Hillary speaks.

[panfluteman]

39. Let Me See... Time to Take Some Tallies Here...

Just a cursory glance at this list revealed the usual presence of the worst jerks in Congress, like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator James Inhofe. As I gazed upon this list and ruminated a bit, it seemed to me like not all states were represented. And the states that would not be represented on the list, I reasoned, were states with heavy Democratic leanings and constituencies. And it seems like I was correct in that initial intuitive assessment - there were no legislators from CA, OR or WA on the West Coast on this list, and going to the also blue East Coast, I saw nobody from NY, MA, VT, CT, ME, VA in the northeast either. There are so many Democrats in these states that the legislators probably felt that if they blocked the cap, they would be hanged by their constituents. In the middle of the country, predictably, the Democratic islands / enclaves of IL, NM and CO were not on the list. And even though it's a red state, AZ was not on the list - probably due to the sheer number of medication-dependent seniors living in the state.

At the other end of the spectrum, which states were the biggest offenders? Let's see - there were a total of 43 Republicans on this list, from a total of 25 states. That makes for an average of 1.72 Republican legislators for each state represented on the list. As it worked out, there were either 1 or 2 Republicans listed for each of the states represented on the list. In other words, which states are the "repeat offenders", with two Republicans on the list, and which are the "initial offenders", with only one Republican on the list? The states with just one Republican legislator on the list were MO, WV, MT, WI, OH, PA and MS. Two of these states, PA and OH, are hotly contested battleground states, whereas the others are pretty solidly Republican. The remaining 18 states of the 25 were the repeat offenders - WY, TN, AR, IN, NC, TX, ND, ID, IA, NE, SC, OK, UT, KS, KY, SD, FL, AL.

When you add up the 25 states represented on this list with the 13 states that I selected previously as not being on the list for various obvious reasons, that makes a total of 12 states left over. HI - that's a no brainer, and a Democratic stronghold, of course. AK - that's an interesting one. Nevada is not on the list, and I suppose that it's because it is also pretty Democratic. RI goes in the basket with the rest of blue New England, and also NH, even though it's not so blue. Hey - GA is not represented either, maybe because it has flipped blue in recent years. And MN is Democratic, of course. Hhhmmm... are there any stragglers that I missed?