The book from which this op-ed is drawn has challenged me and how I think about the contemporary Congress consistently and significantly over the past several years. nytimes.com/2020/11/18/opi… I do think there are some places where the implications of differences between the parties could be explored more fully, especially in terms of how the current GOP agenda (tax cuts + judges) largely consists of things that can be done without having to overcome a filibuster.

Whether Congress should be in Washington and if not, exactly how it should be operating remotely, is a tricky question with lots of moving parts: member and staff health and safety, transparency, quality of deliberation, information security, family responsibilities—and more. But there’s a simmering undercurrent running under the debate: the pervasive sense that, even in a pandemic, members don’t want to be seen as having “gone Washington.”