Yesterday I wrote about transpartisan opposition to the Van Hollen campaign finance bill written in response to the Citizens United decision. After some late-day maneuvering in which Van Hollen agreed to lower the exemption for political organizations to those with memberships over 500,000 instead of 1 million in response to objections that the bill exclusively favored the NRA, it turned out to not be enough, as Speaker Pelosi announced last night the bill would be pulled from the floor. It was scheduled for a House vote today. Politico:
Pelosi summoned the Blue Dogs and CBC to back-to-back meetings this afternoon, but was unable to overcome their opposition to the legislation. The Blue Dogs are concerned that opposition from the Chamber, National Federation of Independent Business, National Association of Realtors and other business groups will damage their reelection prospects in the fall.
The CBC, on the other hand, was unhappy about an exemption to the bill granted to the National Rifle Association agreed to by Van Hollen. While the exemption was later extended to other groups, the CBC remained concerned about the bill's potential impact on the NAACP and other progressive groups.
Democratic lawmakers were largely tight-lipped leaving Pelosi's office late Thursday afternoon, although it was clear that momentum was clearly building against a Friday vote.
By early evening, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-Md.) office formally announced that the vote had been canceled.
I had posed the question of whether pretty much every broad interest group across the ideological spectrum would be able to gin up enough opposition on the one side, with the NRA alone on the other in support of the bill. In this case, it turned out to be gun control proponents and Blue Dogs who allied to bring down the bill (at least temporarily). Groups ranging from Progress Now Colorado and the Sierra Club to the hospitals' association and Chamber of Commerce had publicly urged members to vote against the bill, and in the end, that helped make the difference.
Personally, I am happy, as a bill that gives more power to the already-too-powerful NRA was unacceptable. The bill was written to benefit one singular bad actor. I want a strong campaign finance bill but the playing field needs to be leveled.
It appears that Chris Van Hollen is putting himself up for caucus chair, taking the place of Rahm Emanuel should Rahm go to the White House and become White House Chief of Staff. I would very much like to see Van Hollen ascend the leadership ladder in the House, for two reasons.
One, at the DCCC, he was able to run the organization effectively and work very well with all types of groups. Operationally speaking, the committee basically did as well as it did in 2006, pushing into tougher districts and coming away with a respectable 20 seats or so (pending recounts, etc). Unlike in 2006, though, Van Hollen's DCCC was able to meld seemlessly with a whole variety of groups. There was no sniping at George Soros, Moveon, blogs, or liberals. His organization just worked, and worked well, with fewer stompings in primaries and nasty machismo bullshit.
Two, Van Hollen is a leader who I think will be more progressive than most of us realize. It's not just his policy positions, which are probably just borne of representing a liberal district, it's his instincts I respect. During the Donna Edwards primary, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer both endorsed Al Wynn. Van Hollen, from the neighboring district, did not. And in fact, many constituents in Wynn's district actually though that they were represented by Van Hollen, since the district lines had been recently redrawn, and they liked and respected him. Now, when Van Hollen sat this one out, it was a clear signal that he wasn't just going to protect one of the worst members of Congress, even though the rest of the Democratic leadership did.
This matters. Van Hollen refused to perpetuate business as usual, and we need more of that in the House. At the same time, he's an extremely effective organizer and operator within the caucus, as shown by his DCCC work, and he's got a savvy political sense.
From 2005-2006, we were treated to story after story after story on Rahm Emanuel, the tough talking cursing Chair of the DCCC who had taken on the impossible task of bringing the Democrats into the majority. Democrats ended up picking up more than 30 seats, and Emanuel got huge amounts of credit. These stories had lines in them like:
To those who expected a bragging pol, [Emanuel] was quite the subdued victor. He seemed peaceful -- as peaceful as a slow-moving shark.
I like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She's clearly brilliant and amazingly effective as a Congresswoman. I spoke with her on inauguration day in 2007, and it was striking that her daughter was wearing wheelies and playing around in the hall, and I just thought she looked like a well-adjusted and fun mother who also happened to be one of the most powerful young members of Congress. Here's what I wrote in February.
Tick tock. Every session two years of seniority (and age) are added to each House member. That's 435 members and 870 years. Last year saw the biggest switch in partisan affiliation since 1994 but with 30 retirements and lots more defeats the net effect was an increase of 159 years in seniority. What drives this?
