Patty Murray has been in the U.S Senate since 1993, so she has been through the “why we lost the election” drill before. Yesterday, she spoke to the Seattle Times on her first day back on the job since her party took a shellacking in the 2014 midterms. She told the Times that — contrary to reality — she is “looking forward to working with the new Republican Senate majority.” Of course, Murray reveals her true feelings by then pointing out that she is watching for signs of “tea-party insurrection.”
For the first time in eight years, Murray and her fellow Democrats will serve as the minority when the 114th Congress begins in January. Murray gave her take on why Democrats lost eight seats (nine if Louisiana votes Sen. Mary Landrieu out next month), suggesting that the American people sent “a message of disillusionment.”
Her analysis takes a turn toward blind denial when she attributed the reason why more Democrats than Republicans fell victim to said disillusionment to “more Democratic seats being in play.” The Times goes on to point out that “21 of the 36 Senate seats in this year’s contest were held by Democrats.” However, neither the Seattle Times nor Murray bother to mention that no Republican lost a seat, and that the GOP was able to beat more than two Democrat incumbents (four so far, with a fifth when Landrieu loses) for the first time since 1980.
Rather than look for nonsensical explanations as to why voters overwhelmingly rejected her party, Murray should spend some time re-evaluating Democrats’ out-of-touch ideology—liberalism. But, of course, she won’t.
That’s probably why Murray “declined to say whether she supported a push by Landrieu and other Democrats to hold a vote to approve the Keystone XL pipeline to pump Canadian tar-sand oil to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.” (Even though she is on record as opposing Keystone). The vote comes as an act of political desperation designed to increase Landrieu’s re-election chances in a state that supports the pipeline.
Keystone would also create jobs that have been lacking under the Democrat Senate that Murray is a leader in. But, that wouldn’t explain any of those Democrat Senate losses, would it?
