Word: caucus
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Kilpatrick's story is, by any measure, tragic. He was born into one of Michigan's powerful political families. His mother Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick was until recently chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Tall and brawny, he played football at historically black Florida A&M University, studied law and rose quickly as a young representative in Michigan's legislature. By 2001, he was elected Detroit's mayor at age 31, partly by energizing this city's disaffected youth. His flashy suits, diamond-stud earrings and inaugural "club crawls" proclaimed his comfort with being called "America's first hip-hop mayor...
Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate in 2000, is technically not a Democrat anymore. He left the party in 2006 after losing a primary to challenger Ned Lamont but continued to caucus with the party after winning in the general election as an independent. But he has gone rogue before, straining his relations with the Democrats, most notably when he endorsed Republican John McCain for President and vociferously campaigned for him - often sharply criticizing Barack Obama. Soon after, his Senate Democratic colleagues voted on whether to allow him to stay in their caucus. With the support of Obama...
...didn't much matter what Bill Clinton had to say to Senate Democrats when he made his unusual appearance at their weekly caucus lunch Nov. 10 on Capitol Hill. Yes, he talked policy and economic imperatives and all that. But the former President was really there, at Senate majority leader Harry Reid's invitation, as the ghost of 1994 - a reminder of what happened the last time lawmakers took up the cause of health care reform and didn't finish the job. That failure not only dealt a near crippling blow to a young Democratic presidency but also cost...
...complicated in the Senate. There the ideological balance among Democrats is closer than in the liberal House, and the rules allow amendments that could send the bill in almost any direction. Most crucially, it will take a supermajority of 60 votes - exactly the number Reid has in his Democratic caucus - to progress in the face of a GOP filibuster...
...could easily be seen as exerting improper influence on the CBO's calculations, which are supposed to be free of political pressure. And he has been pleading with liberal interest groups to ease up on Senator Joe Lieberman - an independent whom Reid counts as part of his 60-member caucus - over Lieberman's public declaration that he will filibuster any bill that contains a public option. It was Reid who made the risky call to put a version of the public option in the bill that he will be taking to the Senate floor. "He's telling everybody, 'Leave...