…“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment.”
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 24th, 2016
Good Morning!
Wow…I haven’t said this in awhile…
From the Huff Po:
This Congressman’s Story Perfectly Illustrates GOP Obstructionism Toward Obama
Two weeks after Tom Perriello took office, he was being hit with attack ads.
Tom Perriello embraced Obama’s agenda, even in a conservative-leaning Virginia district. But while he did fairly well, he lost his seat in the 2010 tea party wave.
Even with President Barack Obama’s triumph on election night in 2008, Tom Perriello needed a recount to squeak out a victory in his House race. He ended up winning by roughly 700 votes in a district the size of New Jersey — a margin that infuriated Republicans and shocked political observers.
A progressive wasn’t supposed to be elected in Virginia’s 5th. And Perriello’s victory was quickly celebrated as template for other Democrats residing in rural places stung by factory closings. Conviction politics had worked south of the Mason-Dixon line.
But just as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised to make Obama a one-term president, GOP activists applied a similar strategy to Perriello. Within two weeks of taking office, he faced his first attack ad.
“I’m pretty sure it was about the stimulus and this idea that we were gonna steal your money and spend it all on lavish palaces for Nancy Pelosi,” Perriello recalled in this week’s episode of The Huffington Post’s Candidate Confessional podcast.
More than any other member of Congress from that class, Perriello’s two years in office reflected the hopes, promises, stumbling blocks and casualties of bitter partisanship of the early Obama years. He came in eager to propel a transformative policy agenda that was less rigorously partisan in nature. He left a casualty of the GOP’s intransigence, martyred in the pages of the New Yorker.
“I think [Republican leadership] made a correct Machiavellian decision that there was this extremely talented group of new people who had come in, many of them not from traditional political backgrounds,” Perriello said. “And if they had time to really get to know the voters as human beings, that that would really lock in the benefits of incumbency. They really went for the jugular early on that.”
In looking back on those active two years in office, Perriello conceded that cynical obstructionism was a potent political weapon. But it was still horrifying to watch.
He recalled how Obama encouraged lawmakers to get a stimulus bill to his desk by the time that he was sworn into office. But as Perriello went about getting his bearings, he soon realized that Congress was as dysfunctional as the economy it was supposed to rescue. Perriello tried forging partnerships with members of the freshman Republican class only to be rebuffed.
“They were really reined in from even talking to us,” he said. “It was like the parents in the schoolyard saying, you’re not allowed to play with those kids or something.”
The schoolyard restrictions were startling enough. It became downright shocking for Perriello as Republicans steadfastly refused to support the stimulus even as the administration added conservative-friendly provisions including targeted tax cuts. He called it a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment.” One day, he approached a GOP leader to see what could possibly be made different to earn their support.
“The person said, ‘You’re asking the wrong question,’” Perriello recalled. “‘The question is if it works, Obama is gonna get all the credit for it. And if it doesn’t work we don’t want any part of it.’”
In retrospect, the moment perfectly encapsulated the tremendous productivity and missed opportunities of those early Obama years.
The stimulus ended up passing with only a handful of Senate GOP votes and none from House Republicans. Perriello had his objections, too — he thought the construct and vision of the bill was far too underwhelming at a time when the country needed an economic transformation — but he cast a yea. He would do the same for other politically tough pieces of legislation, from cap-and-trade to health care, and in sticking to the theme of his ‘08 campaign, he would go back home and vigorously defend each votes.
It wasn’t enough. Though he kept his re-election close — far closer, in fact, than many of his more centrist Democratic colleagues who’d bucked the White House — Perriello, who now serves Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa,was swept out of office in the tea party wave. By then, however, he had soured on Congress. The shock felt from those first two weeks never fully receded.
“I know there’s partisanship,” said Perriello. “But you really believe underneath it that there’s some statesmanship… and to have that crass of a political analysis at that moment, that they literally could not — even with the possibility of a depression at stake — rise above that to do what was good for the country. It was spelled out to me really clearly early on.”
This podcast was edited by Christine Conetta. Listen to it above or download it on iTunes. And while you’re there, please subscribe to, rate and review our show. Make sure to tune in to next week’s episode, when our guest will be former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson on his 2012 presidential campaign.
*****
Nice to see so many of you here with me. Blog me.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
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michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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May 24th, 2016 at 9:28 am
Howie, where are you? Michelle, the right never play fair. It is their way or no way at all. When will the dems get a pair and start to resist their obstructionism?
May 24th, 2016 at 9:33 am
Michelle, I couldn’t post yesterday so I hope you don’t mind my commenting on yesterdays article about the creep saying Obama should be hung.
That “hung” thing is code for the n word. My father in law was over and I showed him the article. He said so what the “N” should have been in the White House in the first place, that’s a white man’s office.
As you have said so often in the past, tiny penis talk. I will be voting Hilary. I hope to secretly change the minds of some of my republican female friends. It will be hard because most of them parrot whatever their husbands are saying politically.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:34 am
Michelle have you told Zen Lill that you are back? I can’t wait to hear her opinion on Trump>
May 24th, 2016 at 9:36 am
Why can’t freedom of speech allow the gentleman to voice his dissatisfaction with the nigger? You wanna be political correct advocates need to give it a rest.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:39 am
Kent, I too would love to hear from Howie. What’s he been doing these past 18 months. I checked almost weekly to see if the blog was up. Didn’t think I would miss that know it all Robert or the glib AL, but it was a painful withdrawal.
