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By David Hawkings Posted at 5 a.m. on Jan. 15

The debut of Pocan Magic Mondays. (Screenshot)

We got magic to do, just for you, we got foibles and fables to portray as we go along our way.

Lyrics from the opening song of the musical Pippin are as good a place as any to begin the story of a backbench junior Democrat with one of the more novel approaches to making his mark in the House.

In a political pond with 435 ambitious fish, every one of them is looking for some way to stand apart. The long-timers have the best chances of becoming legislative playmakers or fundraising powerhouses, while the freshmen can bank some on their inherent novelty. Its the members with tenure in the middle, and especially from the minority party, who have the biggest challenge getting noticed.

Consider the Democrats just starting their sophomore terms. Hawaiis Tulsi Gabbard has the whole Hindu-veteran-who-surfs thing going for her. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is a new mother and a severely wounded war hero. Californias Raul Ruiz keeps putting his emergency room training to work helping distressed airline passengers. John Delaney of Marylands $100 million investment banking fortune makes him third richest in Congress. Joseph P. Kennedy III of Massachusetts gets ample attention by virtue of his storied name alone. Texan Joaquin Castro has an identical twin who is Housing secretary. After them, the remaining 30 have more or less faded into the middle distance in the collective portrait of Congress.

This is where Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan and his penchant for prestidigitationcome in.

During 14 years as a state legislator in Wisconsin, he gained a reputation as one of the most influential Democrats in the Assembly, a committed yet companionable liberal who had a knack for getting along and forging compromise with Republicans. But in his first term in Washington, Pocans fruitless pursuit of progressive policies in a deeply conservative House resulted in a relatively miniscule footprint despite ending up with a pair of good committee assignments, Budget and Education and the Workforce.

(The closest he came to a national spotlight was a cringe-inducing appearance in June 2013 on The Colbert Reports Better Know a District segment, where host Stephen Colbert spent eight minutes trying to derive ironic or juvenile humor from Pocans standing as the first married gay man ever sent to Congress.)

Turns out, all the while the congressman had a few tricks up his sleeve quite literally for making a different name for himself. This month, now that hes safely ensconced (he took 68 percent last fall) in one of the countrys most liberal districts, centered on the leftist state capital of Madison, Pocan decided to try to make a splash with a talent hes been cultivating since he was a kid.

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Democrat Has Trick Up His Sleeve to Battle Irrelevance