The more I watch the Senate, the more I realize that I just don’t like many senators. I’m going to start ranking them by how much I like them and see if I can get to ten before I run out of people that I like at all.
1. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island- I like him best not only because he’s a solid liberal, but because he’s super-smart and hard working. I think he’s going to be a star for a long time. (Progressive Punch Rank: 5)
2. Bernie Sanders of Vermont- I like him because he refuses to identify as a Democrat, because he tells it like it is, and because he’s somewhat irascible. (Progressive Punch Rank: 7)
3. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin- Feingold is the strongest civil libertarian in the party. He has principles, and he’s smart. (Progressive Punch Rank: 35)
4. Ron Wyden of Oregon- Wyden is smart, he works hard, and he’s creative. (Progressive Punch Rank: 33)
5. Sherrod Brown of Ohio- He’s a very strong progressive in a difficult state. I also like his gravelly voice and unkempt style. (Progressive Punch Rank: 2).
6. Jack Reed of Rhode Island- He’s the son of a janitor, a former paratrooper, and he’s a solid liberal. I still wish Obama had selected him as his running mate. (Progressive Punch Rank: 6)
7. Patrick Leahy of Vermont- He’s a huge Dead Head and he doesn’t suffer fools lightly. I love the guy and he does a great job chairing the Judiciary Committee. (Progressive Punch Rank: 21)
8. Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts- He gets a lifetime achievement award. His Progressive Punch score is corrupted by missed votes that are bringing down his score. (Progressive Punch Rank: 13)
9. Barbara Boxer of California- I like Boxer’s big mouth and her passion. I’ll like her better if she can learn to get things done. It’s her job to pass Cap & Trade. (Progressive Punch Rank: 12)
10. Tom Harkin of Iowa- There’s not much I don’t like about Tom Harkin. He’s just an all-around great politician and I wish we could clone him. (Progressive Punch Rank: 20)
Well, I made it to ten. I didn’t choose any Freshmen because they haven’t had enough time to establish a record, yet. But I have a lot of faith in Tom Udall of New Mexico, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Begich of Alaska, and Al Franken of Minnesota.
Of the more established Democrats there are a few I like despite having some political differences. I like Jon Tester and Amy Klobuchar. I wish Dick Durbin would take over as Majority Leader. I have a lot of admiration for Patty Murray and Daniel Akaka. Carl Levin and Chris Dodd are good men that mean right.
The rest of the caucus, though, I find somewhere between ineffective and downright annoying.
As for the Republicans, I find Jeff Sessions and John Cornyn to be the most insufferable, Jim DeMint and Jon Kyl to be the dumbest, Jim Inhofe the craziest, and Tom Coburn the most effective at being a dick.
I kind of like Mikulski, too. She’s grumpy and short-tempered. I like that.
Definitely agreed on Brown. Having a somewhat grungy voice and uncontrollable curly hair, I can’t help but like the guy, especially given how progressive he is. I’m hoping he’ll run for president in 2016.
Not with you on Mikulski, who keeps trying to screw around with my workplace. Someone back during the ’40s decided it’d be an awesome idea to put my agency out near the border of Southeast DC and Prince George’s County. Our building is surrounded by an iron fence due to the fact that the area has been high-crime forever, yet Mikulski is constantly griping at us to spend more time in the area and trying to have the fence taken down (despite the routine attempts by fleeing suspects to jump it and the occasional bullet holes in the windows).
All of us — one of the few points of bipartisanship in the agency — hate her and wish she’d leave us the hell alone.
I don’t particularly like Chuck Schumer, but I think he’d be a good majority leader because he is, to put it bluntly, kind of a dick.
Jim DeMint scares the bejeebers out of me. Dumb or not, that is a man with no trace of human kindness, a real classic psychopath.
