Two years ago, a post-Bush Republican Party that couldn't find itself on Google Maps was thoroughly thrashed for the second time in as many elections. The GOP had lost over 50 House seats over two election cycles, scores of state legislative chambers, governorships, US Senate seats, and the presidency to a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.
The latter, something most observers thought wouldn't happen in the United States until some time between the next arrival of Haley's Comet and when Kevin Costner evolves into a fish-humanoid hybrid to live on an Earth covered by H20.
It's amazing what can happen, however, when you have a Democratic president who doesn't live up to many of his core progressive promises, who blames his base for asking him to, and whose communications people, to quote Democratic National Committeeman and CNN Contributor Robert Zimmerman, "... couldn't sell cocaine to Charlie Sheen."
The results were on display this past Tuesday, when an American public tired of being unemployed, scared about their future, and looking for some kind of leadership, handed over the US House - in stunning fashion - to a coterie of cranks who have to put corks on the end of their forks not to jab their own eyes while eating. Think Steve Martin's Ruprecht from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and you get the basic picture of some of the Tea Party proxies we elected to Congress last week.
So the word is that given a chance to really put the GOP on the spot - the chance to force a vote on extending only the middle-class tax cuts, forcing Republicans to vote no in order to save their beloved tax cuts for the rich - Democrats will ... punt.
Although the exact micro-mechanics are not clear to me--it looks like Senators who aren't on the line this year (Ben Nelson, perhaps?--he suggested paying for rich folks tax cuts with not-yet-spent stimulus funds) may well have been the key players in all this, the overall long-term dynamics are well-nigh impossible to ignore, and Congressional Blue Dogs could easily have pulled out of the nosedive well in advance if they'd had the least bit of inclination to do so.
They didn't. And, of course, they are likely to be the most vulnerable to defeat, on average, as the result of overall Democratic ineffectiveness, which they have largely contributed to, as well as this last-minute failure to take a defining stand.
No doubt there are myriad "good reasons" for this--their donor bases, their friends, their money-making career ambitions after leaving Congress, etc. But when push comes to shove it all basically comes down to this: they were less interested in winning as Democrats--their primary public identification--than they were in other things.
This is hardly news, of course. They've been doing this sort of thing since before they were even called "Blue Dogs". And what it simply means is that they are more defined by hatred for other Democrats than they are by anything that should bind them together.
But what struck me at this particular time was the parallel between their thinking on the right and the thinking on the left we've seen expressed here lately by some folks who seemingly would rather see the Democrats defeated this election, to punish them, regardless of what happens to the nation as a response.
Now, I don't want to put myself in the position of making any specific accusations--particularly since (A) I generally find these sorts of "both sides do it" arguments to be both lazy and sloppy as well as pernicious and (B) I'd rather be proven wrong. So I'd like to hear from people who are not inclined to support Democrats right now (not just folks like me who are highly critical of them, as I am) and I'd like to hear them explain to me how they are not like mirror images of the Blue Dogs.
I'd really like to know how they see things differently than that. How is your hatred of Blue Dogs (and other Dems as well, from what I've heard) and willingness to see Dems defeated this year not a mirror image of the Blue Dogs, and how is this not a contest to see who's hatred is stronger?
An article in The Hill this morning claims that the U.S. is standing practically alone among G-20 nations in fighting "austerity" and promoting new spending to break out of the economic crisis.
The idea that the U.S. Is fighting austerity is preposterous. Here is what is actually happening in U.S. policy right now:
Democratic leaders in the Senate have apparently failed to win enough support to overcome a Republican filibuster of a bill to help the poor, the old and the jobless, despite making a series of cuts to the measure over the past several weeks to appease deficit hawks.
"It looks like we're going to come up short," said a senior Democratic aide on Wednesday evening.
The leader of the Obama administration's "deficit commission" is pushing zombie lies on social Security's supposed bankruptcy, and openly talking about how Social Security's funding has already been spent. From everything I have heard, even from the center-left members of the commission, the final report will recommend cuts to entitlement programs.
How all of this adds up to the U.S. fighting austerity and promoting spending is beyond me. Public policy in the United States has been captured by the forces of austerity, too.