I live in the southern part of LA and I looked for Zen Lill, haven’t seen her in months.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:41 am
Welcome back Michelle, hope you can wake up some of these stupid white women. I have been trying to get those in my club to think with something other than their man’s little head.
I hope you will have better luck than I have had.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:47 am
Kent, I almost gave up my alien watch here in Bangor. Most of the Howie club lives in Glamorgan county so I am mostly on my own here. Where do you call home?
May 24th, 2016 at 9:54 am
Michelle, I experience discrimination almost daily. I am a 4th generation american. I speak perfect english, I have a MA degree. White americans are constantly asking me where I am from. When I tell them and ask them where they are from they give me their state or say “here.” I then say, “no, I mean originally.” Most get angry and walk off.
I guess they can’t take what they are dishing out.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:56 am
Hey, Henry#5, so you claim to know what Zen Lill looks like and where she lives. Bullshit.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:58 am
Li(8) You are asian, yes? Then you should not be disturbed when white people ask you where you are from. This country was founded by Caucasians not slopes. What’s your problem?
May 24th, 2016 at 10:03 am
Michelle, the republican party is not really a political party that works to bring an alternative form of government to the people. It is a bastion of white supremacists and poor white trash who have nothing to make them feel great but the color of their skin and the belief that their religion is superior to yours.
I’ved lived among the the pathetic bastards for 60 plus years. As a cook for them I have pissed, shit and spit in their food for more that 40 years. They are vermin without a conscious. They have raped, murdered and generally terrorized black people in my neighborhood for more that 150 years.
May 24th, 2016 at 10:04 am
Jack#10, right and by “founded” you mean the genocide of more than 12 million American Indians.
May 24th, 2016 at 10:06 am
What else who anyone expect of a party of white men and racist scum.
May 24th, 2016 at 10:07 am
Nathan Says: May 24th, 2016 at 9:56 am – If you had been reading this blog for more than a little while, you would know that Zen Lill would grace us with a few Class shots of her in her summer best.
Check yourself.
May 24th, 2016 at 10:10 am
Jack@10, people like you make the trump party viable. We need a through house cleaning. I can’t wait for the demographics to change.
May 24th, 2016 at 10:11 am
Jack, not all white people think like you. I don’t feel it necessary to ask anyone where they came from just because they are not white and are American.
May 24th, 2016 at 4:40 pm
Donald Trump was rooting for a housing collapse so he could go in and make money off the poor people losing their homes.
But white people don’t care because they just wish they were in a financial position to take advantage of those people too.
May 24th, 2016 at 10:47 pm
Why does anyone expect racists to accept a black man in the White House?
May 24th, 2016 at 10:49 pm
This is going to be a great time to be watching an election.
May 25th, 2016 at 2:59 am
This sucks
May 25th, 2016 at 3:08 am
I have been trying to get in for about 2 hours.
May 25th, 2016 at 7:45 am
Hafa Adai Michelle. Delighted to have you back. We need strong women to combat the constant incursions upon the right of females to be free from male dominion over our bodies.
May 25th, 2016 at 8:00 am
Michelle, I’m so tired of white people abusing us. I don’t care if ISIS blows them up. My brother was arrested for stealing free milk at school. The milk is free. But they arrested him and when he protested they claim the arrest was for his attitude when he was illegally arrested. He has to go to juvenile court because a cop mistakenly arrested him for stealing something that was free.
To avoid responsibility for what they did to my brother the cop gets to say he charged my brother with hiding the free milk from others. I hope ISIS goes to his neighborhood and kills the all.
It has been well-documented that students of color, disabled students, and LGBT students receive a disproportionate amount of discipline, such as school suspensions, for their infractions.
A report from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles that analyzed U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights data found that black students were four times as likely to be suspended than white students. Students with disabilities were two to three times as likely to be suspended than non-disabled students.
Black students were suspended at higher rates at highly segregated schools as well, the report found.
I’m sure this 16 year old can go to jail for what I just said where as some A**hole racist can call for the lynching of our black POTUS and the white establishment more or less says “it’s freedom of speech.”
Have at it ISIS. Just keep it in their neighborhoods.
May 25th, 2016 at 8:01 am
Michelle, I see you are back with your usual crowd of maniacs. Speaking of which where is AL?
May 25th, 2016 at 8:03 am
Yes, Rosa@19. I can understand your frustration and anger. But don’t stoop to their level.
May 25th, 2016 at 8:07 am
Rosa#19, I have had similar anger moments in my 41 years of dealing with racists. It is not a place I would want to revisit. Try to put your energy into looking for legal remedies to your concerns.
Wishing for or committing harm to others is their solution to problems. Let the legal, political, and social systems do their work. The demographics will change eventually and we don’t want to be as evil as they have been.
May 25th, 2016 at 8:08 am
Zen Lill, sweetness are you out there?