There are a few headlines trying desperately to portray some sense of major conflict between House Democrats and the Obama administration on the budget. The attempted narrative is to portray Democrats as conservatives reacting against excess spending from the Obama administration. For example, here is how the Washington Post describes it in their headline:
House Democrats Slash More Than $100B From Obama's Plan
However, this is a really flimsy, concern troll narrative. Once you read further, all indications are that the House blueprint has actually increased non-bailout public spending, yet still reduced deficit projections and the possibility for conflict over, President Obama's budget. In the extended entry, I explain how
Already upset with Rep. Ellision over his taking a position as vice chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus, conservatives call on the Muslim community to campaign against Ellision and Carson in 2010. "Kucinich and Ron Paul's comments were sadly much more Muslim than anything our own Muslims are capable of."
On January 9th, the House voted on Resolution 34, supporting Israel's current action in Gaza. Rep. Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, the first and second Muslim American congressional reps. in US history, voted "present" and in support of the bill. The following is an excerpt from a post at Muslimmatters.org, a well-known religiously conservative Muslim blog. It's representative of other mainstream conservative Muslim bloggers' response to the House vote. Remember that religiously conservative Muslims strongly disapprove of participating in politics, so their "buy in" and participation in the November elections was unprecedented. Many voted and contributed money for the first time.
As political support unravels for Muslim Democratic congressmen and as segments of the Muslim community vow to disengage and walk away from the democratic political process, consider this a case study of how the larger Muslim world is being radicalized by Israel's current violence in Gaza.
The question arises though - where were our Muslim congressmen?! Should our own brothers not be at the forefront in speaking out against this massacre? Speaking in support of their brothers and sisters who are falling victim to an act of oppression which is something no less than fully-fledged ethnic cleansing?
Andre Carson voted for the resolution. Meaning, he pledged his support for Israel and the furthering of their "Jewish Democratic" state through the invasion and genocide of innocent Muslims in Palestine.
Keith Ellison gave his implicit support for it, by refusing to speak against it. We are not asking him to change the world, but is it really too much to ask that as a Muslim, you have the courage to take a stand against a massacre of Muslims? Is it too much to ask that you at the least simply echo and support the statements made by some of your fellow Congressman? Do you seriously believe Israel was in the right?
It is troubling that a Muslim congressman can be so clueless about international politics. Does he really believe what he said about Israel? This is either deceit, or the height of ignorance - unacceptable either way for someone in this field, and representing the Muslim community of America. While it is true he was elected in Minnesota, he did raise funds from Muslim communities all over the country, making us believe this would make a positive difference and represent our interests.
The basic premise of Muslim involvement in these arenas predicated on the belief that we knew the system was wrong. We knew that there are many things in politics that go against our religious principles. But we have tried to take a mature stance at objectively analyzing what we can do to avert the greater evil in favor of the lesser one. Have many Muslims lost sight of that? Definitely. Many who were more enthusiastic were often given a free pass because of progress that was being made. After all, we had a Muslim in Congress now. We can make strides in defending the civil liberties of American Muslims.
It was in that vein that many of us remained silent, when our first Muslim Congressman was chosen to be the Vice chair of a Gay Rights Committee. We were uncomfortable with this as Islam's stance on homosexuality is crystal clear. However, many tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, and try to take a more 'mature' understanding that this was part of working with the system. He was making some compromises en route to achieving what we were hoping would ultimately be the greater good for the Muslim community.
Fast forward now to the recent crisis that began a few weeks ago. When it comes to Muslim issues, there is definitely a list of priorities. As a Muslim, I find it hard to place many things above an all out massacre of innocent civilians. While no one is naive enough to think that 2 Muslim congressmen will be able to put through a bill that will result in a sudden reversal of foreign policy, we do expect them to at least take a symbolic stand when afforded the opportunity.
Let's make one thing clear: No one is denying that a Muslim congressman undoubtedly faces an undue amount of pressure, probably more than most other politicians - both within the Muslim community and the microscope outside of it.
The question that I have though, is at what point do we simply say that if this is the net result of working with the system, then it's not worth it?
What is even most perplexing is that we are not asking Ellison or Carson to do something unreasonable! Kucinich and Ron Paul's comments were sadly much more Muslim than anything our own Muslims are capable of. Could Ellison not echo those same sentiments from his fellow colleagues?
If they cannot take even a symbolic stand against genocide, then there is really no hope for anything else after that.
It is seriously time that we re-evaluate our strategy on these issues. What is the real end game here? I do not disagree with the theory of making our voices and concerns heard, I am questioning the manner in which we do it, and the extreme to which we have gone. Is there benefit of working with a system in which Muslims, when finally making it to the stage, cannot stand up for what is important to us?
The Western Muslim society has slowly been getting more and more politically active (and savvy). While I do not discount political participation en masse, I feel that we have lost sight of what I understand to be our initial intention in getting involved - averting greater harms to our community.