Harold Meyerson, writing in the WaPo, has a great piece today that accentuates a drumbeat we've been beating here at OpenLeft. A few weeks ago, Chris wrote in response to Blue Dogs winning a "victory" in taking down a jobs bill:
This is only a victory if self-immolation is considered a victory. Consider:
1. Blue Dogs slash aid to states;
2. In response, states will engage in massive layoffs of public sector workers;
3. These layoffs will exacerbate an already dismal employment picture;
4. Voters will likely turn against Democrats as a result;
5. More Democrats in vulnerable seats will lose re-election;
6. Blue Dogs are disproportionately from vulnerable seats.
So yes, truly a big victory for the blue Dogs. They managed to reduce their own chances of re-election. Awesome!
Apparently various Senators have the same theory on jobs:
1. More unemployment
2. ?
3. The deficit is reduced!
Not to mention:
4. Get re-elected by my still-unemployed constituents who are happy I prioritize the deficit over their economic well-being! Woo!
Meyerson nails it:
Earlier this year the Blue Dogs, and many other Democrats, were saying they would welcome an end to the debate over health-care reform so they could turn their attention to jobs, jobs, jobs. But now that President Obama and Democratic legislative leaders have done that, the Blue Dogs have largely turned skittish.
Efforts by the leaders in both houses to pass bills that would save the jobs of teachers and police officers, maintain states' ability to make Medicaid payments and extend unemployment insurance have hit not only the expected bumps in the road (unified Republican opposition) but also fresh potholes: Blue Dog resistance to countercyclical spending.
[...]
Until recently, virtually every Democratic member of Congress could be counted on to support some level of countercyclical spending. That was one of the basic ways Democrats distinguished themselves from the laissez-faire right. But today, the Blue Dogs insist on offsetting stimulus with cuts, which can create a self-negating position. Suppose you vote for a stimulus that enables the states to save teachers' jobs, while offsetting that expenditure at the federal level by reducing spending on, and jobs in, building rail lines. In aggregate economic terms, you may well have zeroed out the net effect of your action. It's hard to believe that anyone ran for office to craft such exquisitely balanced nullities.
The problem here is that the Blue Dogs, like much of the public, conflate the issues of the nation's long-term fiscal sustainability with the short-term deficits created by the worst downturn since the '30s. Thus the Democratic imperative of creating jobs in 2009 became, earlier this year, one of creating jobs and reducing the deficit, and now, for some Blue Dogs, has become chiefly one of reducing the deficit. In polls, meanwhile, the public rates "jobs" as its chief concern, with the deficit lagging far behind. But because this recession is deeper and longer than any since the '30s; because the job-creating component of the first stimulus, while considerable, was clearly too small; and because the administration did not concentrate those jobs in visible agencies, as Franklin Roosevelt did in the Works Progress Administration, only a minority of Americans credit the stimulus with saving or creating jobs. For millions of Americans, concern over the deficit is at least partly a concern over the government's broader inability, as yet, to "fix" the economy. Reducing the deficit now, however, will make the economy worse.
Yet the Blue Dogs' short-term deficit hawkery is more than bad economics. It's bad politics, too. Even pragmatic centrists -- especially pragmatic centrists -- have to be in favor of something. The Blue Dogs don't seem to know what exactly that might be.
What interests me most about this is that there are two routes to defeating Blue Dogs- one is, as Chris described this morning, through increased progressive base performance in primaries. The other is, as I suspect will be the case for many Blue Dogs this cycle, going down at the hands of a Republican. As is the custom in electoral world, lots of political groups, pundits, strategists, etc. do "why what happened on Election Day happened" post-election op-eds and strategy memos. There is an opportunity here to link unemployment and electoral performance, along with potential exit polling demonstrating that among those who voted against the Blue Dog, the #1 reason was jobs, in making a case that Blue Dogs spelled their own electoral defeat here. In fact, that would be pretty useful and timely right now.
Legislative battles on big, complicated bills are like the huge wartime battles you read about in books, although usually there's less actual physical violence (psychological violence, financial violence, the death of truth, the death of souls? Oh yes, all that- but generally not actual physical violence).
The armies of the big bankers surged forward in the middle of last week, and from everything I have heard and could tell, were about to sweep away most of the remaining reforms progressives have been fighting. But give our side some credit: there was a major pushback from Americans for Financial Reform, the AFL, SEIU, MoveOn, and other groups, and by Friday we had regained our traction and stopped the retreat. Because this is a conference committee it's hard to know what is real and what is not, but in spite of being outspent more than 500 to 1, our little band of guerrilla fighters is hanging in there.
