Harrisburg Democrats Miss an Opportunity- While Republicans Don't

The point of a legislative caucus is to pass legislation and win elections. By that measure, I'm not sure what the Pennsylvania House Democrats are really doing as a caucus, but they aren't doing either of those things.

In short, I'm saying they're not doing a great job at the leadership level, and yesterday they had a shot to do something about that. They didn't. They re-elected Frank Dermody to lead the House Democrats. He'll lead a caucus of 84, down from the 92 he had. That's also down by 20 from the last time we won a majority, in 2008. For perspective, they'd need 18 of the 119 Republicans to cross over in order to pass anything. In other words, they won't be passing legislation. If things stay as is within the leadership team, they won't win many elections either.

Meanwhile, Mike "We're going to stack the deck for Romney" Turzai is the new Speaker of the House, a huge step to the right. His crazy will be honed in by the bright Dave Reed, the new Majority Leader. In fact, only Turzai and Rep. Adolph (Appropriations) are from "blue" counties in their whole leadership team. Expect the House to be a real terror for Governor-elect Wolf.