Senate Democrats are expected to elect the same party veterans as their leaders when they return to work this week, but a new class of junior lawmakers is exerting its influence by challenging the chamber’s sacred traditions and the partisan, top-down governing style that has marked the past two years.
The young Democrats, many of whom will be on the ballot in 2012, reject the view that the Senate must move at a glacial pace, that only its most senior members get to determine the policy agenda, and that bipartisanship has become the purview of the naive and nostalgic.
“In the last election, voters said, ‘Please work together.’ I think they’re going to move next to profanities,” said Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.), a member of the Class of 2008.
Full Story: Junior Democrats in Senate seek to change the way chamber does business