We still don't know the fate of derivatives, the Volcker rule, or numerous other critically important parts of the legislation that relate to the size, power, and speculatory practices of the biggest banks. If this were a typical issue, the Blue Dog banking buddies, the Republicans in the Senate, and the pro-banker elements of the Obama White House would have already broken through our lines and forced retreat. But the public hates Wall Street, Democrats need the seal of approval of the reform groups in order to convince people they won something, and the Democrats also need a campaign issue in the fall, so there's a different dynamic. While some Senate Republicans are making threatening noises about a filibuster, and Blue Dogs are threatening to vote no on a final bill if their banker buddies aren't coddled, everyone knows that it will be very difficult politically to vote against the final financial reform bill. Republicans already tried to filibuster and had to fold in record time, so they don't want to go through that again. Anyone in conference or in the White House saying we have to make concessions to bankers because otherwise there will be a filibuster is saying it because they want to be in bed with the banks.
So we keep fighting back against wave after wave of bank money and all that it buys: lobbying, PR, advertising, campaign contributions, fake coalitions, bogus research, etc. But we seem to be winning a few. Main street businesses and consumers (who I am consulting on the side of) seem to be winning over the banks on the swipe fee issue- the compromise announced yesterday had a couple of concessions, but the language in the bill is pretty solid. The bill includes compromises that satisfied the state treasurers' concerns, making this a completely clear choice: bankers vs. Main street businesses and consumers. Should be pretty simple how a Democrat should vote. There is a last minute drive by the banks to gut the compromise, so we still have to hang on.
We lost having the financial products consumer agency completely independent, but the Federal Reserve has no power over its staff or regulatory power, and that's a big deal. The audit of the Federal Reserve seems to be an area in which we won most of what we wanted.
Just like a long, gory battle on the field of a war, every day feels like a year, and much of what we are fighting for could still get swept away. But the Democrats who are trying to do the right thing and have some political advantages they don't normally have, so even with 500 to 1 odds in terms of spending, we still are in the ball game in terms of getting some decent things done.
Let the conferees know where you stand, and if the bankers haven't stolen all your money yet, send some over to the folks at Americans for Financial Reform- they are doing a great job given the odds.
In what has to be the nail in the coffin for any form of second stimulus, House Appropriations chair David Obey is now looking to pay for a grant to state and local government prevent to teacher layoffs by taking money appropriated for other tasks in the original stimulus. The size of the grant has also been reduced from $23 billion to $10 billion:
Crossing a line they had hoped to avoid, Democrats are actively discussing cuts from White House priorities in last year's Recovery Act in order to come up with $10 billion to avert threatened layoffs of public school teachers next fall.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) outlined the options in a memo to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday, and while no details were released, President Barack Obama's long-term investment agenda would almost certainly be affected.(...)
At the same time, he has also scaled back his appetites. For example, his draft bill last month included $23 billion to help state and local education boards cope with budget cuts driven by the economic downturn. That has now been cut in half to about $10 billion.
Obey has been a stimulus champion from the start of this process, so his turn away from new appropriations to re-directing appropriations is significant. It also signals pretty much the complete victory of the Blue Dogs, even if that "victory" is a form of self-asphyxiation.
The last remaining shred of second stimulus that might get passed would the the economic relief bill (variously called the tax extenders and unemployment extension bill). The version that passed the house cost $113 billion, while the version currently being considered by the Senate is larger, at $140 billion (see here for details). Not too long ago, something in the neighborhood of $250 billion was a possibility, but once again conservatives seeem to have decided that wars are free, but health care for the poor, the unemployed, and the elderly is the greatest threat the nation faces.
Congress returns to session this week. In case you missed it, after passing Afghanistan war funding without battling an eyelash, last week Blue Dogs slashed an economic relief bill by nearly $100 billion. It was a glorious "victory" for them:
The Blue Dogs won a significant victory by forcing House Democratic leaders to cut $79 billion in spending, including subsidies to help laid-off workers buy health insurance and ease state budget cutbacks.
