The most fun and rewarding job in my CAREER was the two years I spent in #Chicago doing opposition and vulnerability #research for local, state, and federal #campaigns.
I never made more than $33,000 a year doing it.
I loved the data, the #public records investigation, synthesis, narrative reporting.
Some clients and opposing candidates had been in Congress since the 90’s.
Reading Congressional #RollCall going back 10+ years was a regular activity.
It was possible to track the votes of representatives across the makeups of different Congresses, with marked inflection points in 1995, 2001, 2002, and up to 2006, which when I left that professional domain.
Depending on the demographics and gerrymandering of a given district, from the #RollCall it was clear how #Democrats failed to unify and betrayed coalitions much more readily than #Republicans.
What I learned was that #Republicans were much more disciplined and shameless.
When Democrats were in the majority, their coalition shattered. The most glaringly obviously morally good, harm-reducing, fiscal-surplus generating stuff would languish in committees or get voted down.
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