| First, we know from their performance in the 110th that the leaderships are temperamentally highly risk averse.
This does not come about by chance: I've discussed before how, unlike the Gingrich GOP (almost all of whom could not remember being in the majority), the senior Congressional Dem roster regaining the majority in 07 were largely holdovers from the 103rd.
Thus, the 06 results weren't a revolution so much as a restoration. As if the GOP had merely been keeping the Dems' seats warm for them: the Dems were the once and future majority for whom the future had just arrived!
Second, these majorities, newly restored to their rightful places, are all the more anxious to cede none of their power and influence. They covet their own turf. They think they earned it; they kinda-sorta think they own it. (Forty unbroken years of House majority status gets you feeling that way.)
In the 110th, they've benefited (up till recently) from an extended honeymoon, in which lefties have only with great reluctance come to recognize that their expectations for the new majority (worked up (almost) as much by the word-spinning of Pelosi & Co as by personal digital stimulation) were doomed to remain unrealized.
A big Dem win in 08, however, would stimulate lefty expectations on an enormously greater scale. Guys like our own Three Musketeers would have an enhanced influence on other elements of party supporters because large majorities would appear to swathes of lefties as bringing some pretty radical policies within the realms of practical politics.
In such circumstances, the regulars on the Capitol would be bound to lose some influence over the party to the outside guys who were leading the charge to enact the sort of radical measures that divided government and tight majorities had previously made Cloud Cuckoo Land stuff.
The regulars won't like that one bit.
A month or two back, Chris flagged the theory of some theoretician or other that the leaders of an organization would prefer that organization to decline rather than share power with outsiders with the ability to make that organization prosperous.
The principle applies here with a vengeance.
Third, the existing Dem majorities would be terrified that, if they moved to enact radical policies, they would erode their financial base: with a small majority, large bundlers and PACs know that the menu will be reliable corporate welfare with ideological icing (Schiavo stuff for the GOP, minimum wage hikes for the Dems) that will titillate the majority's base without affecting the powers that be.
But a large majority trifecta would result in such immense pressure from the base - and not only bomb-throwers like Stoller (sense of humor check...) - that there would be no way that Dem Rolodexes wouldn't become pretty bare pretty soon.
(I'm not saying that would necessarily happen. But I'd be staggered to find that wasn't a widespread view among Dem incumbents.)
However - what happens when reality is restored, and the game returns (as surely it will) to tight majorities and a tight market for the favors of said big bundlers and PACs? I think Dems think they would be punished for going with the long-haired crowd, and they would rather not go there.
(Allied point: at least in recent years - as far back as the Open Secrets archive goes, at least - the Dems have got less than their fair share of contributions relative to their degree of control of the elements of the Federal elected branches.
Obviously, with a win in 08, the leaderships would be looking to move to eliminate that disparity. A big majority may, paradoxically, tend to put a crimp in that effort.)
Now, the idea that the leaderships would try to take care of these anxieties by partially throwing the election in some way, to keep their majorities down, is clearly ludicrous. Pretty much, they get the majorities (and WH mate) that they're given by Sixpack.
But - when it comes to their anxiety level, that only makes things worse! |
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