The number one factor, of course, is the advantage that long term incumbents have at the ballot box. Both parties applied pressure and/or incentives to prevent retirements and both had at least some success. Last year most of the Democratic retirements and many of the Republican ones were by politicians seeking higher office. These are generally individuals with a low or moderate amount of House seniority (Jim Nussle and Bernie Sanders topped the list at 16 years each but the average was around 10 years for 16 members). This year, once more, longer term House members stay while relative youngsters like Heather Wilson (will be 10 years) and Steve Pearce (6) try to move on.
Republicans have provided more sticks than carots. They threatened to shut out lucrative lobbying positions and pleaded with veterans that they were needed to save control of the House. OTOH, Republican "term limits" for committee chair positions and emphasis/punishment on ideological purity tended to drive a few long term members into retirement.
"Rep. Artur Davis, desperate to become the next governor of Alabama, thinks sucking up to the current Republican one will help him," Moulitsas wrote Thursday.
"The Daily Kos is a group of people who don't understand and certainly don't represent Alabama values," Elons said. "So it's no surprise that they would say something as ridiculous as that." Corey Elons, press secretary for U.S. Rep. Artur Davis
There's a weird institutional isolation between activist liberals and the rest of the party establishment. Nothing illustrates that better than people like Artur Davis explicitly running against Daily Kos in his local paper. Artur Davis is one of those powerful figures you don't hear that much about. He's the recruitment chair of the DCCC, a self-described 'centrist', and a New Democrat. He voted for the Bankruptcy Bill and attacked Moveon for criticizing Democrats for voting wrong on the capitulation bill.
Davis's record suggests that he's both friendly to right-wing corporate interests and hostile to economic populism. He voted against net neutrality, introduced the failed free trade deal with the Bush administration and signed the letter to the Presidential candidates asking them to go on Fox News to debate. His foreign policy ideas veer to the neoconservative, as he won his seat in 2002 by beating Earl Hilliard on a pro-Israel platform in a majority minority district, sucking up huge sums of money from AIPAC and overwhelming Hilliard with negative TV ads. Davis is now one of the most AIPAC-friendly legislators out there, and a walking political lesson that it is a very bad idea to vote against a war with Iran. Davis is part of a conservative, business-friendly and AIPAC-friendly black elite political class emerging which gets its muscle from AIPAC and right-wing business interests (the same coalition who brought down Cynthia McKinney and put Hank Johnson in her place). I'm not defending McKinney or Hilliard, who I know very little about, but AIPAC really made its bones of late by destroying these two legislators. It was their primary campaign against their Joe Lieberman, as it were.
There's very little counter to the institutional vessels upon which Davis relies for power and support. He may run for Governor of Alabama, or Senator, though he'll probably get crushed in either contest as his local Chamber of Commerce supporters decide that, while a conservative Democrat is good for a Democratic district, Republican is better statewide. The problem here is deep, and points not just to elites like Davis but also to the extreme lack of political support for African-American progressive candidates. Progressives, and particularly liberal Jews, have a strategic interest in developing resource bases and strategies to help African-American progressives and counter the influence of AIPAC. I had hoped George Soros and Mort Halperin were going to do something, but that hasn't happened yet.
Anyway, Artur Davis is in charge of recruitment for the DCCC. Beware of treating that organization as anything but a vessel for the interests of someone like Davis. When really bad things happen in a Democratic Congress, this is one of the people to look to to tease out just what is going on internally.
Matt noted that Chris Van Hollen was upset by our campaign to target the Democrats who voted twice to fold to Bush, first on the war and then on FISA (dubbed by Matt and Chris the Bush Dogs). I understand the annoyance of Van Hollen on this, since he has only one job between now and election day in 2008, which is to elect more folks with a "D" behind their name - that's what DCCC chairs are judged on, pure and simple. And I'm a practical guy: at the end of the day I would sacrifice a ton to keep Democrats majorities in the House and Senate because the alternative is so much worse. But, I strongly support the Bush Dog campaign, and I want to make the case to my fellow insiders as to why this helps the Democratic Party rather than hurts it.
Here's my argument:
1. Every time the Democratic Congress caves to the president, it drives the Democratic Party's numbers down. Or have you noticed already? I hope so. You are being too clever by half with these votes, and it's not working. I know that a lot of your caucus members from purple and red districts are looking for political cover, but voters, activists and donors don't care about legislative subtleties when our side gets rolled. The Party doesn't get credit for the majority of the caucus that voted against Bush, all they know is that a Democratic-led Congress let Bush win again. Voters want to support Democrats, and they do support you when you oppose Bush, but, they have questions about your competence and toughness - and caving to Bush doesn't bolster that confidence.