This is only a victory if self-immolation is considered a victory. Consider:
Blue Dogs slash aid to states;
In response, states will engage in massive layoffs of public sector workers;
These layoffs will exacerbate an already dismal employment picture;
Voters will likely turn against Democrats as a result;
More Democrats in vulnerable seats will lose re-election;
Blue Dogs are disproportionately from vulnerable seats.
So yes, truly a big victory for the blue Dogs. They managed to reduce their own chances of re-election. Awesome!
"We are hearing from the public, 'You're adding to the deficit, you're adding to the deficit,'" said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, a member of the conservative Blue Dogs who have held together against many proposals that require even more borrowing by the Treasury to pay for them.
Yeah, sure they are. That is why, when Americans are asked to list the biggest problem facing the country today, and are not prompted with a list of problems, only 5% cite the budget deficit:
CBS News/New York Times Poll. April 5-12, 2010. N=1,580 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
"What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Open-ended
Economy/Jobs: 49%
Health care: 8%
Budget deficit / National debt: 5%
Poverty / homelessness: 4%
War / Iraq / Afghanistan: 4%
Big government / bureaucracy: 2%
Moral values: 2%
Other: 21%
Unsure: 5%
The country cares a a lot more about jobs than about the deficit. So, naturally, to fulfill the will of the voters, Blue Dogs slash aid to states that will result in huge layoffs, all in the name of reducing the deficit.
Genius. The name "Blue Dog" derives from supposedly being choked blue by the left-wing of the party, but it seems to me that Blue Dogs are engaged in a self-asphyxiation right now.
The Blue Dogs have successfully watered down, and significantly delayed, the passage of the economic relief bill. It will not pass before recess:
The U.S. Senate will not take up a package of tax credits and federal-benefit-program extensions before lawmakers leave town for a one-week recess, a senior Democratic aide said Thursday.
The House may pass an extremely watered down version of the bill on Friday morning, before going on recess themselves. However, in the Senate, since Republicans will use procedural moves that would require 60-votes and at least four days to pass the bill, the Senate has just decided to call it off for the holiday. Harry Reid had planned to stay in session through the weekend to pass the bill, but that was back when the House was expected to pass the bill on Wednesday. At this point, even if the leadership had decided to stay in session through the holiday, only a couple of Democratic Senators would have had to skip town to make passage impossible.
This bill--which reportedly had enough votes for passage in the Senate--was intended as a $200 billion, second stimulus of sorts. Originally, it provided grants to states to help pay for Medicare and Medicaid, created six month extensions for unemployment and COBRA benefits, renewed several middle class and small business tax cuts, and infused the economy with needed infrastructure spending. It needed to be passed by June 2nd, too, when hundreds of thousands were set to lose unemployment and COBRA benefits, and when Medicare was set to cut payments to doctors by over 20%. Also, there is this little thing called the election coming up, too.
But, the Blue Dogs blew the whole thing up, even after the bill was watered down to $144 billion. The version they will vote on tomorrow is watered down even further, cutting $30 billion and ending COBRA altogether:
According to BusinessWeek, the original bill is being split into two separate bills, one that would extend unemployment benefits and one that would provide a 19-month reprieve for doctors from scheduled cuts in Medicare payments.
The House dropped the federal subsidy for COBRA health insurance all together. It won't be in either bill. That program, which helped unemployed people pay for health insurance, will lapse May 31.
This latest version of the bill is $30 billion cheaper and would add $60 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The House will vote on it tomorrow.
Splitting it into two bills will cause even more problems, as it will make the legislation take an even longer time to wind its way through the Senate.
When some version is eventually passed, it retroactively restore the benefits people lost. The delays and watering down of the package will, however, still cause a lot of damage. Its almost enough to make you want to see Blue Dogs lose, even if it meas Republicans take their seats:
"We just feel that these provisions warrant more scrutiny than they've received versus just putting them together in a broad package, no changes, no questions asked and asking us to vote for it," said Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D., S.D.). Ms. Herseth Sandlin is a leader of the Blue Dog Democrat Coalition, a group that advocates controlling government spending.
Nice. Herseth Sandlin's sanctimonious process whining is going to hurt hundreds of thousands of Americans really badly.
UpdateMitchell Hirsch says that Pelosi will bring the bill to a vote anyway tonight, and "members will have to decide whether they're with big business and the rich or American people." Doesn't sound like she knows if she has the votes, but is bringing the bill up anyway, because right now there is no other choice.
