The choice: Eileen Bedell or Donald Brat & Dave Trump..er, Dave Brump/Donald Trat? Hmph. VA-7

by JamesWNewton

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday, Nov. 01, 2016 Tuesday, Nov. 01, 2016 at 10:15:55am PDT

Lawyer, small-business owner, mother, spouse Eileen Bedell for Congress in the VA 7th District

That Dave Brat is a bum of a congressman is pretty clear. The articles on DK and throughout the web are too numerous to pick out one or two here — but there’s a list below if you’re interested, and trust me, it’s worth grabbing some popcorn and taking them in.

What may not be as clear, however, is that the alternative to Dave Brat is a really good one, in the person of one Eileen Bedell.

Here are her bona fides:

First, she’s a lawyer — and not the hide-behind-your-desk-with-the-door-closed kind, she’s a litigator. As a fellow attorney who teaches litigation to undergraduates, let me explain what that means in the big picture:

She gets things done — and knows how to decide on the right priorities to do so successfully.

She knows how to get to the root of an issue or problem — and figure out a solution and negotiate it out with other parties.

She doesn’t put up with BS — not from other parties, not from people around her, and certainly not from herself.

She knows the importance of respect — for herself and for those with whom she works, be it opposing counsel, the court, or her employees. She also respects and knows how to work with the processes and systems she has.

With respect to the substance of her legal practice, she works with clients dealing with contract issues, family problems, workers comp, estates settlements as well as entrepreneurs looking to get businesses off the ground. In other words, she sees how things work in the real world.

Which leads me to the next thing you should know — she’s a small-business owner herself as she owns her own legal practice. So not only does she deal with the issues businesses face through her clientele, she does so in her own life. With this background, she is perfectly suited for Congress to work on one of the most important issues facing our economy — how to help small business owners succeed.

This is also shows that she’s courageous, leaving the security of a larger business to starting her own, and then doing so successfully. The same could be said about when she decided to run for Congress. When no one else stood up to run against Brat, Eileen did. Since then, about ten months ago, she has campaigned tirelessly and ceaselessly, while her opponent has gone on book tours and avoided debating her.

Next, she would immediately be one of the smartest and most savvy people in Congress. Most impressive, she is a Phi Beta Kappa from Virginia Tech. To put that in context, PBK is the oldest, most prestigious academic honor society in America, with chapters on only 10% of college campuses owing to a rigorous approval process. It’s membership includes 17 U.S. Presidents and 38 Supreme Court Justices. She has a law degree from the College of William & Mary, one of America’s oldest and respected public universities. You put that together with the street smarts from years of being in litigation, and suddenly you have someone who is a force to be reckoned with.

For the record, Brat, while often touting his academic credentials (that some say aren’t as great as he implies), can’t say the same thing. He went from school to school to school to consulting to the World Bank to academia. In short, he honestly has no clue how most of the policies he likes to belittle play out in the real world. Eileen does.

Lastly, Eileen is a Virginian, through and through. She grew up in northern Virginia, went to Tech and W&M, and has lived and worked in and around Richmond since. She respects Virginia’s history and is known to quote one of Virginia’s beloved sons, Thomas Jefferson. She is vested in ensuring Virginia’s future, particularly since she has both a teenager and an infant who are growing up in the Commonwealth.

Oh, and did we forget to mention that Brat and Trump are deeply involved in a beautiful bromance? Sad but true.

YouTube Video

So there it is. She’s smart, savvy, practical, has good common sense, and has the real world experience to know what needs to be done and how to do it.

Before even going in to policy differences, it’s a pretty clear choice, isn’t it?

YouTube Video

On November 8th, vote for Eileen Bedell, D for VA 7th District. Vote for someone who actually knows how things work and therefore how to improve them and prioritize what to work on. And if you’re not in the 7th, tell a friend who is, but help tell the country that we are no longer going to put up with out-of-touch ideologues who do little but hurt our country.