Having watched for a while the entertaining meltdown that is the Democratic party’s House Ways & Means chairmanship crisis, I’d thought that I’d take a look at the top seven replacements for Charlie Rangel (via Jen Rubin) and quickly point out the… complications.

• Fortney Pete Stark, CA-13.  Crazy.
• Sander M. Levin, MI-12. Public option squish*.
• Jim McDermott, WA-07.  Seditionist.
• John Lewis, GA-05. Racist.
• Richard E. Neal, MA-02. Fifth in seniority.
• John S. Tanner, TN-08. Retiring.
• Xavier Becerra, CA-31. Seventh in seniority.

No, Neal and Becerra’s lack of seniority is an issue for Democrats.  They don’t rotate out their leadership like the GOP does.  Which makes the way that everybody skips past Levin a bit odd: looking over the guy’s record… well, there isn’t much of one.  He’s this 78 year old guy who’s been in Congress for 28 years and doesn’t seem to have done anything particularly noteworthy while he was there.  This is, of course, a personal tragedy and searing indictment of the man’s life choices: but it’s not precisely an obstacle to his taking the chairmanship, rambling progressive attack video or no.

Besides, even if it was: it’s only until January 2011 anyway.

Moe Lane

*Kid, that video was a minute too long.  Nobody wants to hear about your pontifications about bloggers and predating the country or whatever the heck it was you were talking about.  They wanted to hear about whether Sandy Levin would vote for a health care bill that doesn’t have a public option in it.

Far too many beautiful and unique snowflakes in this business.  Far too many.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.