As unlikely as this seemed, at 3:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, the Democratic party had a better than outside chance at controlling the House of Representatives. Friend of the Blog Greg Mitchell provided a nifty rundown of the state of things. Judging by the results at that moment, no matter who wins control, it is going to be a squeaker, and lawsuits and recounts are very likely and will have outsized import. If the Democrats want to start fighting back, hard, they should muster every trick of politics and the law for these fights and leave Whither Goest Poor Li’l Us? for later. Needless to say, a Republican superfecta—Presidency, Senate, House, SCOTUS—would be an extinction-level event for a lot of the best things about the country, and for the actual humans who depend on those things. However, if the Democrats were to flip the House, a lot would change about Tuesday’s outcome. Assuming that Speaker-speculate Hakeem Jeffries can keep his caucus under iron control, and he’d damn well better find his inner Sam Rayburn, the House would control the purse strings on anything El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago wanted to do.
One person who should be locked in a steamer trunk is our own Democratic congressman Seth Moulton, a legend in his own mind who is the living personification of my grandmother’s ultimate expression of derision, “Who’s he when he’s at home?” Moulton was elected in 2015. By 2018, he was leading a rump faction of Democratic congresscritters to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. She, of course, beat him like a little tin drum. He ended up voting for her, but a year later, the undaunted SOB put together an exploratory committee to run for president.
Yes, of the United States.
That lasted about two months, during which time Moulton never cracked high single digits in any poll. He last popped up on the national radar when he and a Republican colleague took a secret trip to Kabul, allegedly to facilitate the withdrawal of American forces there. The trip was unauthorized, its impact unhelpful, and Moulton was unwelcome. From The Washington Post:
The cloak-and-dagger trip infuriated some officials at the Pentagon and the State Department, where diplomats, military officers and civil servants are working around-the-clock shifts in Washington and at the Kabul airport to evacuate thousands of people from the country every day. “It’s as moronic as it is selfish,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a frank assessment of their trip. “They’re taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans—while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk—so they can have a moment in front of the cameras.”...Officials expressed disgust at having to divert resources and accommodate sitting members of Congress while racing to get evacuees out of the country. “It’s one of the most irresponsible things I’ve heard a lawmaker do,” said one diplomat familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It absolutely deserves admonishment.”
Generally, it is considered a public service to get between Seth Moulton and a microphone, but few people are willing to risk life and limb to do so. Consequently, on Thursday, he was invited to share his view from the top of his mountainous ego with the audience of WBUR Radio:
Democrats are so clearly out of touch....We need to listen better...It should have been easy to win this race. Trump did not have good policies. A lot of Republicans revolted against him. We’ve never seen a president with more top members of his administration saying he’s unqualified to be commander-in-chief. It should have been an easy win, and yet we got crushed. We need to do some serious looking in the mirror.
That’s a land-speed record for arriving at banality. I have looked in the mirror, pal. And I see the reflection of a country so thoroughly in the throes of the prion disease, which has now jumped species from conservative Republicans into the general population, that it has deliberately thrown itself into convulsions for the next half decade. I am sorry to say this, but a huge portion of “the American people” are simply f*cked in the haid.
As a corrective, I direct you to this map of the House elections from NBC News. You will note the massive swath of red in the middle of the Great Plains. In the middle of it, however, there is a neat little blue Tetris piece on the Kansas-Missouri border. That is Kansas’s Third Congressional District, represented by Rep. Sharice Davids, who was re-elected for the fourth time in a congressional district that has more Republicans in it than Democrats. Regulars at the shebeen know that I am a great fan of Representative Davids and consider her one of the real workhorses in the Democratic caucus, both for her district and for the country. This is what she said in her victory speech, from The Kansas City Star:
“We are going to keep up our fight, we are absolutely going to keep up our fight,” Davids said. “To do things like expand Medicaid, making sure that we have good public schools, making sure we’re funding public education including special ed, making sure we have a Kansas that actually works for everyone.”
...As voters expressed discontent with high inflation and an increase of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border, Davids’ campaign largely focused on her efforts to aid Kansans—both by touting votes she took to help bring down prices for medications like insulin and through official events celebrating the local projects enabled by federal funding she helped secure. “If you are in the third district, whether you voted for me or not, I am here to be a representative for every single person in this district,” Davids said Tuesday night.
No listening to the crazy people. No looking in the mirror. Representative Davids looked at a national campaign built on hate, and lies, and nonsense, and she beat it back with actual policies that helped actual people. Somebody should listen to her.