Since the House must pass a bill before the Senate can do anything, and since it could take up to four days for the Senate to pass a bill after the House does, it no longer looks like the bill will be passed before the June 2nd deadline for expiration of unemployment benefits and cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. Harry Reid had vowed to keep the Senate in session until the bill had passed, and Democrats claimed to have the votes in the Senate. However, now the talk is about adjourning with only a temporary extension to prevent the expiration of unemployment benefits and cuts in Medicare payments to doctors:
Without a bill from the House, Democrats said they would take a run at passing a temporary extension Thursday night after passing a supplemental war spending bill.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Senate leaders will shortly face an attendance problem as Senators jet home for the weeklong recess to campaign or meet with constituents.
"If we haven't received the extenders from the House or if we receive them and it's late, it's problematic. It's really difficult," Durbin said.
He added that the absence of Senators would make it difficult for leaders to muster the 60 votes needed to break an expected GOP-led filibuster of the extenders measure.
What a disaster. The Blue Dogs really fucked Dems--and themselves--on this one. This bill is the last chance Democrats in Congress have to pass legislation that can improve the economy before November. If the economy is still stagnant in November, the first Democrats to take the fall at the ballot box will be the same Blue Dogs who blocked this bill. Their right-wing intransigence is entirely self-defeating.
Hoping for a turnaround on this before the end of the day...
The Senate easily voted to end debate on supplemental war funding bill today, and the House is currently debating and voting on their version of the bill right now (the Don't Ask, Don't Tell vote will come during that debate). However, the House is still yet to take up the second of the two spending measures: the economic relief bill that will extend unemployment insurance, extend various tax breaks, provide for some infrastructure spending, and give grants to states to help them pay for Medicare and Medicaid.
"We're on the way" to having enough votes to pass the measure, said Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democrats' chief vote-counter. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asked whether the House will vote today, said, "I don't know about that; it depends how long" the House takes to act on a defense funding measure.
This is turning into a real struggle. There are even whispers that instead of passing the bill, the House will instead pass a continuing resolution instead (which would severely reduce the overall spending amounts in the bill). That is still unlikely, but I have heard it mentioned by a source on Capitol Hill.
The political calculus of the Blue Dogs who are refusing to vote for this bill is bewildering. Presumably, many are frightened that if they vote for this bill, then they will face Republican attack ads about voting to increase the deficit. However, it should be obvious to them that if they vote against the bill, they will face Republican attack ads about voting against Medicare spending and closing tax loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas. The latter attack ads sound a lot worse than being attacked over increasing the deficit.
Such ads may be cynical, given that almost every Republican will vote against this bill,but it won't stop Republican challengers from utilizing that rhetoric anyway. If Blue Dogs are looking to avoid political fallout in this vote, they are better off picking the poison of increasing the deficit than the poison of cutting Medicare and supporting companies that ship jobs overseas.
Democrats struggled Thursday to extend jobless benefits for people who have been out of work for long stretches as lawmakers worried about the growing budget deficit balked at a scaled down package.
House leaders had scheduled a vote Thursday on a bill that would extend the benefits through November, but they ran into opposition from Republicans and some Democrats concerned about the cost of the overall bill.
"They need to go back to the drawing board," said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, a member of the conservative Blue Dog coalition.
The fight in the House could extend into tomorrow. the continuing resolution, in lieu of a a bill, is a growing possibility.
Last week, two of the more conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives, Larry Kissell and Heath Shuler, faced surprisingly stiff primary challenges from candidates who raised literally no money:
On Tuesday in North Carolina, two Democratic House incumbents fared surprisingly poorly against left-wing primary challengers. From Public Policy Polling (emphasis mine):
The biggest story out of Tuesday's election results in North Carolina was not anything related to the US Senate race, but the surprisingly weak performances by Larry Kissell and Heath Shuler in their primaries. Kissell received 63% and Shuler only 62% against candidates who did not have the resources to mount really serious campaigns.
The poor performances by Kissell and Shuler and where they did poorly- the most liberal parts of their districts- are a clear indication that there is significant unhappiness with them on the left. The question now is how that unhappiness will manifest itself this fall.
