To wash down all the lovely news.
Some 12 year old Scotch, Hell, make it a double, to go along with the Warren promotion and the President's "Fail Mary" Landrieu and immigration reform defiance, and the usual bucket-sized Prestone chaser to go along with just about everything else that arrived around those nuggets.
Tester settled for the DCSS? Himes, maybe, destined to be helming the DCCC? Lesson learned?
A fitting end note for the week. Rather than confirm Loretta Lynch as AG with 51 votes during the lame duck sesson, her nomination will be put off until the GOP is in charge of the Senate. Because the additional weeks and months of smears, jeers, insults, attacks, and abuse of Loretta Lynch making the GOP look bad if they refuse to confirm her is more important than getting the new AG in when it can be more easily done. I'll hope Loretta Lynch has iron skin. Her benefactors and champions have voluntarily put her on a DC spit-roast set to "slow" on advice you could get from somebody who still considers Lanny Davis and Al From wise generals.
Maybe the (D) should change its icon from a Donkey to Rahm Emmanuel or a huge Horse's Ass.
But I repeat myself.
If you, as a political party, want to impress millions of voters, and millions of them voters of color, by purposefully choosing a qualified woman of color to make another historic choice for an AG, don't then put her over the creaky extra-slow rotisserie, set to very well-done, because... there is no way that this is not an act of genius! No matter how much this woman has to endure and sacrifice, even if she is ultimately humiliated and run off, we look good and they look bad. Win-Win. 100% Hey Dems? What would you remember most? The nominations, or all the unnecessary misery, sometimes grossly enabled by their own team, heaped on those who proudly stood up and said 'yes' when they were called? Everything counts. All of it.
Obama has submitted her name for confirmation. He has eaten a lot of shit, a ton of it, over the mid-terms. For nothing. All because it was "the smart thing for all considered to do". Right. According to all of those brilliant people like the ones who were wiped out for all of their trouble, and the experts who advised them on how to lose expertly? Just schedule it and do it.
If you have time for Mary Landrieu Theater, you have time to make sure the nation has an AG, a Surgeon General, and as many judges as you can get in place. The 2010 lame duck session was extended to 26 days. 26. Because the sitting (D) Senate majority wanted it to be so. If time is a factor, it is because you choose to help make it so.
Oh, but no worries. Worst case? Why the current AG, who clearly has had more than enough and overtly wants out of the job, who's going to be under even more withering assault from both Houses of Congress if he stays, can stick around to be abused while he walks a big new wall. Fort Impeachment. For two years. For a ploy with blatantly obvious flaws if it goes wrong.
But wait, there's more. There's Mary Landrieu. Mary "Obama Who?" Landrieu. She's got a plan!
The DSCC has cut her off, and made a show of doing it. Before her run-off even got started. So. How do you hammer home "desperate loser" competely? First, float a fling spaghetti at the wall trial balloon, in Politico, by nameless Senate staffers. Putting it out there that no, we have no plan, no details, and no, we don't even know when we'd vote. But. We're gonna have a Hail Mary for Mary XL Pipeline vote in the lame duck. The one that is too full for an AG vote. When both she and her freakshow opponent are already on book as being pro-Pipeline. Then you rush a vote, begging for unanimous consent, so nobody opposed has a chance to get organized, and you can cast the member, likely of your own caucus, who objects as the no-good bad guy/gal.
Will this save her seat? No. Will the Democrats gain anything in the process? No.
So your most likely outcome is you put your already beleaguered but defiant President on the spot, over a totally self-inflicted and tactically useless debacle, ending with a predictable veto. When he desperately wants you to pass his nominees instead of fucking around. Bonus fail? You just royally pissed off your sacred rich and powerful donor class, all for a smarmy Ex-Senator Walking, the rest of the Three Stooges who Heath Shulered Reid with Fail Mary after Reid let her play reindeer games, all to the delight of the GOP, who were handed a win by debacle for no good reason. Remember all this the next time somebody tells you that you shouldn't focus on all the fail because all of these people are all so, so much smarter than you are.
