Tim Kaine went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, ostensibly, to explain, for the umpteenth time, his role in the Senate Democrat capitulation on healthcare premium tax credits, but the appearance was notable mainly because he used the opportunity to throw shade at his progressive critics, and offer some tough love for Chuck Schumer.
Credit here to Tim Kaine: when he does something wrong, he stays wrong.
None of this soul-searching crap.
I did what I did, if you don’t like it, tough.
Actually, not sure if I should be giving him credit on that.
ICYMI
- Tim Kaine to critics of his Senate shutdown compromise vote: ‘They’re wrong’
- Kaine critics line up to take shots at ill-conceived Senate compromise
Main thing that was clear to me after listening to Kaine on “Meet the Press”: he shouldn’t be expecting any Christmas cards from Ro Khanna and AOC, who he called out by name; and I would expect Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among others, might be losing his address as well.
“I don’t tell Ro Khanna or AOC or anybody else who you should pick as your House leader, because I have a full-time job being a senator, I don’t need to freelance opinions about House leadership. They should focus on their own leadership and let senators do what they need to do to keep this country moving forward,” Kaine said, at the end of a long answer to a question from “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Schumer’s status as the Senate Minority Leader.
Cue Chris Tucker and Ice Cube from “Friday.”
“Da-a-a-a-a-mn,” indeed.
I guess I’m also disqualified from freelancing opinions on Schumer and Kaine and the disastrous shutdown deal as well, since I have a full-time job, and it’s not United States senator.
If I can, though, just freelance opine to myself here for a minute – what we still don’t have here from Kaine or any of the eight Senate Democrats who voted to enshrine the Big Ugly Bill healthcare cuts from back in the summer is, you know, why not just vote back before Oct. 1 to do that, and save everybody the trouble?
I mean, to be fair, Kaine did offer thoughts on that:
“It was an assessment of what Republicans would do,” Kaine said. “You know, today there will be a lot of good football games, and every team goes in with a game plan to start, but if the game plan isn’t producing what you want at halftime, the coach goes in and says we’ll make some adjustments. Forty days in, the Republicans were saying, we know we need to talk about healthcare, but we will not engage on healthcare until government is reopened. Now it’s fair to test somebody’s red lines, and we tested them over and over again in October, and they didn’t budge from that. Frankly, I viewed the situation last weekend as we had no path, none, to a healthcare fix until we reopened government.”
To be fair there, Ray Charles could see back before Oct. 1 that there was no path to a healthcare fix, with Republicans in the majority in both houses of Congress, and Donald Trump holding the veto pen.
Ray Charles, not only blind when he was alive, but dead since 2004 – that Ray Charles.
Using the football analogy, Kaine and the eight, we are to believe, decided amongst themselves to make the halftime adjustments; if that’s the case, and the players are changing the game plan, that would seem to suggest that Schumer shouldn’t be the coach anymore, if the players are just going to call their own plays.
“Being Minority Leader is tough,” Kaine said. “In the Senate, we have some tools in minority, but not many. We don’t control what’s on the floor, and, you know, if you’re dealing with senators, it’s not exactly like senators just get in line and follow the leader.”
Not a feckless leader like Chuck Schumer, anyway.
I mean, Republicans fell in line behind Mitch McConnell, and he somehow marshaled 41 Senate GOP votes as their minority leader in 2010 to water down the Affordable Care Act.
McConnell, with the personality of the turtle on a fencepost, also used bare majorities to steal two Supreme Court spots from Democrats, which is why there’s a 6-3 Trump majority on the Supreme Court, and, among other things, no more Roe v. Wade.
McConnell, destined to rot in hell, if there was a such thing as hell, is the Nick Saban of Senate leaders; Schumer is the Brian Kelly.
Which is why it is that we have, per Kaine, Senate Democrats out there calling their own plays, and they don’t seem to like people pointing that out, and being critical.
I agree with Tim Kaine on 98 percent of everything, but on this, man, he’s so far off base that it might outweigh the rest.
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Chris Graham
