It’s been ten years since the historic winter of 2010. Much has changed since then. Now seems like a good time to look back and see if there’s anything left to learn from what happened.
It all started with the snowstorms that hit the east coast of the United States in February. The most snow Washington, D.C. ever got in one month before then was 35.2 inches in 1899. In one week in 2010, two large storms dumped as much as 52 inches of snow on the city.
Blizzard conditions were so bad at times that snowplowing and repair operations were suspended, leaving many people stranded and without power.
People called the unexpected weather Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon.
Then things got worse.
So much snow fell by the end of the month that most people today don’t remember those first two storms. The third storm is the one people talk about when they talk about the winter of 2010.
Anyone who could get out of the city, did. All non-essential workers were told to stay inside, and not to risk travel.
As the snow piled up, one hundred of those non-essential workers found that they were trapped together in their place of work. They had not been paying attention to the growing crisis, or that everyone else had left. The first sign of trouble came when one of them got up to go home.
Senator Evan Bayh had announced only days earlier that he was retiring and would not seek re-election because he was fed up with the partisan politics that had frozen the Senate and made it incapable of passing even basic legislation.
When he saw that there was over six feet of snow just outside the doors of the Capitol Building, Bayh was stunned. He reached for his Blackberry. There were three things on his mind:
- I should call a press conference immediately, to tell my constituents that I am aware of this problem;
- I’ll have to fire my aide (after he sets up the press conference and gets me safely home), because he should have warned me about this;
- Why didn’t I go rogue like Palin and walk away early, instead of sticking around to finish my term?
Bayh’s Blackberry didn’t have a signal but he stood there and kept dialing for half an hour. He was eventually joined by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Reid took one look outside and asked Bayh whether he would support a motion to adjourn. Bayh wondered whether there were enough votes for it to pass.
“There’s only one way to find out.” Reid reached for his cell phone. “We’ll float the idea through the press.” But Reid also had no luck getting a signal.
“What’s going on out here?” It was the Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell.
“Look at this,” Bayh said, ignoring Reid’s signal to keep the Republican in the dark. Bayh opened the door and showed McConnell the wall of snow.
“I suppose you’re going to blame that on us, too,” McConnell chuckled. “So much for global warming.”
“I think we should adjourn,” Reid said.
“No way,” McConnell shot back.
The rest of the Senate was told about the situation. Joe Lieberman suggested an emergency bailout plan. “Last week a container ship carrying snow shovels hit an iceberg in the Potomac. We should rescue it,” Lieberman said.
When asked what the snow shovels were doing on a container ship, Lieberman had to explain his connection to the CEO of the company that made those shovels in a factory in China. Then he said he was against the bailout anyway.
“I happen to know someone who makes those shovels right here in the USA, in Texas,” John Cornyn shouted.
But John McCain asked whether there were any illegal immigrants working in that factory.
Secretly, McCain wondered which of his fellow senators would break first. With the rest of the building empty there would be no one to feed them. He could feel the chill creeping in as the heating systems failed. But he suspected that the absence of lobbyists to tell them what to do, and no way to appear on a TV or radio show, would be what hurt the worst. He knew that would be his own personal challenge.
“Look, this is a shovel-ready project. And I just happened to find a dozen snow shovels in the basement,” Chuck Schumer said. “I move that we take turns and dig our way out.”
“What, all of us? That’s socialism!” Jim DeMint yelled. “The Republicans won’t vote for it, so you can’t pass it.”
“Well, it’ll be 59-41,” Reid said. “All we need is 51 votes.”
“We’ll filibuster. You can’t get cloture without 60 votes.”
“Well… we’re stuck here otherwise…” Reid said.
And so they did. Filibuster, that is.
They started by taking turns reading shorter documents, like the Constitution. They worked their way up through some recent bills, thousands of pages that confused them, that when read aloud didn’t make sense. At first it was just Republicans, but then Democrats joined in. Sometimes, they didn’t read; they talked. They taught themselves to cook and clean and get along.
They kept warm by burning some of the bigger bills.
The rest of the nation was busy with its own problems, didn’t expect their help, and didn’t notice they were missing. Finally, the food started to run out.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Reid said. McConnell nodded.
“I’d support that,” he said. “But first, let’s see what else we could do.”
“How about we start with that idea that any bank that’s too big to fail is too big to exist?” someone shouted.
There was a chorus of cheers. Bipartisan cheers.
Looking back, it seems so simple. But it was also too late. Americans were too angry, and recent changes to election law allowed corporations to spend freely in political campaigns. The mid-term election of 2010 swept in a group of reactionaries and Wall Street puppets, and things fell apart from there.
So think about what could have been as you wait for this year’s Summer Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.