There has been a lot of moping on our side of the aisle - Sixty seats ...gone ... sob. There has been a lot of crowing from the GOP - Look at our shiny new majority … cackle.
The view from here on Capitol Hill, twenty four days after the 112th Congress began its work, is far different. The New Dems and Blue Dogs were decimated - half of them fell. The Progressive caucus? 79 when the polls opened, 76 when they closed. and the losses of Phil Hare and Tom Perriello are our own damned fault.
Meanwhile the Republicans are … in disarray. Their vaunted discipline is gone, torn to shreds by a wave of incoming wave of Tea Party backed freshmen.
The Democrats lost in the 2010 midterm, but the Progressives won and what we’ve gained is much, much more important than just a larger slice of a smaller pie.
Capitol Hill is a funny environment. The cobblestone streets, the Federal style houses - it feels old, at least as old as one gets in this relatively young country. But this is a college town ... and the typical Congressional staffer is fifteen to twenty years younger than me.
They talk about incoming freshmen legislators and in some ways it is just like going off to college after that last summer of freedom - complete with this helpful sign reminding new people that they need to get themselves connected.
It seems like everyone is moving. I noticed this fun unit badge on a filing cabinet in the basement of the Cannon office building.
The basement halls are full of office equipment ...
The upstairs halls are full of office equipment …
And our usual hangout, which happens to be right across from Representative Ron Paul’s office, was dismantled and lining the halls outside.
So they found us a different room and over twenty House staffers crowded into this space to listen to Beth talk about … blogging! They all wanted to learn how, and where, and when to blog. DailyKos got quite a bit of play, we talked about the culture and interests of some of the other national blogs, and they seem excited to get started engaging the community.
This wouldn’t happen without the support of the Progressive Caucus leadership. If you’ve been following our visit you know we hosted a cocktail party just for these hardworking young people, then we got to spend a day working with Congressman Grijalva’s staff. We were introduced to Congressman Ellison’s staff before the final vote - he has replaced Lynn Woolsey as the co-chair for the House Progressive Caucus.
We’re getting into these offices because we’ve been organizing people in the field since clear back at Netroots Nation 2009. They’ve seen what we can do for elections and on the policy front. They know we’re the ones behind Progressive Congress News and they’re excited to see this system up and running, as it helps them focus by filtering out the junk and just providing them with policy oriented news.
You guys are going to get tired of me rattling my tin cup, but it’s a simple truth: we’re frugal, but we can’t keep doing these things out of our personal passions and with what limited income I have. A number of people have stepped up and donated, making our being here and hosting that staff mixer possible. A few of the Congressional offices are paying us for work on their Twitter/Facebook presences, but this doesn’t add up to a living wage for Beth, let alone the money we need to periodically go back and forth from Illinois.
We need your help to maintain the Progressive presence here or all that hard work we did on elections is for naught. Progressive Congress is our fiscal sponsor for the news project and we can take your tax free donations right here.
If you want to become involved in the service work behind us getting this kind of access to policy making you can talk to @SandiBehrns about working on the news project, or @caradox about joining the wardogs blogging group. If you have a project of your own that you feel might fit into the overall scheme of coordinated messaging you should seek out @Spedwybabs. If you have a technical project that might fit you should start with me, @NealRauhauser.