Where’s Waldo?
Not content with the dog and pony shows conducted by Senate Republicans, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet says he abandoned those chambers yesterday and fled to the House where Democrats shut down the floor by staging a sit-in to demand media attention gun control.
We can’t verify he was actually there, because the C-SPAN cameras automatically turn off when the House is not in session, and that occurred shortly after the Democrats began reliving their glory days of the 1960s.
WATCH: Here’s when #holdthefloor sit-in by @HouseDemocrats began at 11:25am ET. https://t.co/lrN40rdNZyhttps://t.co/XWFw4TgbGp
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 22, 2016
The Durango Herald is the only media reporting Bennet took part. We spent considerable time parsing Bennet’s phrasing “I joined so and so in calling for such and such” — it’s the common vernacular for “I think that too,” not so much “I actually did that!”
We also scoured photos and videos on social media to determine whether for some odd reason, a U.S. Senator was actually intruding on House floor activities.
We couldn’t find him.
We didn’t think senators were allowed in the House except when invited for events like the State of the Union or joint sessions of Congress. And for that matter, we’ve never seen a lowly House members running around the floor of the upper chamber.
Then we found this nugget, which suggests it could conceivably be true:
Several Democratic senators crossed the Capitol on Wednesday to join protesters, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine and Cory Booker, all mentioned as potential running mates for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who voiced her support on Twitter.
Now there’s a precedent we didn’t research, whether it’s standard procedure for senators jockeying for the Veep slot to push their way into House business if it endears them to the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
In that case, perhaps Bennet was actually there.