America's Sweetheart, Part III

(Part I and Part II)

Watch the Justice Democrats video above where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explaining explains the difference between a real champion of the working class and a garden variety careerist Democrat who manages to ooze into Congress. "There's a lot of people in the Democratic caucus," she tells her colleagues. "When we are courageous enough to just puncture the silence on an issue, they will start to move. Don't people realize that the most powerful position you can be in is when you are not materially attached to a position of power? If you're a one-term Congressmember, so what? You can make ten years worth of change in one term if you're not afraid."

Wondering who the problem children will be in the 116th Congress? On Thursday, Joe Cunningham (SC), Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), Conor Lamb (PA), Seth Moulton (New Dem-MA), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY) and Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ) backed Trump on a government shut-down procedural vote. The bulk of the freshmen have voted 100% party line on roll calls. According to ProgressivePunch the only Democrats who have gone below the 90% mark are

Conor Lamb (PA)- 88.46
Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- 88.0
Joe Cunningham (SC)- 84.62

The problem with the Benedict Arnolds who abandon the party on procedural votes to make themselves look "good." Democrats who have been in Congress for a while have been trying to walk freshmen through the ropes about why the caucus should stick together on procedural votes, particularly when the Republicans offer a random motion to recommit, which is what happened with the one above where we had the 6 defectors. Apparently Gottheimer and Moulton-- each notoriously out for himself and no one else-- never learned the lesson. Lamb, Rose and Van Drew, not especially sharp Blue Dog freshmen, decided to tag along. What that does to the freshmen in tough districts who stood with the party to just ignore the irrelevant GOP sideshow and instead just work towards reopening the government is to give a 2020 opponent an opportunity to exploit the faux-bipartisan nature of the motion to recommit. "Why didn't Harley Rouda vote with Seth Moulton and Josh Gottheimer and 4 other Democrats for this bipartisan attempt to..." whatever, is what Republican opponent Scott Baugh could be yelling at a debate. I would never expect anti-union faux-Dems like Van Drew, Lamb, Rose, Moulton and Gottheimer to understand the importance of solidarity.

What these 6 did is nothing but pointless fake independence. They accomplished nothing except, perhaps, their own selfish goal of being able to tell voters backs home they're bipartisan. Republicans will attack them anyway. This is a losing strategy. Independence is what Ocasio-Cortez does, a concept way beyond the ken of a Jeff Van Drew or Max Rose or Conor Lamb.

As for Republicans, the 10 members (none of whom are freshmen) who seem to be most open to crossing the aisle so far this session are:

• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)- 42.31
• John Katko (NY)- 38.46
• Elise Stefanik (NY)- 30.77
• Will Hurd (TX)- 30.77
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA)- 23.08
• Chris Smith (NJ)- 23.08
• Justin Amash (MI)- 19.23
• Fred Upton (MI)- 19.23
• Greg Walden (OR)- 19.23
• Adam Kinzinger (IL)- 15.38
• Rodney Davis (IL)- 11.54