These results suggest that there is a larger pool Democrats who are disgruntled at the incumbents in their own party than previously imagined. In fact, this pool of disgruntled Democrats might well be larger than the much more publicized tea party.
Over the past week, more evidence has appeared that the Democratic base is digusted with conservative Democratic incumbents. In Utah, conservative Democrat Jim Matheson has been forced into a primary challenge against a challenger who has raised less than 1% of his money:
It was a busy political convention weekend in Utah, with party activists feeling restless. Over on the Democratic side, five-term Rep. Jim Matheson was unable to reach 60% of the delegate vote at his party's convention, forcing him into a primary for his house seat against retired high school teacher and adjunct college instructor Claudia Wright. And all this in the same weekend that saw Utah GOPers unseat their own incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett.
Matheson took 55% of the vote to Wright's 45% -- a stunning position for a nine-year incumbent. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Democratic activists were put off by the Blue Dog Matheson's instances of voting against the Democratic legislative agenda, with his vote against the new health care reform law as one example.
"You're angry about some of my votes," Matheson told the convention, which responded with what the Tribune described as ironic applause. "But I'm a Democrat and I'm here to tell you I don't run from that label because it's in my blood."
This morning, a poll shows that Blue Dog Tim Holden is receiving a similarly cool reception from the Democratic voters in his district. A new poll shows him leading Shelia Dow Ford, who has all of $6,607 on hand, 54%-27%. It is pretty stunning that Holden can only get 54% support in this district, even though he has been in Congress for 18 years and is running against someone who basically does not have a campaign.
Taken together, these four campaigns show that there is very fertile ground for progressive primary challenges against Blue Dogs. The base is sick of conservative Democrats who vote with Republicans (all four have Progressive Punch scores under 50% on crucial votes in 2009-2010, and all four voted against the health care bill). This is even the case in red districts (all four of these districts have lean-Republican, or strong Republican, Cook Partisan Voting Indexes). All four of these incumbent Democrats are surrendering around 40% of the primary vote to candidates who have raised virtually no money and who are not even able to run real campaigns. Imagine what could have happened if they faced strong primary challenges.
Over at FDL, Jon Walker thinks that Republican Party is now the hotbed of insurgencies against the institutional status quo. Well, I think the House results listed above, combined with the unfolding results in the Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina Senate primaries, shows that there is as much, if not more, fertile ground for progressive primary challenges in the Democratic Party. Progressives are getting 35-40% of the vote for free against Blue Dogs. The key is just that we have to be targeting Democrats who have voted against the party's agenda from the right, rather than focusing on progressive Democrats for not bringing down the party's agenda because it wasn't progressive enough. Enough of the base is with us to win campaigns against the former, but not against the latter.
I am working on getting together some materials to help these primary challengers, and hope to launch a campaign to this effect later today. It is time for us to get into the fight. Stay tuned.
It is difficult to respond to Ron Fournier's "analysis" piece about both Democrats and Republicans abandoning "the middle" without just offering up a string of invectives about Fournier's complete absence of research and analytical skills. Here is the lead paragraph from the AP's Washington bureau chief:
Charlie Crist's departure from the Republican Party is not just a Florida story; it's an American story - a tale of two parties driven by their ideologues, squeezing out moderate candidates, alienating independent voters and isolating the place in U.S. politics where most things get done: the middle.
The entire proof that Fournier offers up for Democrats abandoning the middle is Ned Lamont's defeat of Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary. No joke--that is the only evidence he offers up in this "analysis" piece.
This might be because any analysis of the changing composition of Democratic members of Congress would have shown that the Democratic house caucus has actually moved noticeably to the right over the past six years. For example:
50 of 106 Democratic House members who are members of the Blue Dog coalition and / or New Democratic coalition were first elected in 2004 or later. Another, Baron Hill, was first elected in 1998, defeated in 2004, but re-elected in 2006
Of the 93 Democratic members of the House of Representatives who were first elected in 2004 or later, 51 are members of the Blue Dog Coalition and / or the New Democrat Coalition. Even if Andre Carson, Jared Polis, and Laura Richardson are removed from that list because they also joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and even if Baron Hill is removed because he first won a seat in Congress back in the 1998 elections, that still makes 47 out of 92, or a majority.