2. Party discipline is a good thing. The leaders of the Democratic Party ought to support efforts to get more party discipline. I'm all for a big tent and all that, but to govern effectively with narrow margins, you have to have both carrots and sticks and not be afraid to play hardball. Both Reid and Pelosi have shown signs of this at times in terms of their inside maneuvering, but having folks outside of Capitol Hill swing a few sticks is good for you too.
3. A little pushback now could solve bigger problems later. If this kind of cave-in routine keeps happening, and nothing bad ever happens to the more conservative members of your caucus who are going astray, the anger is going to keep building. The result could be ugly in the middle of an election year. Consider strategies like our Bush Dog campaign as shots across the bow. If it helps your caucus members stand up to Bush, and stops this crap from happening again, then the festering anger coming from your base in the summer of 2007 gets better resolved by the 2008 election season, and folks will be united and happy when it really counts. But, if we don't raise the warning flag here and now, and your Bush Dogs keep hurting the entire Democratic Party by making us look weak and incompetent, then all hell will break loose at exactly the wrong time.
4. Great opportunity and great danger. Every poll I've seen shows that the Democratic Party is at a moment of great opportunity. Bush's failed presidency has convinced voters that if this is what it means to be conservative, then they consider themselves progressive. They are moving our way on issue after issue, and we clearly have the opportunity to build on the 2006 election results, and have an even bigger year in 2008. This is an opportunity of historic proportions.
But voters aren't sure what they think about us yet. And as far as I can tell, it's not because they are scared we will stand up to Bush, and go a dramatically different direction from him. What they are uncertain about, because we haven't governed in a while, is our basic competence: can we deliver? Are we strong enough to stand our ground and lead? If voters decide the answer to those questions is no, I fear that not only will we have blown a historic opportunity, but that we won't be getting them back again anytime soon. So here we are with both great opportunity and great danger staring us in the face, and it all comes down to whether we have the confidence and competence to stand up to Bush on the things that really matter.
So to my insider friends, I know the Bush Dog campaign seems a little cheeky, but my argument is that it's good for our Party and for our election prospects in 2008. I also think it is, as a matter of policy and principle, the right thing to do.
Well the idea for going after the Bush Dogs has gotten a bit of pickup in local press, even though we haven't yet gone forward with it. Here's DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen.
"Would you put a bit of money and effort to go after these wayward Democrats?" writes blogger Matt Stoller on Open Left. "We can't replace all of them with progressive Democrats, but we can certainly annoy at least a few of them and raise the costs for voting against the Constitution."
That would be liking shooting themselves in the foot, U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told us recently when asked about such groups upset with lawmakers like Carney.
Meanwhile, Congress wins just 18% positive approval from Democrats, while 80% of Dems give them negative marks for their performance so far. Republicans watching the performance of the Democratic-controlled Congress are more harsh - just 12% give it good marks, while 86% said they are doing only a "fair" or "poor" job in Washington. Political independents appear to agree with Republicans on this count - just 16% give Congress positive marks, while the balance give it a negative rating.
The public is mad at Democrats for caving to Bush. Check out these numbers from the approve/disapprove on whether Bush should have the power to wiretap the phone calls and emails of Americans without a search warrant from a judge. 60% of all voters, 77% of Democrats, 66% of Indepedents, and 36% of Republicans strongly disapproval, with another 12% overall giving a softer disapproval. Those are nearly Terri Schiavo numbers type numbers.
We wouldn't have to do this if Van Hollen, Hoyer, and Rahm could actually impose discipline on the Bush Dog Democrats they just got elected. Instead, it's pretty obvious that Pelosi has very little control over the House, and had to schedule a vote on FISA or she would face an open revolt. Worse yet, it's also obvious that Van Hollen doesn't care. He doesn't recognize we're trying to help him do a better job and work against the alienation most voters feel. I was pretty explicit that we are not going to try to primary these people, that's up to local Democrats. We are just offering criticism and a bit of political pressure for voting to shred the Constitution, which, incidentally, is probably a very stupid political move for the Democrats as a whole.
It's a good thing that Van Hollen is getting asked about this by the press. Next time there's a close vote, he'll have a stronger incentive to whip Bush Dogs more effectively.
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