Hoyer

Should've done this earlier, but now that Hoyer's been voted into the Majority Leader spot, it's worth knowing who he is. Zach Roth's prescient profile of Hoyer -- titled "The Establishmentarian -- is the place to go. A taste:

When I asked friends and former staffers which issues Hoyer seemed to feel most passionately about, most spoke instead about his political skills. “He cares more about process than issues, per se,” says John Moag, who worked for him in both the Maryland state Senate and the U.S. Congress. “Good process ultimately produces good policy. This is a guy who’s been compromising his whole life because he knows that’s how it gets done.”[...]

the flip side of Hoyer’s obsession with process and old-fashioned relationship building is a reluctance to think strategically about changing the ways that Washington operates—even when doing so would benefit Democrats. Over the last year and a half, Hoyer—a protégé of Tony Coelho, the former California congressman who revolutionized Democratic fundraising in the 1980s—has led an aggressive effort to raise money from K Street lobbyists. Even more important, he has seemed unwilling to fundamentally rethink the unhealthy relationship between lobbyists and legislators that currently drives our political system. If Democrats are not only to regain power, but to maintain it and govern in a fairer and more responsive fashion, they’ll need to unite behind root-and-branch reform. But the evidence suggests that Hoyer lacks the political vision, and the will, to do so.

Read the thing whole. Or whole the read thing. Whichever.