I applaud your introspection and candor in both making and justifying this precedent-setting decision. But allow me to debate you on one point: executive overreach. From my perspective, George W. Bush tended to use his executive authority (and especially signing statements) preemptively — to justify his policies and actions before asking others for an opinion he thought (or had reason to believe) would contradict them. Obama used his executive authority not to preempt, but as a last resort; to take some action when years-long inaction in Congress created a situation that was as intolerable as it was intractable. Amazingly enough, even the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, weighed in on the utter dysfunction of Congress, by finding that despite a 2006 re-authorization voted 98–0 in the Senate and 390–33 in the House, key provisions of the law should be struck down because these two chambers could not be trusted to vote properly. Thus, even when they were passing legislation, they were ineffective. And of course we all know how much they have abdicated their responsibilities in terms of passing budgets and fulfilling their other constitutional obligations.

I would argue that the dangers you fear of executive overreach are actually a symptom of legislative under-reach. That is not to say that I encourage the Congress to pass every stupid law that pops into one of their heads. But I do believe that the commitment of Republican leadership to block and thwart President Obama at every conceivable turn, regardless of the merits of his agenda, has done damage not only to the executive and legislative branches, but it has held us back in basic economic terms. The decay of our infrastructure is accelerating because it is past the point of breaking, and the Republican party does not want to give President Obama the appearance of victory by funding the construction projects needed to fix it.

I therefore propose that instead of blinding endorsing members who will continue this bad behavior in the Legislature, that you consider endorsing those candidates who can provide enough consensus and common sense to actually make progress these next four years, rather than making them effectively another 4-year-long economic time-out.