No wonder Harry Reid just arbitrarily promoted Elizabeth Warren to a Leadership job invented for her without consulting the rest of the (D) Senate caucus. Why would he? After the post-election fail-fest we've seen since beatdown day? It's like staring at a pack of frightened little toy dogs who just shake and quiver mixed with a few distinctively robotic plastic toy dogs covered in a sea of little corporate logos like a NASCAR driver's racing suit. Nobody say 'boo!' Please. We will never ever get the awful smell of pee out of the very expensive Senate carpets.
Think about all the glorious reverse-MENSA just bubbling up in front of America right now.
Ultimately, Mary Landrieu's "thank you" to President Obama (for his disasterous immigration reform gambit advocated by idiot "experts" insisting that this is the thing that you do to help her, and others like her) is a completely self-serving "fuck you" that enrages your sacred donor class and party ranks rather than accomplishes anything and then casts her seat likely being lost as being a double-dip of "his" fault on the way out the door. Fail Mary's "thank you" to Harry Reid, for letting her play Fail Mary XL Pipeline Theater, was to immediately turn around and stab him in the back in the Democratic Senate Caucus minority leadership vote, and make sure the news got out almost immediately that it had gone down. Oh, look. There's new DSCC chair Jon Tester standing behind Ex-Senator Walking, because nothing says "I want a Democratic wave in 2016" like helping to prop up a Caucus political suicide bomber. As long as she can conceive of it saving her own backstabbing backside? First No limits. Then? No Labels!
What a closing act. The perfect exclamation point to cap off the two years since 2012.
Steve Israel at the DCCC and his "off limits" Republicans. Democratic Leaders who tolerate, and even reward, incompetence at the DCCC and DSCC. Say, Israel being offered a third (!?!) crack at the DCCC by Nancy Pelosi before he turned it down. The President of the United States being talked into "putting off" immigration reform until after the election, to save Hagen. Pryor. Landrieu. Grimes. Nunn. Begich. Udall. Only to have it blow up in his face, and all of those Senators lose their seats anyway. Democratic consultants and advisers who give absolutely awful advice and get more work and stay viable win or lose. The fetid "ChristieCrats" in NJ who enabled corrupt Chris Christie his whole career. Andrew Cuomo as Governor of NY with what went down with the New York Senate and his secret deal not to help Democrats win after promising he would do so. Fail Mary. Who now has made it known to her home state that she and her Republican opponent still both agree 100% on the XL. To draw a job-saving distinction.
You can have a demoted and diminished minority caucus Senator who prizes the XL Pipeline and who will sneer at Obama to pander to white resentment to save her job, which is to be like a craven corporate lobbyist with a Senate seat. Or. You can have a majority caucus Senator who prizes the XL Pipeline and sneers at Obama as a fundamental passion in his wingnut political life. Only a ConservaDem would be tactically and strategically dimwitted enough to think that strongly agreeing with her Republican opponent on an issue was drawing a sharp and winning distinction with that opponent. She might as well take it to it's illogical conclusion and declare that she will switch parties if she's re-elected. Aha! Gotcha! Confused Republican opponent.
Low-information voters miss a lot of things. So. The Democratic Party is helpfully doing a lot of idiotic and unhelpful things all over the place. So that even the most clueless of Americans have an example or two come across their bow that lets them know that the current Democrats are very easily startled and weirdly gravitate towards the corrupt and the inept. People who no longer believe that the political process works and who think they cannot make a difference are coming to that conclusion based on what they see staring at them.
Good luck to Loretta Lynch. Good luck to the President. Hope he's already lawyering up for the non-stop 'It's like they cloned Issa' shit show. Here's to preparing a fine tall stack of really infuriating executive orders. Good Riddance Fail Mary full of Disgrace. Oh, Here's also to all of the people who I convinced to turn out to early vote or vote on election day who now pissed off at me. I didn't lie to you. I swear. This party could still stand up and do great things. There is no greater force for public good than Democrats who are not ashamed of their legacy brand.
I believe in our ideas and our policies. I believe in our legacy brand. I believe those ideas, those policies, and that brand should be dominating American politics based on Movement Conservatism's proven track record of total failure, their bad faith, and their inability to lead, govern, or keep America safe in this world. I don't believe in the current top Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party, or the people who are in charge of the party machinery. There are good people, at every level of the party, great people, but the party itself is in the weeds and desperately needs a reboot.
Something is just very, very wrong with the political party we see staring back at us right now.