By comparison, of the 162 House Democrats who first won their seat in 2003 or earlier, only 55 are members of the Blue Dog Coalition and / or New Democrat coalition. That is only 34%, compared to 51% for Democrats first elected in 2004 or later.
The Democratic House caucus is moving to the right. Even leaving aside joining self-proclaimed "moderate" caucuses like the Blue Dogs and the New Dems, quite literally every ideological voting scorecard in existence will tell you that House Democrats with less seniority are further to the right of those with more seniority.
Further, conducting actual analysis of caucus memberships and voting records is not something Fournier was ever going to do himself. Even if Democrats were moving to the left--something that I have been unable to accomplish, despite my best efforts--Fournier isn't going delve into the research and facts necessary to prove it. Instead, he is just going to assert it is true, and then quote Pat Buchanan as supporting "evidence." (seriously) Hell, Fournier didn't even bother to prove that Republicans are moving to the right, even though that is actually something that is provable.
If you are going to write a piece claiming that both parties are abandoning the middle, then the least you should do is actually show that both parties are moving away from the middle. Fournier doesn't bother to do that, and focuses only on a couple of anecdotes in primaries to demonstrate his thesis. This is a pathetic amount of research for someone holding such a position of authority in our political discourse. Even freshman college students aren't allowed to get away with dreck like this. For Fournier to simultaneously complain in his piece that part of the problem in this country is that too many people are consuming news from media outlets where "facts are fungible" is the height of irony and lack of self-awareness.
In other words, is there room for moderate candidates and moderate voters in either party? #crist
Wow. Just, wow.
Amazing that the Washington bureau chief of the Associated Press can somehow forget that there are two large centrist caucuses of Democrats in both branches of Congress. First,, the self-described m"moderate" New Democrats boast over one in four Democrats in the House:
A July 2009 Press release described the organization as "the largest moderate coalition in the U.S. House of Representatives", announced the election of Representative Joseph Crowley (New York) as the Coalition's Chair and counted 68 Members in the House of Representatives
Then there are the Blue Dogs, who claim another 54 members in the House. Even though 16 of their members are also New Democrats, that still makes for 106 out of 254 House Democrats, or 42%, who self-identify with a Democratic caucus that is openly moderate. And this doesn't even count members like Chet Edwards, who is not a member of either group.
In the Senate, there are 16 members of Evan Bayh's moderate working group (the 15 listed in the link, plus Arlen Specter), and 14 New Democrats. Combined, there are 22 Democratic Senators who are members of at least one of those two self-identified "moderate" groups, or 37% of the entire Democratic Senate caucus.
All told, 41%, or 128 of 313, Democratic members of Congress belong to one of these self-identified "moderate" groups. But maybe Ron Fournier considers Blue Dogs to be flaming liberals.
In terms of voters, in 2009 fully 60% of self-identified Democrats identify as either "moderate" or "conservative," according to Gallup:
Further, also according to Gallup, 39% of self-identified moderates self-identify as Democrats, compared to only 24% as Republicans:
But, I guess those voters don't exist.
To claim that there are no moderates in the Democratic Party requires maintaining a remarkable amount of distance from the reality of the internal workings of the party. It also requires a health dose of bratty, whining petulance. Can Ron Fournier really believe, even as a deficit commission appointed by President Obama is underway, and even as virtually every piece of legislation Democrats try to move through Congress was basically photocopied from proposals by Third Way, that "moderation" is somehow not being served by the Democratic Party Washington, D.C.?
This goes hand in hand with Mary Landrieu's preposterous claim that progressive Senators, rather than groups of conservative Democrats, are really in charge of what sort of legislation moves through the Senate. The adolescent, divorced-from-reality, blame everyone else, cry baby, uber privileged mentality that is at the heart of contemporary American "moderation" is truly mind-blowing.
The three-way special election in Hawaii's 1st Congressional district (May 22nd) is neck and neck, with the more progressive candidate a bit behind Ed Case (a former Blue Dog member of Congress) and Charles Djou (the Republican candidate):
Right now, the race is close: according to a Democratic source, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has conducted an internal poll showing Case at 32%, Djou at 32%, Hanabusa at 27%, and 9% undecided.
