ONE FISH, TWO FISH, NEW FISH, BLUE FISH —Your Huddle hosts spoke exclusively and extensively with the three co-chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition — Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine.), Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) — about what they’re hoping to achieve as the group who tends to vote independently of the Democratic leadership.
First things first: “Blue Dogs aren’t centrists. If we could banish the term ‘centrist’ from the political vocabulary, we absolutely would,” Golden said.
Golden was previously a co-chair of the group alongside Jim Costa (D-Calif.), who left the role. Petola and Gluesenkamp Perez are now co-chairs with Golden, with Gluesenkamp Perez officially joining the group Wednesday.
Try, edgy? “Some people might even describe it as edgy sometimes,” Golden said, because of the rare frankness that the trio brings to Washington. “But I think it’s really important to be genuine and real and honest, and that’s something I think all three of us have as a strength in this place.”
The cure: “We believe that Blue Dogs are really the antidote to the poison of fascism and and extremism — like, we are not just about taking out the easy,” Gluesenkamp Perez told your Huddle hosts. “We all ran and won in Trump districts. Some of us took out some pretty gnarly opponents.”
She added: “The antidote to that extremism is people that know and care deeply about their community. It’s not more partisanship.”
On the debt limit: Golden said that despite the fact that the group sent a letter to Biden to negotiate on the debt limit in February — months ago — he added, “it’s not helpful or constructive to sit here and pick the negotiators about what they could have or should have done.” But he said the group wants to see a deal with Republicans before announcing whether they’d support it. While they aren’t positioning themselves to be critical dealmakers on this issue, Golden says the group wants to be “positive contributors to the outcome here,” noting that, “By the way, a lot of people I think, aren’t playing that role.”
Golden said he’s in touch with most of the folks in the room and at the table for negotiations, both on the White House side and Republicans.
Fish caucus within a caucus: Peltola noted an important constituency that the three co-chairs share: fishermen.
“It’s important for Blue Dogs to be including fishermen as part of the blue collar real world economy in America and real world households, and I’m just excited to be part of, like, a fish caucus within the Blue Dog caucus,” Petola said.
On the upcoming farm bill: Gluesenkamp Perez has been hosting Farm Bill listening sessions and has a key takeaway: “What I’m hearing from my farmers and producers in those meetings is … these folks are not clamoring to cut food benefits. What they are talking about are fundamentally antitrust issues.” They want to be able to fix their own equipment and get their milk to market.
“The Republicans can’t stop talking about banning books. Like, fix something. It’s enraging to me that the things that are crushing our farms and our producers have become — they’re just crumbs, the amount of attention they get,” she said.
On leadership: Golden said voters and lawmakers should be more skeptical of what the establishment says is good for them. “When you have the president of United States, no matter who it is, and the entire political establishment, the leader of every party, standing together on stage and saying, this is going to be good for you, it should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little bit, and you want to maybe look into the details,” Golden said.
Just for fun: “I think we are the only people in Congress that can run and fix a chainsaw,” Gluesenkamp Perez mused before Peltola jumped in: “Chainsaws are not my friend.”
Mock Paper Scissors 
The House can vote to overturn a lot of stuff; they’ll learn the AZ Lege lesson: a razor-thin margin means that Dark Brandon’s veto stamp is an insurmountable obstacle.
Also, christ on a crutch:
When you view the “political establishment” as the enemy of the people, you’re not “the antidote to fascism”, you’re an enabler of it.
You’re right that anti-trust is the big issue but it’s the big issue everywhere, and it’s those horrible icky partisan dirty fucking hippie leftists who have been complaining about that issue for decades.
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It’s right out of Reagan’s playbook.
I once read a sci-fi short story about a weird invasion of bots – terrifying, life-and-freedom threatening bots on the phone babbling something incomprehensibly fast. It was eventually translated to “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”. And that’s when I realized that not all sci-fi authors use their brains when they write.
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If those good Christian Bible thumper Republican Politicians would quite thumping that Bible and actually READ IT, they might realize that the only time Jesus got physical, downright violent even, was when he was dealing with MONEY LENDERS. Compounded interest is a sin, my Bible tells me so.
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They don’t care about what Jesus did or said. How about the Sermon on the Mount?: “Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, blessed are the peacemakers, etc.” Or “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Or “pay your taxes” (alright, that’s not a literal quote, but is implied by “render unto Caesar…” Doesn’t sound like the guiding principles of GOP Christians (although I admit that turning the other cheek isn’t easy nor necessarily always a good idea – but then I don’t claim to be a Christian). But it is easy not to cast a stone at people you don’t agree with.
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I had thought this passage was about taking advantage of people who were attending temple.
You know, monetizing religious activities.
I won’t object to your selection, though. If the big name, big money, preachers would listen to this they’d be paying off student loans for the good of others instead of condemning themselves to the consequences they threaten their flocks with.
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I think you’re right. They weren’t money lenders, but money changers, who were ripping off foreigners who had to exchange their money for Jewish money to pay the temple tax. Jesus drove them from the temple (twice), apparently because he didn’t think cheating people was acceptable in a temple.
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And they were changing money so they could purchase the acceptable sacrifices. If I remember the interpretation I was told as a child correctly.
Maybe it’s time for me to re-read some of this with a freshly jaundiced eye.
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I feel for those students who are buried in debt. The days when you could go and attend a university and have to work a summer job to afford it are long gone. I was lucky in that as a former marine, I qualified for a public institution, and received a fairly generous contribution. It made all the difference…
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Seriously, when I went to the University of Arizona (starting in 1976), the state resident registration cost was $450 per year for a full class load, and anyone in the top 75% of their HS graduating class was automatically accepted.
Today: $13,200 per year.
That’s over 5 times the rate of inflation….
Of course back then the state kicked in something like 80% of the UA’s budget, today it’s < 5%.
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