Henry Waxman To Retire, Saying He Wants to Spend More Time With Children, Frightening Them With His Monsterface

We discussed this dynamic on the podcast last night, not knowing another pig-faced shoe was about to drop. It's no fun to serve in the minority -- small staff, smaller offices, small influence -- and when it becomes clear that a party will not be capturing a house of Congress, some Congressmen decide to retire. Conversely, older Congressmen in a party in-power are more likely to stay on.

Politico reported late yesterday that Democrats had decided on a triage strategy-- they would abandon their quixotic efforts to seize control of the House in order to direct all resources to attempting to hold the Senate.

Democrats: Cede the House to save the Senate

With Democrats’ grasp on the Senate increasingly tenuous — and the House all but beyond reach — some top party donors and strategists are moving to do something in the midterm election as painful as it is coldblooded: Admit the House can’t be won and go all in to save the Senate.

Their calculation is uncomplicated. With only so much money to go around in an election year that is tilting the GOP’s way, Democrats need to concentrate resources on preserving the chamber they have now. Losing the Senate, they know, could doom whatever hopes Barack Obama has of salvaging the final years of his presidency.

The triage idea is taking hold in phone conversations among donors and in strategy sessions between party operatives. Even some of the people who have invested the most to get House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi back into the speaker’s chair are moving in that direction.

“There is no question that Democratic donors are shifting towards the Senate in 2014. They will continue to support Nancy, but everyone agrees that the emphasis is going to be on the Senate,” said Joe Cotchett, a prominent San Francisco trial attorney and friend of Pelosi’s who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party candidates and causes. “When you see people like [longtime California Democratic Rep.] George Miller announcing that they are not running again, you know where the money will be going.”

And now the swinish brute Henry Waxman decides that after decades of doing his best to destroy American democracy, he too wants to spend more time with his K Street lobbyists.

“I just think it’s time to move on,” Waxman [said].

He specifically denies that he's dropping out of congress after nearly thirty years of, um, "service" due to the fact that Democrats have no chance of taking the House.

“I don’t accept the idea that Democrats won’t get the House back,” Waxman said. “I think that the Republicans have nothing to offer. They’re against everything. They’re against everything Obama wanted. They have no alternatives on health care policy. They have nothing to say, they have nothing to offer.”

But I can tell he's lying because he has a "tell." That tell is that he's Henry Waxman, three-decades-long Democratic Congressman from California.

More: @JohnEkdahl notices Freddoso's Conservative Intel noticing something.

On a related note, Waxman holds a D+11 district. But Waxman still had a rough time of it last cycle — practically nobody noticed, but he almost lost his seat. A wealthy candidate named Bill Bloomfield (a longtime-moderate-Republican-donor-turned-unaffiliated-voter) put $7.6 of his own money into an independent bid against Waxman and held him under 54 percent in the general election. Bloomfield has actually raised $75,000 already this cycle, but he might just be paying himself back some of the loans he made his campaign.

posted by Ace at 01:53 PM

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