In the interest of “common ground,” we could see a proposal like increasing cost sharing in Medicare. It would be astounding for Democrats to do so, coming off of a successful effort to blame Republicans for… increasing cost sharing in Medicare, by ending the program and giving seniors a too-small coupon to purchase health insurance.

Russ Feingold may be well-positioned to return to the US Senate if he chooses, now that Herb Kohl has retired. A normal politician in that position would not make waves with any party leaders, or take up principled causes where both parties have failed. Feingold is not that normal politician. The Hill reports that he publicly shamed several Democrats in an email to supporters of his new organization, Progressives United. But they don’t make clear what the fuss is about.

Is Steny really suggesting that Congressmen are not aware of who their donors are, are not intimately familiar with how much they’re raking in from contractors?

House Democrats lit into John Boehner and the Republicans in a conference call with progressive media just now. “Boehner has about 80 members who think that compromise is a dirty word. They keep wanting to move the goalposts and stick in radical social changes that they can’t get any other way,” said Jim McDermott (D-WA), referring to the unrelated policy riders around abortion and women’s health funding that Republicans are demanding. “This isn’t about debt reduction, it’s about the social agenda they’re trying to jam through. It’s really a cultural war that’s going on here. They’ve been offered the money, the President gave them the money.”

It’s completely different to support raising the retirement age, which is mainly a benefit cut and an attack on workers in menial labor jobs who cannot hold out the way someone sitting at a desk can, than it is to “consider all options, including raising the age,” according to Hoyer. I’m not sure it’s so different, really.

Women members of Congress contribute significantly to the DCCC’s coffers. But they don’t appear to be getting much for their money.

Jamie Dimon, Vikram Pandit, Tom Donohue, Barack Obama, and the UAW: goodbye, US jobs! The official White House press release on the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade

The public ought to know who supports what position in this debate. And who knows, maybe Democrats could get enough crossover votes to pass the middle class tax cuts only, although the prospects of that holding in the Senate are quite dim.

By inventing a new post of “assistant leader” for James Clyburn of South Carolina, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has headed off a leadership fight that threatened the unity of her caucus just as it became drastically smaller.

The common approach is to look to House “leaders” as how they will play broadly in the country, whether they have the ability to excite the mass middle of the public. Yet we know that the identity of the number 2 Democrat in the leadership will have no bearing whatsoever on the fate of the House in 2012 and beyond. The leadership position is a legislative one, particularly the position of the Minority Whip, whose job mainly entails keeping the caucus unified on important votes.