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I was watching the House vote on the debt-ceiling “Raw Deal” live on C-SPAN yesterday when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat, made a surprise appearance to cast her vote. Giffords was shot in the head by a crazed gunman last January, as everyone knows, and few people expected her to return to work, ever.
It is telling that she returned to vote for the deficit-ceiling deal that Pres. Obama struck with the tea bagger faction in the House — even though many, if not most of 28 of the baggers, did not vote for it themselves. Giffords is one of the few remaining Blue Dogs in the Democratic caucus. Her appearance yesterday is likely a sign that, while she probably won’t run for the Senate next year, as had been widely speculated before she was shot, she will seek reelection to the House. If so, she will need the votes of right-leaning independents in her district.
Giffords’ unexpected appearance on the House floor at a moment of high political drama was no accident. It was carefully stage-managed political theatre for which Giffords’ friends, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, among others, are likely responsible.
Without Giffords’ appearance, the Raw Deal’s passage would have been a moment of unmitigated triumph for the tea party GOP and for Speaker Boehner. Instead, Pelosi et al stepped all over Boehner’s victory and rewrote the headlines about the vote that you are reading today.
Yet another DINO Blue Dog who claims they must become Republican Light to get reelected. Too bad for them that strategy back fired in last year’s elections when over 50% of the incumbent DINOs lost their reelection bid. Too bad for them that they continue to make the same mistake.
Now it’s time for the Progressive Democrats to challenge every DINO in the House and Senate during the Democratic Primaries. Progressives won 90% of their reelection campaigns last year. So if new Progressive Democrats beat out DINOs in the primaries, there is an excellent chance they will also beat out the Republicans in the November election.
I’m sure it was good for Giffords to return to the House floor. But we need more than cheap political tricks out of the Democrats or this nation will revert back to the 1870s that Arizonans seem to prefer (not that any of them have any real experience of that life).