I’d just be happy to have even a Blue Dog as one of my senators. Instead, I’ve got Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander. Alexander is actually quite intelligent and the sort of basically sane conservative that existed in greater numbers in the pre-Reagan era, i.e., he’d vote to let orphans starve but not to shoot them. Corker, on the other hand, is harder to nail down. Is he more of a dipshit or a thug? Hard to say, really. In any case, I could do without either of them.
Incidentally, the headquarters of the Tennessee GOP is in the building next to my work. I’m always open to suggestions for a harmless but flamboyant prank to pull on them.
Alexander is the only Republican from Dixie to vote for Sotomayor.
Yeah, I noticed that. He’s not a fundamentally bad guy, however much I might disagree with him on a great many issues, and having talked to him in both personal and professional capacities over the last twenty years, I can tell you he’s a bright, pleasant human being.
I’d still rather have a liberal in his place.
They really should make him Minority Leader because he would be a better face for the party in the parts of the country where they do poorly.
God forbid. That’s my main complaint with him — he provides a cover for the crazies. At least with McConnell and Boehner up front, the nature of the beast is clear for anyone who cares to look.
Alexander is seldom if ever at the vanguard of the loonier GOP stuff, but he seldom if ever bucks the leadership, either.
A long time ago, during the era of dialup BBSes and FidoNet, I had a conservative Christian sparring partner named Dan Bennett. We started off as quite bitter enemies, but over time we developed a high degree of mutual respect and actual friendship. I credit him with teaching me a great deal about public debate. He was a master of the art, and probably the most formidable opponent I have ever faced in that regard.
Like Lamar Alexander, he was sane, reasonable, and humane. The policies he supported were, in my very liberal opinion, harmful, but he wasn’t out to hurt anyone; he believed those policies would be helpful, and he could deliver very well-reasoned arguments to support them. But like Alexander, he also declined to publicly dispute with the loonies. I asked him about that once, and he told me that one does not air one’s dirty laundry in public, or words to that effect. It wasn’t far from Reagan’s famous “11th Commandment” that Republicans shall not speak ill of other Republicans.
I wonder what Dan thinks about that now that placing factional loyalty over loyalty to reason has transformed the GOP into a seditious mob of lunatics.
Hang a Puerto Rico flag outside your window if at all possible in honor of Justice Sotomayor’s roots.
Amy Klobuchar is likeable, but her politics are not. I was surprised and pleased to see Franken taking positions to the left of her. She’s flirted with being associated with some kind of ‘blue dog Senate’ faction, and her former prosecutor instincts make her very ‘law and order.’ She was wrong on FISA, iirc, and has been a fan of some War on Terror rhetoric. So pro-military, pro-cop, pro-spook.
She’s pro-choice, of course, and good on women’s issues. But I don’t know that she’s said how she’ll vote on public option, either.
So I guess some of her politics are fine, but behind the charm there’s rather a standard Democratic senator.
I was surprised and pleased to see Franken taking positions to the left of her.
I never understood where people got off saying that Franken was DLC. He isn’t. Do people realize why Franken got into the race to begin with? He got in it because of Wellstone. If you are running to honor the memory of Wellstone, and actually fight for what he did, you aren’t DLC.
I like Boxer. I hate DiFi.
When Barbara Boxer started out she came off as a lightweight, but over the years has become pretty solid (both in knowledge and political effectiveness).
Glad you have Whitehouse first – watching him in hearings is better than any courtroom movie, Perry Mason. Very curious to see what he does to move the various doj, torture, illegal, constitutional issues out there. Menendez has been low profile of late – wonder if the NJ44 (at least one of whom – who knows everything about NJ politics – is already “dead”) will affect him at all.
It really depends on what factors you use to rank them. For instance, Kennedy is by far my least favorite senator, simply because I care so much about health care and he’s taken more money from the health insurance industry than anyone else in Congress. And he’s accomplished virtually nothing in his 45 years in the Senate. Decades as the chair or ranking minority member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, and he hasn’t even bothered to take the time to come up with a coherent health plan. I don’t know why people admire this guy. He’s as corrupt as any politician alive. But each to his own, I guess.