Even though the DCCC is supporting Case, these numbers are believable. The only public poll on the campaign, taken back in January, suggested a close campaign, with Hanabusa slightly behind, based on the underlying favorable ratings:
The poll also asked voters whether they had favorable or unfavorable opinions of the candidates, with Case rating highest at 42 percent, followed by Djou at 37 percent and Hanabusa at 33 percent.
Hanabusa had the highest unfavorable rating, 27 percent, compared to 18 percent for each of her opponents.
These numbers implied, even three months ago, that Djou had a chance and Case had underlying strengths that would help him offset Hanabusa's strength among organized labor and local endorsements.
Unless the unfavorables for both Case and Djou are driven upward, it is going to be difficult for Hanabusa to win this campaign. As such, it is worth wondering whether a Djou victory is all that terrible.
The only reason Djou has a shot in this campaign is because of the unusual, three-way race. Thus, even if he wins next month, he will have extreme difficulty keeping the seat in November when he will have to face a single Democratic candidate. Democrats will get this seat back pretty quickly, and there won't be a single piece of legislation from May through November that will be imperiled by a Republican victory here.
By contrast, if Case wins the seat, it will be extremely difficult to ever oust a Blue Dog from this D +11 district. Successful primary challenges are few and far between, what with the difficulty of recruiting primary candidates, high incumbent name IDs, and the virtually the entire Democratic and advocacy group infrastructure lining up behind every Democratic incumbent. If Case wins this seat, good luck getting rid of him.
Some will point out other considerations, mainly the impact a Djou victory will have on other campaigns in terms of diverted resources spent winning back HI-01, and a negative media narrative. However, the media narrative for Democrats in 2010 already stinks, and a congressional campaign in HI-01 won't really ever suck up that many resources.
Is a Republican holding a seat for five and a half months worse than a Blue Dog holding a seat for a decade or more? The answer is yes, if a Blue Dog ends up replacing Djou in November anyway. If Djou can be replaced with a strong, progressive Democrat, then the answer is no.
Progressives should hope that Hanabusa pulls this one out, and not sweat the Case vs. Djou result that much. Arguably, it is better for them over the long-term if Djou wins (although that is not a certainty).
What is particularly irritating about crank complaints against "political polarization" is how utterly ineffective their proposed solutions to the "problem." The best available political science on the topic (PDF) suggests a major factor (the rise of a two-party system in the South) and a minor factor (increased income inequality):
Using National Election Study data from 1952 to 2000, we explore the relationship between income and voter partisan self-identification. We find that partisanship has become more stratified by income. We argue that this trend is largely the consequence of polarization of the parties on economic issues and the development of a two-party system in the South. The trend is much less a reflection of
increased economic inequality.
If the main cause for increased political polarization is the rise of a two-party system in the South, then a straightforward option to reduce polarization would be to entirely wipe out one of the two major parties in a large region of the country. I presume the pundits and pols who complain about polarization would not actually advocate for a one-party system in a large swath of the country (at least in public). Anyway, moving to a one-party system in one-third of the country is probably impossible anyway. As such, those complaining about this "problem" better get used to levels of polarization elevated above the 1932-1980 period indefinitely.
However, the secondary cause of political polarization, elevated income inequality, is actually a problem that many pundits and pols, including those in the center would desire to solve:
The problem is that both parties are not advocating for reduced income inequality. Barack Obama's call to "spread the wealth around" when he was a candidate became the most prominent attack ad used by John McCain in the 2008 campaign. This is some thick irony, given that John McCain has long been one of the favorites of anti-polarization pundits (McCain was the third most common guest on Sunday talk shows even before he ran for President in 2008) and anti-polarization pols, such as Joe Lieberman, who complain about political polarization.
To put it bluntly, the poster child for anti-polarization used an attack on the very concept of reducing income inequality as one of the main messaging points of his campaign, even though a reduction in income inequality is the only course of public policy that has been demonstrated to reduce political polarization.
In fact, one entire party isn't even advocating for reduced income inequality. The Blue Dogs, the exalted bearers of bi-partisan in the Democratic Party, prominently proclaim fiscal conservatism--which is largely synonymous with income inequality, and thus polarization--as their core value.
Until the cranks who complain about political polarization start actually advocating for a policy course that would reduce political polarization at its root cause--income inequality--then it is difficult to consider them anything except charlatans. Right now, most of the most prominent anti-polarization scolds take opposing a reduction in income inequality as their core value.
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