I'm a day late with this, so I hope the person concerned will forgive me, but..............

[DFW]

44. I only met Rahm once

It was enough to be happy not to meet him again.

He was/is a nasty, manipulative little piece of work. The fact that Howard's absence at HHS was an immense disservice to the whole nation couldn't have been less important to him. Selfish little bastard. Howard put up a brilliant façade of taking it in stride, but I knew him well enough to know he was huge disappointed that Obama went along.

I asked him in February, 2009, after Daschle dropped due to his undocumented household help, and Sibelius wasn't yet nominated, what he would do if he got frozen out of the Obama administration, which we both knew was a distinct possibility, if a shameful one for the Democratic Party. Howard said he would join some law firm on paper, for some name recognition for them and some steady income for himself, and then spend the rest of his time raising hell for causes he cared about.

He has been doing that ever since. Don't think his occasional appearances on MSNBC or CNN are anything like high importance to him. He's glad to do it, but those spots pay peanuts, if anything at all. He has always been a fervent environmentalist, going back decades all the way to fighting Bernie Sanders when Sanders was mayor of Burlington, to protect some land near the lake from being developed instead of being built up (Sanders was backing the developers).

+He has also been a strong family man, always going home on weekends, no matter where he was as DNC Chair. I don't know anyone besides Norm Ornstein who even knows his wife's name (they met while in Medical School, so his partnership has lasted at least as long as has mine, and I have been with my wife for 48 years). He also has been championing the fight against human trafficking, organizing and participating in a march from the Burmese border to Bangkok to shed some light on it. He has not been sulking, twiddling his thumbs since leaving the DNC chairmanship

That a man like that was NOT nominated for president when we could have done so, and that a man like was denied a cabinet position although he was by far the most qualified for the job--those are failings for which our party will have to answer to history for.

What could and should have been...............