance of Democratic opponents to reform. The list is an interesting one, ranging from conservatives who tend to oppose progressives regardless the issue (Nelson, Pryor) to senators who benefit from [...]

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Rest in peace, Senator Byrd.

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In the middle of a must-read article by Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney on Huffington Post, Rep. Tom Perriello has what I believe is a fundamentally true quote about the American people and politics: “Part of the problem is that we often take this “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” approach that assumes that people are [...]

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Carl Hulse and Adam Nagourney, in a piece on the legislative procedural mastery of Mitch McConnell: Even Mr. McConnell’s fellow Republicans say somewhat admiringly that he can be a secretive and coldly calculating tactician with an eye for political openings, someone more consumed by political strategy than ideology or philosophy. He is in many ways [...]

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Mike Stark does some great work interviewing Senator Chris Dodd, getting him to speak out against the obstructionism by the Republicans that have turned the Senate into a dysfunctional institution. he had some pretty strong words for the conduct of certain Senators (that remained unnamed), saying they needed to “start acting like Senators”. But perhaps [...]

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