Rep. Capuano Tells Fellow Dems: 'You're Screwed'

Bummer of a birth mark, Democratic Party

Representative Michael Capuano (D-MD-8) just finished a losing primary against Martha Coakley, and he when asked to share his experience on the campaign trail, ye was blunt:

You're screwed

Capuano took to the microphone, looked out at his colleagues and condensed what he'd learned into two words. "You're screwed," he told his friends in the House, according to one attendee. The room's silence was broken only by soft, nervous laughter.

Capuano confirmed the gist of the message -- "I'm not sure of the exact wording," he told HuffPost, chuckling -- and said that he doubted his wisdom was anything they didn't already know.

"I think I was just confirming stuff they already knew," he said. "I focused on two things: the war in Afghanistan and jobs."

Everywhere Capuano went in his state, he said, he was bombarded with demands that the government do more to create jobs. He was also greeted by deep skepticism about Obama's escalation of the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Capuano said he told the caucus that opponents of the war need to be given a chance to vote against funding for it on the House floor.

"If we do anything [on the war], we need to have a separate vote on it. People who can vote for it, can vote for it. But those of us who want to vote against it, [should] be given that opportunity, too," he said. "But I focused mostly on jobs. People are tired of the promises of jobs. They need them now."

There are some very real issues here.

The first is that Barack Obama's "Wall Street before Main Street" policies just aren't selling.

The second is that Afghanistan is unpopular.

What makes it worse is that the stimulus package will be tied to the Afghan war funding:

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, told reporters Tuesday that short-term extensions of unemployment and COBRA will be attached to the defense bill.

In effect, that requires members of Congress to back a war they oppose in order to get funding for jobs, a bargain many are loath to make, but one they've made over and over since Democrats rook control of Congress following the 2006 midterm elections -- which were decided largely by voters fed up with the war in Iraq.

Steny Hoyer is optimistic, because, well, he's a pro-war, pro-bank bailout squish, and he wants the rest of the caucus voting with him.

We are seeing a disaster unwind in slow motion, and the only person who might make it better, Barack Obama, is spending too much time kissing the asses corporate interests that created the NAFTA driven political firestorm in 1994.