Or, the difference between New Democrats and Blue Dogs revealed
The difference between a New Democrat and a Blue Dog Democrat is often hard to see for many people. This is because neither group has either a coherent list of policies and principles, and because their House caucuses share fifteen members.*
Today, President Obama and Senator Blanche Lincoln put that difference on display for the whole country to see.** Lincoln, who trails badly in her quixotic quest for re-election, had an illuminating back and forth with President Obama. In this discussion, Lincoln argued that Democrats just need to attack the left, look independent and bi-partisan, and maintain status quo policies (or, really whatever policies Republicans want). President Obama argued that Democrats need to scrap Republican policies, leverage the private sector to perform public services, and then attack the left.
Here is how Lincoln started her question:
LINCOLN: Mr. President, I come from a seventh-generation Arkansas family. My dad was a good Democrat, and he was a great Arkansan, and he was very typical of Arkansans in that he was very independent-minded, as am I, and as most of my constituents. And he used to tell me early on when I ran for Congress, he said it's really results that count. And as I look at what's going on in my state and among my constituents -- I visited with a constituent yesterday, good Democrat, small business owner, who was extremely frustrated -- extremely frustrated because there was a lack of certainty and predictability from his government for him to be able to run his businesses. He's -- he and his father have worked hard, they've built three or four different small businesses, and he fears that there's no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and have to make a payroll on Friday. He wants results. He wants predictability.
And I think that you're exactly right. People out there watching us, they see us nothing more than Democrats and Republicans up here fighting, fighting only to win a few political points, not to get the problem solved.
Lincoln's question is entirely about identity. Instead of policy, she mentions her family lineage. She notes how she is "independent minded." She talks about how people in the administration are unable to identify with specific experiences. She mentions how it is important to appear as though you are solving a problem, rather than appear as though you are fighting. The entire question is based on identity and image, excepting her insistence on "results" without ever defining what "results" actually mean. Even the one thing close to a specific that she offers, "predictability," essentially means no change to policy at all. The most predictable policies are the ones that never change.
For Lincoln, the problem Democrats have with voters is entirely born of identity and public persona. As such, her solution is also entirely based on image and identity. Just attack the left, and make it look like you are working with Republicans:
LINCOLN: [A]re we willing as Democrats not only to reach out to Republicans but to push back in our own party for people who want extremes, and look for the common ground that's going to get us the success that we need not only for our constituents but for our country in this global community, in this global economy? Are we willing as Democrats to also push back on our own party and look for that common ground that we need to work with Republicans and to get the answers?
Lincoln offers no policy solutions at all. In fact, she explicitly argues against any new policies, instead favoring "predictability." Keep all policies the same, attack the left in public, and get lots of photo-ops and co-sponsored bills with Republicans (bills that don't change any policy, of course). This is an identity-based ideology, just as Blue Dog-ism itself is an identity based ideology entirely about publically differentiating oneself from the left:
"Blue Dog Democrat" is derived from the term "Yellow Dog Democrat." Former Texas Democrat Rep. Pete Geren is credited for coining the term, explaining that the members had been "choked blue" by "extreme" Democrats from the left.
There are no policies here. There are no principles. Being a Blue Dog is just about appearing anti-left. That is the founding, essential tenet of Blue Dog philosophy.
With surprising forcefulness, President Obama responded to Senator Lincoln that reaching out to Republicans, and adopting their policies, isn't going to do any good for Democrats. This is because Republican policies have have failed, and caused real economic problems that are making voters angry:
OBAMA: Well, if the agenda -- if the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression -- we don't tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don't put in place any insurance reforms, we don't mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they're doing now because we don't want to stir up Wall Street -- the result is going to be the same.
I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policies that got us into this fix in the first place.
Here we have the first key difference between New Dems and Blue Dogs. While Blanche Lincoln and Blue Dog-ism are only concerned with making it look like she is fighting against the left and working with Republicans in an "independent" fashion, President Obama believes the problem facing the country is based the failure Republican policies to solve economic problems. Look at how Obama lists numerous, specific problems is a way quite divergent from Lincoln's vague, identity-based question (emphasis mine):
OBAMA: Part of the reason people are feeling anxious right now, it's not just because of this current crisis -- they've been going through this for 10 years. They've been working and not seeing a raise. Their costs have been going up, their spouses going to the workforce -- they work as hard as they can. They're barely keeping their heads above water. They're trying to figure out how to retire. They're seeing more and more of their costs on health care dumped in their lap. College tuition skyrockets.
They are more and more vulnerable, and they have been for the last decade, treading water. And if our response ends up being, because we don't want to -- we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don't know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.
