What’s an Unemployed Washington Democrat to Do?

by Andrew January 10, 2017, 9:48 pm 146 Comments

According to a (very sad) story in Politico, a whole mess of Washington Democrats are worried about their employment prospects after Barack Obama leaves office next week. As the website puts it: “There’s rarely been less demand for their services.”

From Politico:

The Trump tornado is tearing up post-election planning around the Beltway. It’s not just that those 4,000 administration jobs are no longer available to Hillary for America alumni, or that failed Senate candidates like Russ Feingold and Katie McGinty won’t be able to hire their staff on the Hill. There are also the lobbying firms, trade associations and corporate government affairs offices that are pitching senior Obama aides’ resumes into the round file while scrambling to hire operatives with Republican connections.

The site spoke to Mira Patel, who followed Hillary Clinton from the Senate to the State Department and all the way through to her campaign. Suffice to say, there aren’t many Washington firms interested in snapping up her services.

“It feels like there are just thousands of us trying to find a job, and there are no jobs,” said Patel.

Politico notes that this phenomenon isn’t unique to the outgoing Democrats; indeed, Republican staffers faced their own employment rout when Obama took over for George W. Bush. But they say Obama and Clinton aides are finding it especially tough to find work because few in Washington expected the election to turn out as it did.

“People are in shock,” Anastasia Kessler-Dellaccio told the site. She left her job to run Foreign Policy Professionals for Clinton and is now scrambling to find purchase. “I think people, myself included, are trying to figure out, ‘How do I recalibrate my dreams?’”

So sad.

Patel said she had been warned for years not to get too comfortable with Obama running the show.

“Never count on a Democratic administration,” Patel said, recalling the warnings. “I was like, ‘Oh, come on, this is gonna be great.’”

Never count on a Democratic administration. That’s more than just good advice for Obama staffers, that’s good advice for every American voter.