Pramila Jayapal is a Congressperson from Washington State.
That's where I live.
From my point of view Pramila is a perfect representative of the people.
She speaks cogent but understandable English sentences, frequently free of D.C. Spin.
She loves America, not for what it is, but for what it could be, and therefore, what it should be.
"Should" is the banner under which she marches.
And she DOES march.
She has probably single-handedly kept the Biden Human Infrastructure Bill alive and progressing. She and a hundred Congresspeople of similar human beliefs - the Progressive Caucus - have kept two senators from being able to sweep off the table the most important social legislation since the New Deal; it has shrunk, but it is still chugging toward passage; and two trillion, its current funding target over ten years, while compared to the money that Manchin and Sinema think should be spent on useless things like eighteen billion dollar aircraft carriers and F35 aircraft that nobody wants (The current unit price of an F-35A is now $89.2 million) all amounting up over ten years to seven trillion and counting is trivial, compared to nothing, which is what we spend on our human infrastructure now, is measurable.
I assume Sister Justitia is screaming from her grave that one of her protégés could have written such a clunky sentence.
But scan the punctuation; it all works.
However:
If that sentence sounds angry, it is.
Violently angry.
(Sister Justitia would have given me an "F" for this post because of the fragments. Because of her I abhor fragments, but when I read Patrick O'Brian or Hilary Mantel I see hoards of fragments used like literary scimitars slashing through boredom and exposing the raw pulse of reality; so I have adopted a cautious policy of fragment usage.)
But I am a politician and this post is about politics, so, now that I have gotten my anger out of me, let's talk politics - and the Constitution.
Why, one might ask would Pramila Jayapal decide to become second in line - to be seeming to hinder the most important legislation in seventy years - to two last class senators?
Why would she want to diminish the funds and slow the progress toward the vote?
Maybe because she saw that there was no way to get all that should be legislated to be legislated, so, maybe two thirds is better than nothing.
That's a risky call.
But it's probably the correct call; it's probably an astute call.
A lot of people- like me - are tired of waiting for America to meet its three and a half trillion, or six trillion, or whatever trillion obligations (we bail out the banks every time they screw us but we won't take care of our people) and I think we may like Pramila's call on this,
But what's in it for her?
I guess one might conclude that she wants to be Senator herself, so getting press is good.
But, for her to become Senator, she would need to unseat one or the other of the two best Senators in in US Senate.
That would be very difficult - maybe nigh on impossible - and, even if she were to succeed, it would leave her very important seat exposed to trump nut onslaught and deny the seat she would recently occupy the power and wisdom of its recently defeated occupant.
So I don't think that's what she is doing.
I don't think she wants Maria Cantwell's seat or Patty Murray's seat.
But I think she wants something: she is smart, talented, capable of assuming and managing power, and young enough to be around for quite a long time.
I suppose, therefore, that Speaker of the House is what she wants.
But the Speaker of the House is third in line for the Presidency.
Pramila was not born in the United States.
How does that work out?
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