TPM Reader BA checked in mid-day about the events on Capitol Hill …
Re: “It helps her”, I think I would add that it’s hard for me to imagine any of the Democrats running against Hillary pulling this off as well.
As an active Democrat who has remained, thus far, undecided, her performance here and at the debate have gone a long way toward convincing me to support Clinton instead of Sanders; even though, politically, my ideals line up more closely with Sanders’ democratic socialism than Clinton’s quasi-third way centrism.
If a Democrat wins the 2016 election, her or his main job as I see it will be defending the achievements of the Obama adminsitration, which will surely be under even more sustained attack once he leaves office. Any major expansion to that legacy will need to be incremental given a hostile, partisan Congress that, at least in the House, is pretty much “locked in” by gerrymandering until the next redistricting cycle.
In that light, I’m increasingly leaning toward Hillary, not so much based on what she believes but on her competence, both as a public official and as a politician who knows how to punch back.
