A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

I voted against George W. Bush twice. But when he was elected, I went to work for him as a White House intern. I worked hard, I took my responsibilities seriously, and I looked for common ground with people whose viewpoints differed from my own. I love my country. I respect the office of the presidency. And I’m not afraid to learn from people who don’t think exactly like me. +++ Growing up as a Utahn, Western Pennsylvania was a magical place. There were lightning bugs at dusk and deer in misty hills and when my grandfather cut the grass it smelled sweeter than anything we had in the arid Rockies. And, of course, my grandparents’ house always meant games and cookies and fun with cousins. Later, when I moved to DC for grad school, it was even more of a refuge. I probably made that 8-hour round trip five times in one semester. To see my grandma. To see the brilliant fall oranges and reds on Route 30. To feel at home. Latrobe, Pennsylvania is literally Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhoo

Published November 14, 2016 Updated January 15, 2017 Republicans plan to use a parliamentary tool known as 'budget reconciliation' to pass a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, aka Obamacare). If reconciliation sounds familiar, it's because Republicans denounced it with great gnashing of teeth in 2010 when they claimed that Democrats were using it to ram the ACA through Congress. I was a Democratic congressional staffer at the time, working on budget policy for a member of the House Budget Committee; I can tell you, we didn't ram through the ACA, with reconciliation or otherwise. But don't take my word for it. Take John McCain's . Or read Jonathan Chait's short and 100% accurate piece: "Every Republican Lie About Passing Obamacare Is True About Repealing It." Or see Norm Ornstein's excellent "The Real Story of Obamacare's Birth," which also covers the myriad ways in which Democrats sought to work with R

A friend posted this Seth Meyers video and it's well worth the watch. But it's actually what Meyers left out that scares me most: Trump's two biggest allies this year have been ... Vladimir Putin and rogue agents in the FBI . (!) Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election. ... “The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent. I commented on my friend's post: I could actually live with a president who brags about sexual assault, stiffs small business contractors and defrauds working class students trying to get college degrees, cheats on his income taxes, and illegally uses his charity as a front to enrich himself . Perhaps I could even live with one who incites violence against minority groups and buddies up to white supremacists, one who doesn't understand the basic policy 101 details of his own proposals,

When I left the Hill last year, I wrote down my favorite -isms for my staff. I stumbled upon them again today and decided they're still surprisingly relevant to life in advocacy. The House’s most important motto: “Nunquam quicquam nunc si potest donec XXIV Decembris.”  (Never do anything now if it can wait until December 24.) Procrastination is the right strategy 95% of the time (and a total disaster the other 5%). That said, no work ever goes to waste. So if you wrote a speech for an event that was just canceled or questions for a hearing she wasn’t able to attend, remember that press releases and op-eds and speeches and hearing questions get re-used as constituent letters and talking points and vote recs. And vice versa. Anything is possible on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives if you have the votes. Congress is a representative body. You can’t hate Congress without hating the American people. And I really hate the American people. Competence is always p

"If you support Hillary Clinton, could you please tell me why? I AM NOT asking if you're voting for Clinton as a vote against Trump. I AM asking, if you sincerely support Mrs. Clinton and would have considered voting for her regardless of who the GOP nominated." There are so many things I want to say in response that it's completely overwhelming. Instead the best I can do is type up what I can when I can with the hope that I'll come back and add in pieces as energy/time/and small children allow — that "additional reading" section at the end is as much for you as for me, a reminder of pieces that have influenced me and that I'd like to include. I'll set some topic headings in the attempt to provide some semblance of order to is otherwise pure stream of consciousness. But first: Yes, I'm with her. No, I did not take this picture spur of the moment as we were walking out to the pool, why do you ask? After giving careful consideration t

  What do you know about Bernie that I don't? Is it that he simply doesn't have a chance or what? I've written and discarded three full blog posts over the last two months on why I'm inclined to support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. This version has taken me a week... and it started out as a simple reply comment on Facebook. Part of the delay: it's not an easy decision. I know and respect too many sensible Sanders supporters (like my husband), and am influenced by their thinking. But also: I don't want to tear down a candidate who might be the party's nominee and whom I would still vote for in a general. I suppose you'd call me a "Hillarealist" in that I think Clinton can win a general election and Sanders can't (for reasons I’ve discussed before HERE and HERE ). But unlike those alleged “Democrats who would love to line up behind Bernie’s sunny ideals but know that he just isn’t electable,” I wouldn

A response in two parts.  Part One.  There is a Republican equivalent of Hillary Clinton and it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Mitt Romney.  Most of what shapes your opinion of Clinton isn’t true. Rather, it’s truthy , and the direct result of a 30-year-long smear campaign, very little of which has ever turned out to be true. It’s the way that many Democrats still think George W. Bush went AWOL during Vietnam even though the documents alleging it were almost immediately debunked and the way some liberals think Romney paid $0 in federal taxes because Harry Reid said so. Accusations get a lot of coverage, particularly in partisan media; debunking gets almost none. T his is what I do for a living, so I end up hav ing to read everything. I don’t design jet engines or treat patients or program software or fill cavities five days a week. I do this.* I like to joke that I read more National Review and American Spectator in any given week than most of my Republican friends combin

From his first year in office on, stories have circulated here in DC about just how widely loathed Ted Cruz is. Now, following his first place finish in Iowa, the rest of the country has been brought up to speed with a host of press outlets covering quotes like this: Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who recently endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush after ending his presidential bid in December, was asked whether he preferred Trump or Cruz as the nominee during a news conference on Capitol Hill. “It’s like being shot or poisoned,” Graham told reporters Thursday in response. “What does it really matter?” And this: When ["Face The Nation" host John] Dickerson asked whether Cruz was a one of the "false prophets" to whom Boehner had referred, the speaker smiled and referred to comments he made at a fundraiser in Colorado earlier this summer. There, he reportedly dismissed Cruz as a "jackass."  And my personal favorite: Senator Mi