Congressman Bill Braley really wants to be the next Senator from Iowa. This won’t come as a newsflash to anybody who follows politics in the Hawkeye State, always in the eye of political watchers around the nation, and in fact he’s been gathering headlines while running up an early lead in fundraising. But given the rather conservative to small-L libertarian leanings of Iowa, one might wonder why it should be a given in the mind of the media hive that Bill is on some sort of glide path to victory there.

The Shutdown Monster has been allowing the tide to go out on a number of politicos, allowing us to see exactly who was or wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, and Congressman Braley is no exception on this front. When put to the task of identifying some of the horrors being inflicted upon Americans by this mess, Bill was quick to come up with an answer. He’s having to wash his own towels at the gym.

They must not have been down to the gym lately. There’s hardly anybody working down there. There’s no laundry service, so we’re doing our own laundry down there. And we pay a fee to belong to the House gym! So this is no different than if you’re working at an employer that offers a wellness program that you pay a fee to belong. That’s what we do there.

You may not often find yourself agreeing with Jimmy Kimmel, but even he couldn’t resist this.

That’s some serious pain that the wannabe Senator is suffering through, and he’s doing it all for you, people! Of course, if he really wanted to examine who is suffering under this fiasco, he might want to speak to some veterans.

The House already passed the Honoring Our Promise to America’s Veterans Act. One imagines that if Bruce Braley spent more time finding a way to get Harry Reid to allow a vote in the Senate on something of real value he might be taken more seriously, no? He wants to represent hundreds of thousands of veterans in Iowa if he’s elected to the upper chamber. Perhaps he can spend a bit more time working for those who have served our country and are currently being ignored and a bit less about the towel boy not showing up outside the showers.