Jeff Merkley and Pramila Jaypal on the detention camp funding fiasco

I'm atttending the 2019 Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Congresswoman Pramila Jaypal (D-WA) spoke to the Friday afternoon keynote session in an interview format moderated by the Huffpost's Amanda Terkel.

Amanda asked good questions and pressed them on important points. A very large part of the discussion was around the fiasco in which the House passed the Senate bill on financing the border concentration camps without even trying to negotiate improvements based on the version the House passed, which incorporated specific legal provisions to protect prisoners from the most serious forms of abuse.

Both Merkely and Jaypal were diplomatic about criticizing the Senate and House Democratic leadership. But they both made it clear that the handling of that funding measure was a massive flop for the Democrats. They did confirm speculation that I've heard from Sam Seder on The Majority Report, which is that because most Senate Democrats voted for the Senate bill, that gave House Blue Dogs an excuse to not insist on confronting the Senate, i.e., voting for the Senate version without using the reconciliation procedure to negotiate improvements, claiming they didn't have any cover after so many Democratic Senators voted for it.

Merkley explained that the Senate Dems negotiated as much as they could get on their initial version and thought they had an understanding that the House Democrats would send back an amended version of the Senate bill, which they could then support in the Senate in the hope they could get enough Republican votes to pass some of the protective features. (Merkley himself voted against the Senate version.)

I don't recall Chuck Schumer's name coming up at all. Pelosi's did. You didn't have to read too hard between the lines to hear that they were both saying that Pelosi dropped the ball badly and that Schumer didn't handle it so smoothly, either. Merkley stressed that the worst-case scenario for now and next year would be for Trumpist bills to be consistently passed by a minority of House Democrats voting with House Republicans. But both clearly agreed that Senate and House Democrats need to be voting in coordination with each other.

And both Merkley and Jaypal, despite putting in in diplomatic terms, both made it clear that the House not pursuing impeachment of Donald Trump is a dereliction of Constitutional duty as well as political malpractice on Pelosi's part.

On the PBS Newshour, Mark Shields and Ramesh Ponnuru both agreed that Nancy Pelosi is an awesome leader and that progressives are foolish and should be ignored except to gripe about them, Mark Shields and Ramesh Ponnuru on Democratic divisions, citizenship data 07/13/2019: