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Key Committee Pick Signals Obama-Pelosi Direction
By John Nichols
There is usually reason to celebrate when the US House's tradition-bound seniority system is upset, and such is the case -- with a few cautions and codicils -- with the determination of the House Democratic Caucus to put California Congressman Henry Waxman in charge of the chamber's exceptionally powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.
In a showdown of the sort rarely seen in recent decades, the caucus voted Thursday morning to remove the current chair and long-time definitional player on the committee, Michigan Congressman John Dingell. The vote was close – 137 for Waxman, 122 for Dingell – but that does not make it any less significant as an indicator of the direction Congress is likely to take in a period when Democrats will control the executive and legislative branches of a federal government that Waxman thinks should be far more activist in its approach to environmental issues and the regulation of corporations.
That said, the Waxman-Dingell fight was never a precise left-right struggle.
(9) CommentsNovember 20, 2008
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It's Official: Democrats Have Won 58 Senate Seats
By John Nichols
The senior Republican member of the US Senate, Alaska's Ted Stevens, conceded defeat Wednesday in his race for a new term.
The announcement by Stevens confirmed that Democrats will have at least 58 seats in the new Senate. And with two contests yet to be settled -- in Minnesota and Georgia -- the party that just two years ago was a minority player in the chamber could begin the new Congress with a filibuster-proof majority of 60.
While several thousand ballots are still to be reviewed in Alaska, Stevens acknowledged Wednesday that he fallen so far behind Democratic challenger Mark Begich that his reelection was now out of the question.
(141) CommentsNovember 18, 2008
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Lieberman Keeps Chairmanship, Caucus Membership
By John Nichols
To the surprise of few on Capitol Hill -- and, surely, to the disappointment of many beyond the beltway -- Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman will retain his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Homeland Security Committee and his place in the Democratic Caucus.
Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president who angered his fellow partisans first by embracing neo-conservative foreign policies and then by backing Republican John McCain for the presidency, had been targeted for punishment by grassroots Democrats who were furious with his positions and actions.
But the message of Lieberman's critics was never coherent -- it ranged from calls for expelling the independent senator from the caucus to stripping him of committee assignments to demanding an apology -- and it never achieved the sort of critical mass that might have influenced Democratic senators to demand a measure of accountability from one of their own.
(77) CommentsNovember 18, 2008
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Choosing Obama's Successor
By John Nichols
Barack Obama resigned his US Senate seat on a grace note.
Unfortunately, the process of replacing him may not be so graceful as his exit from the chamber in which he has served for the better part of four years.
Obama's letter to his Illinois constituents, published Sunday in the state's newspapers, recalled a distant era in American politics when legislators saw themselves as being of a state -- and deeply connected to that state's electorate.
(9) CommentsNovember 17, 2008
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Treasury Secretary Jon Corzine?
By John Nichols
Everyone is excited about the fact that President-elect Barack Obama is talking with New York Senator Hillary Clinton about the prospect that she might serve as Secretary of State. But the big news from inside the transition process is the speculation that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine might be selected for the essential economic position of Secretary of the Treasury.
Corzine certainly has one of the "qualifications" that official Washington demands. He is a former senior partner with Goldman Sachs, the firm that has contributed so many Cabinet secretaries and administration insiders over so many years that it is referred to as "Government Sachs."
But Corzine is not your typical Goldman-Sachs man.
(87) CommentsNovember 14, 2008
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Obama Move Heats Up Race to Fill His Senate Seat
By John Nichols
Barack Obama is about to create one of the most attractive vacancies in American politics.
And two of U.S. House's leading progressive members would like to fill it.
The president-elect has announced that he will quit Sunday as Illinois' junior senator, creating an opening for the seat he has held for a little less than four years. Though he says that serving in the Senate was "one of the highest honors and privileges" of his life, Obama explained in a written statement that he's ready to begin "the hard task of fulfilling the simple hopes and common dreams of all Americans as our nation's next president."
(19) CommentsNovember 13, 2008
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Keep Lieberman in the Caucus (For Now)
By John Nichols
This writer has worn out several computers criticizing Senator Joe Lieberman, going back to the days when he was mounting a conservative-backed challenged to progressive Republican Senator Lowell Weicker. In 1988, Lieberman was a Democrat in good standing with a party that was willing to defeat one of the nation's leading liberals in order to secure a minimal partisan advantage.
Now, Lieberman is a free-floating independent -- having been reelected, after losing his 2006 Democratic primary, as the standard-bearer of an ego-trip party called "Connecticut for Lieberman" -- who caucuses with the Democrats.
On foreign-policy issues, Lieberman is more neo-con than the neo-cons. On economic policy, he is, like Indiana's Evan Bayh and a number of other senators, a Democratic Leadership Council corporatist with a slight sympathy for trade unionism. On social policy, he's a moderately liberal mainstream Democrat.
(69) CommentsNovember 12, 2008
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The Doctor Who Cured the Democratic Party
By John Nichols
When Howard Dean, fresh off a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination that ended with a scream, announced that he would seek the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, the right-wing echo chamber exploded with delight.
Asserting that Dean would forever consign Democrats to also-ran status, radio ranter Rush Limbaugh shouted: "Please, make him chairman. Please! Please! Please!"
Political strategist turned Fox News blowhard Dick Morris was pithier, declaring that: "In choosing their new national leader, the Democratic Party is publishing a... succinct suicide note. It reads 'Chairman Howard Dean.'"
(86) CommentsNovember 10, 2008
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Obama's Best Advice Will Come From Reich, Bonior
By John Nichols
Barack Obama appeared at his first press conference as the president-elect of the United States on a day of sobering economic news. Just hours earlier, the Department of Labor had reported that 240,000 American jobs were lost in October, bringing the unemployment rate to 6.5 percent -- the highest rate in 14 years. And General Motors, the hobbled giant of American manufacturing, was announcing that it might not have enough money to make it through the end of the year.
Though his 20-minute appearance offered few details regarding specific plans, Obama acknowledged the fact that, "We are facing the greatest economic challenge of our lifetime..." So it was not surprising that the president-to-be would surround himself with a few dozen economic wingmen and women, as well as his new chief of staff -- Clintonite neoliberal Rahm Emanuel.
Most of the advisors who stood with the senator who on January 20 will assume responsibility for an economy in crisis were more in Emanuel's investment-banker, free-trader mold than that of the tens of millions of workers and farmers who elected Obama as an agent of change. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was to the side of the stage. Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker was just behind Obama. Another former treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, was in the room and perhaps in the running for a top spot in the administration.
(87) CommentsNovember 7, 2008
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Obama's Disappointing First Choice
By John Nichols
House Minority Leader John Boehner and other Republican insiders in Washington are griping about President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel to serve as White House chief of staff. Emanuel, they complain, is too partisan.
If only that were the case.
Partisan true believers stand strong for the ideals and principles of a party, they want to follow the dictates of the platform and stay in tune with grassroots activists.
(100) CommentsNovember 6, 2008
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