House Majority Leader Boehner's Legal Campaign To Destroy Rep. Jim McDermott...

The Stranger ELI SANDERS May 18, 2006 at 01:34 PM
READ MORE: 2006, 9/11

It is spring in Washington, D.C., the air already hinting at the sticky summer humidity to come. Around the Congressional office buildings, aides scurry about in newly dusted-off seersucker. And in a crosswalk on Independence Avenue, Seattle's long-serving Democratic Congressman, Jim McDermott, is hurrying toward a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

He is wearing, as he often does, his "Save the Children" tie, red and printed with rows of happy multicultural kids holding hands, an almost too-perfect accoutrement for the man widely regarded, and reviled, as one of the most liberal members of Congress. Over his nine consecutive terms representing Seattle's ultraprogressive 7th District, McDermott has used the platform of his safe seat to become a national voice of the uncompromising left--the guy Michael Moore turned to for quotes about Republican fear-mongering in Fahrenheit 9/11, the guy who flew to Baghdad in 2002 and predicted that President Bush would "mislead the American public" into war.

His outspokenness, particularly about the war, has made him a popular national figure among Democrats.

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