Martin Longman of Booman Tribune and Washington Monthly (no enemy of progressives):
“The Stupid War on Cory Booker ...”
washingtonmonthly.com/…
Highlights:
The amendment would have given Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the chairman of the Budget Committee, the discretion to pass a bill on the importation of prescription drugs or other means of lowering the price for American consumers, even if that required him to adjust how monies were allocated to his subcommittees.
For starters, Sen. Enzi voted against giving himself this discretion, so he clearly had no intention of taking advantage of it.
And:
The Republicans who voted for these things were just avoiding needlessly wounding themselves. The same is true for the Democrats who voted against them.
What does it mean that Cory Booker voted against this meaningless prescription drug amendment? What does it mean that Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico voted against it? What does it mean that Senator Ted Cruz voted for it?
It means approximately nothing.
And:
If you’ve decided that you need to wage a preventive war against Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential aspirations by killing him over this vote, then you’re waging your own ideological war and way off message.
It’s easy to see why you might have been taken in by this when you look at headlines that say “For Some Reason, Cory Booker and 12 Other Dems Helped Kill a Bill That Would Lower Drug Prices.”
But that headline should be considered Fake News.
But Democrats suck, right?
And really: Markos is a great blog runner but his political chops are … not.