While Lincoln sees the problem as one of identity, Obama sees people facing specific economic difficulties caused by conservative policies. Ed Kilgore brilliantly articulated how President Obama specifically, and Third Way / New Democrat / neoliberal philosophy generally, deviates from contemporary American conservatism philosophy:
To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, "New Democrat" movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as "the Third Way," which often defended the use of private means for public ends. (It's also arguably central to the American liberal tradition going back to Woodrow Wilson, and is even evident in parts of the New Deal and Great Society initiatives alongside elements of the "social democratic" tradition, which is characterized by support for publicly operated programs in key areas).
To be clear, this is not the same as the conservative "privatization" strategy, which simply devolves public responsibilities to private entities without much in the way of regulation. In education policy, to cite one example, New Democrats (and the Obama administration) have championed charter public schools, which are highly regulated but privately operated schools that receive public funds in exchange for successful performance of publicly-defined tasks. Conservatives have typically called for private-school vouchers, which simply shift public funds to private schools more or less unconditionally, on the theory that they know best how to educate children.
Beyond education, this is a pattern in all major Obama administration polices. Cap and trade is an attempt to leverage the market to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on, and creating a marketplace for, carbon. Mandated private health insurance with regulation and subsidies is an attempt to create increased health insurance coverage without an expansion of public sector insurance. Purchasing toxic assets from Wall Street is an attempt to fix the broken credit market without nationalization of the financial sector.
President Obama believes that Democrats can do better with voters by moving away from conservative policies, and adopting Third Way policies that will ease several, specific, economic difficulties that people face. This is far more substantive than Blanche Lincoln's plan to change no policies, and just adopt a more overtly anti-left, "independent-minded," bi-partisan image.
There is, however, one area where Blue Dog-ism and New Democrat-ism share common ground: they both view attacking the left in public as a necessity. More from President Obama's answer to Lincoln:
OBAMA: So the point I'm making -- and Blanche is exactly right -- we've got to be non-ideological about our approach to these things. We've got to make sure that our party understands that, like it or not, we have to have a financial system that is healthy and functioning, so we can't be demonizing every bank out there. We've got to be the party of business, small business and large business, because they produce jobs. We've got to be in favor of competition and exports and trade. We don't want to be looking backwards. We can't just go back to the New Deal and try to grab all the same policies of the 1930s and think somehow they'd work in the 21st century.
So Blanche is exactly right that sometimes we get ideologically bogged down. I just want to find out what works, and I know you do, too, and I know the people in Arkansas do, too.
President Obama wants to find out what works, rather than clinging to the 1930's. That is why he hired Larry Summers, who praised the overhaul of New Deal financial regulations in 1999 thusly:
"Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers said
We all know that scrapping those 1930's policies package worked out so well, and that President Obama made Larry Summers the head of National Economic Council. As such, we can have faith that President Obama did this based on the smashing success of ditching 1930's regulations, and not because, unlike the left, President Obama is taking an ideological position on business.
No matter what President Obama says, his beliefs in this regard are ideological, and not just based in finding what works. For example, even when scrapping New Deal era policies resulted in a massive financial crisis, President Obama still argues that we must scrap New Deal policies. Additionally, in the midst of a financial crisis at least partially caused by scrapping those policies, President Obama hires Larry Summers, one of the chief proponents of scrapping New Deal era regulations. That is quite the opposite of just looking for what works. Larry Summers, and the regulations he championed back in 1999, were complete failures.
As a New Democrat, President Obama disagrees with Blanche Lincoln about the problems Democrats face with voters. Rather than simply being an identity / image problem, he sees specific economic frustrations people face that can be fixed by adopting a different set of policies from conservatives. Generally speaking, those policies can be described as using regulation and subsidies--often written in coordination with the business community--to get the private sector to perform public services.
In a nutshell, the difference between Blue Dogs and New Democrats is a primarily identity based centrism, versus a primarily policy-based centrism. Blue Dogs are primarily concerned with looking anti-left, independent and bipartisan. New Democrats actually believes in neoliberal, Third Way economic policies (and also tend to be socially liberal). It is worth noting that, in terms of actual voting habits, the group that is more concerned with image (Blue Dogs) ends up voting much more right-wing than the group that is actually centrist (New Democrats).
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* = Overall, there are 39 House members who are Blue Dogs but not New Dems, 15 who are both, and 52 who are New Dems who are not Blue Dogs. Additionally, there are 81 full voting members of the Progressive Caucus, four of whom are also New Dems.
** = While there is no Blue Dog caucus in the Senate, both generally and in her specific comments quoted above, Blanche Lincoln is still an excellent example of the legislative and media philosophy of the group. Also, while President Obama never joined the New Democrats while he was in the Senate (they do have a Senate caucus, of which Blanche Lincoln is a member), he did describe himself as a New Democrat last year.
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