Tim Walz: People are Sick of Dems' "Strongly Worded Letters"

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73. here's something to chew on

...those two Democratic 'leaders' aren't executives.

They're not even put into those leadership positions by voters, as this screed against them suggests. They are voted into the leadership by the elected Democrats to represent and organize THEIR priorities, and are challenged to perform that duty by organizing a diverse and disparate collection of interests from around the nation who chose the Democratic party as a legislative vehicle.

The leaders are legislative managers who organize the Democrats who they have available to them around legislation which a majority of them will agree to support.

They don't have the power and authority of presidents to make things happen by fiat, or on their own initiative, so it's substantially inaccurate to portray them as the leaders of the party, as some are wont to do. They are individual Senators or Representatives with two votes between them that they actually control.

We don't vote them in as leader, and the people who sent them to Congress didn't necessarily vote for them to lead Democrats around the nation, as much as they voted for their own interests where they live (pointing to the destructive calls for them to resign their seats entirely from some). They're very likely, and look to be, representing the voters who sent them there with solid individual progressive votes for nearly every Democratic initiative or interest.

We have to ask, before we delegate all of these expectations of leadership of the party, in which no voter outside of the Democratic membership in Congress actually cast a ballot directly to elect any Democratic leader, why they persist in those roles?

It's obviously because they represent the collective will of their respective memberships, almost without fail, in each and every utterance of support for each and every initiative that comes out of the Democratic caucus.

That's how the leadership is structured, and that's how it operates. They are there because they represent the collective will of our elected majority in Congress to a fault; I'd even go so far as to say they've proven individually MORE progressive in their voting than the majority in some notable instances, than what's sometimes emerged as consensus among Dems.

People put them out there, cast them as something they're just not; don't have the individual power to effectively make all of these aspirations people have for them come true; especially in a minority.

I'd remind everyone that Schumer, for instance, presided over and fought behind the scenes for EVERY plank of the historic legislative accomplishments of the Biden term that emerged from committee and was successfully voted on when we held the last (slim) majority.

They are a direct reflection of the membership who voted for them to lead THEM. Nothing more, despite all of the performative expectations outside of those very vital and important legislative duties,

Almost every Senator, and every Rep thinks they could be president. That's what these two manage every day, so it's really something for anyone to expect they would, or should, be acting like they have the liberty to go beyond the expectations of the people who put them in those roles.

Thing is, they have a very firm grasp of the reality of the numbers of votes they have to work with to do more than the performative expectations some seem to think is their primary function.

But, it's always interesting to me how strident and insistent the demands are from folks who don't seem to be accounting for or taking any responsibility for giving these leaders sufficient numbers of Democrats to actually set the agenda and advance legislative solutions in the majority.