My normie wife, who doesn’t read this blog, asked me yesterday if I had heard that Hegseth’s impeachment failed because some Democrats didn’t show up to vote. My response mentioned that our new Representative, Brittany Pettersen, missed it because she was at a fundraiser for a PAC that took AIPAC money. Let’s just say that didn’t go down very well.

As I’ve mentioned here before, my wife didn’t care about politics, much, until Trump 2.0. Then she tuned her socials to full-on resistance wine mom Democrat. I’m guessing that she’s not alone. There are a lot of newly politically engaged Democrats who expect action, and their social feeds are going to tell them immediately when Democrats fuck up. I want to give two examples, and then talk about substantive policy.

Example 1: Another leadership screwup on an important vote:

I really like Becca Balint, but the fact that she had to go out and blame the big, bad Republicans for not following the rules is something that I’m guessing she didn’t love doing. There are ways to stop a voice vote on the floor, and the leadership should have been ready to do it. Also, it seems like Katherine Clark is the person that Jeffries sends out to apologize or explain whenever there’s a fuckup. Unfortunate for her.

Example 2: Adam Smith:

Smith had to walk this back a bit when asked by Greg Sargent:

Establishment Democrats need to realize that a lot of us feel burned by the way that the Biden Presidency and Democratic control of Congress in 2021-2023 turned out. Besides Merrick Garland doing very fucking little very fucking slowly, the Jan 6 committee took for-fucking-ever to spin up, and by the time they struck, the iron was pretty cold. We don’t need months of careful preparation on the impeachment articles for Hegseth. Massie’s were pretty good. Tack on a couple more about him keeping a separate paper list of “DEI” generals and admirals, and pass it through the House. Perhaps add on one for the inevitable demotion of the soldier doing his duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier yesterday:

Democrats are way, way too cautious about the way they speak in public. Unfortunately, that caution leads them to make milquetoast, hedging statements that enrage the base. Also, unfortunately, most of them aren’t as talented as AOC, Talarico, AES and others, who just get it.

Moving on to substantive issues, this ProPublica expose of the results of DOGE running through the VA is horrific. It details a veteran with a ruptured appendix whose care was delayed hours because the OR at the East Orange, NJ VA hospital was closed because of staffing cuts. A vet who had terminal colorectal cancer was denied palliative, pain-managing radiation therapy because the medical physicist who calibrated the machines quit after the DOGE cuts. This is the kind of thing that will be getting worse if the veterans’ bill that Republicans tried to sneak through gets through the Senate. I hope Schumer and his cronies aren’t too busy passing bills that their donors want them to pass to block this one, but I have no faith in them at the moment.