The 10 Dumbest Congressional Caucuses — Ranked

Looks like those clowns in congress did it again.

Getty/Era of Benjamin Harrison, cartoon

It’s hard to say when it happened, exactly, but at a certain point in my life the word “caucus” lost its ability to paralyze me with hysterical sophomoric laughter. Sure, it still elicits a wry smirk out of me from time to time, but the poignant hilarity of the word — its sheer comedic value — has diminished considerably over the course of my depressing descent into ostensible adulthood in which I actually choose to listen to NPR programs that use the word “caucus,” rather than being forced to do so by my parents.

Imagine, then, my delight at discovering something almost as funny as the word caucus was to me in my precocious youth: a list of actual caucuses from last year’s 117th Congress.

To be clear, not all of these caucuses are funny — in fact, many of them are extremely serious and worthwhile. There are caucuses that focus on disease prevention, social justice, and a suite of other sincerely noble efforts. But peppered throughout this nearly fifty-page list of official, government-approved interest groups are some of the absolute dumbest affinity clubs I’ve ever seen. And I went to a state school.