So. Paul Hodes. Congressman, Senatorial candidate, and a table-pounder on the subject of unemployment benefits (although judging from his polling, he probably has personal reasons for that right now). Well, Congress had a vote last week on precisely that topic, after months of the Democrats trying to work out a way to turn their mere seventy vote majority in to actual legislation. So did Rep. Paul I-care-so-deeply-about-the-plight of the-unemployed-I-could-just-vomit Hodes enjoy casting his vote? His vote of vindication?
In fact, did he even vote on it at all?
No, of course he didn’t. Vegas beckoned, baby.
A spokesman for the Hodes campaign said an unspecified “scheduling issue” prevented the congressman from voting July 22 when the U.S. House approved restoring jobless pay for millions of Americans who had been out of work six months or more. Spokesman Matt House said Hodes remains a strong supporter of extended benefits.
Hodes was scheduled to appear in Las Vegas the next day at the liberal bloggers convention Netroots Nation, and by Saturday afternoon he had told a Huffington Post reporter at the conference that…
I’d thought that I’d spare you Hodes’ hypocritical agitprop; the important thing is that he skipped out on a signature vote to go to Vegas. To hang with netrooters and bask in their regard. And the netrooters will now try to cover for his lapse of judgment by whining that the vote was a sure thing, anyway. Sure it was, but that’s kind of immaterial. Lots of votes are sure things for the Democrats in the 111th Congress – which is one major reason why few votes are going to be sure things for the Democrats in the 112th Congress. And that is why Hodes was so eager to get to Vegas; the way things are looking, he’s not going to be one of them…
Moe Lane