As for those who believe that this stance is too harsh, and that trashing the system is 'throwing the baby out with the bath-water' - then I say this. If you still believe that this engagement is the proper course of action, then I ask what could have possibly motivated these Congressmen to favor Israel (one explicitly, and one implicitly)?
If it is really a case of "bad apples" and not a shortcoming with the system, then I challenge you and all the politically active Muslim organizations who backed Ellison with this: Send out emails on your email lists expressing your disapproval of what they did, in the same way that you previously encouraged people to support them. If you are a true believer in "writing your Congressman" and civic engagement - then write to Ellison, and these Muslim organizations. Let them know that you will not only refuse to re-elect them, but you will campaign against them because of this travesty.
On top of all this, what really bothers me about the story is that Obama's quote was intentionally leaked, out of context, to a hostile reporter with the intention of damaging Obama. And it must have been done by a Democratic House staff member, since the meeting was closed door, there was no media, and no video of the event exists.
Anonymous Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill have long been used by the media to attack liberals and progressives in the caucus and the party infrastructure. In this case, one was used to attack the Democratic presidential nominee according to the exact "arrogant" narrative that the McCain campaign and the Republican Noise Machine are trying to use. As such, it is probably the most vicious use of the anonymous Hill staff leak imaginable.
Someone needs to pay for this one. I would recommend leaking a series of faulty tips to a wide range of staff members, making sure that each false leak is different. When one appears in the media, make sure that person is fired. In fact, it might be a good idea to do this sort of thing all the time. To close on an ironic note, last year I heard from a Hill staffer that Rep. Obey did this to Rahm Emanuel during the Iraq supplemental fight. When the faulty news leaked to Rahm appeared in print, Rahm was then kept out of future strategy sessions on the subject (at least at the time).
At least for now, it's looking like the house dems are standing up on retroactive immunity. They are now proposing a compromise that maintains liability of the telecoms, but enables them to have their trials behind closed doors.
I wonder if holding secret trials might be partially undermining the ability to actually conduct oversight of the president, but this seems like a good effort on their part--they haven't surrendered the principle that the telecoms be held accountable, and they have offered a compromise now that is still unpalatable to the President.
I am sincerely still shocked at the ability of the house to stand firm on this, especially after how casually the Senate gave up. That is still looking like our biggest problem. From the above article:
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid yesterday called the House Democrats' proposal "a tremendous step forward," but an aide said the Nevada Democrat is not planning to take it to the floor soon. "Since Republicans have refused to participate in the negotiations that led to this bill, it seems unlikely to achieve 60 votes in the Senate," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "Republicans should stop playing games on this important issue."
Come on, Harry. You don't have to be afraid of Bush any more. Stand firm. Make him veto this, and explain to the American people how the telecom's cash is worth more than the common person's privacy. Please.
ProgressivePunch.org is announcing a dramatic software patch to its ?Chips are Down? progressive ranking system of key votes enabling citizens to hold members of Congress accountable for their voting records starting with keeping sophisticated tabs on their behavior.
Due to an earlier programming error, "Chips Are Down '07-'08" scores for Democrats displayed on Progressive Punch prior to February 13, 2008 were previously inflated. Corrected Chips Are Down scores now demonstrate more clearly than ever how some Democrats vote with Republicans on key votes. For example, on the corrected ranking of Chips Are Down scores, Democrat Jim Marshall of Georgia ranks below two Republicans, Ron Paul & Wayne Gilchrest (recently defeated in a primary by a right-winger). While Republicans are pretty uniformly terrible, Democrats now range from Tammy Baldwin's 97+% down to Marshall's 28%.
Progressive Punch's statement continues on the flip...
Progressive Punch has just announced the addition of a new tool for rating members of Congress, which should prove especially useful in getting a fix on different Democrats. It's called a "Chips Are Down" score and has just been calculated for the current congressional session.
The votes used to calculate the scores in the "Chips Are Down '07-'08" column are a subset of the overall votes that qualify according to the Progressive Punch algorithm described above. They show the impact that even a small number of Democrats have when they defect from the progressive position. These are votes where either progressives lost or where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently. The definition of a vote where progressives lost is one where a majority of the progressive cohort (see list below) was on the losing side of the vote. Narrow progressive victories are defined as votes in which progressives won by 20 votes or fewer in the House (so a shift of 10 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result) or by 6 votes or fewer in the Senate (so a shift of 3 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result).
One of the most common responses to the Bush Dog campaign is that "You don't live here; you don't know what you're talking about; you want to elect a liberal Democrat to this district; and it can't be done; we'd end up losing in a landslide."
That's a big mouthful, and ordinarily I'm the kind of guy who would sit down to parse it, and answer its various parts. But I'm not going to do that in this diary. Instead, I'm going for the heart of the argument--that this is the sort of Democrat we have to run to win in this kind of district. I'm going to refute that assumption in the most straightforward way possible: I'm going to compare Bush Dogs to non-Bush Dogs in fairly similar districts.
The analysis will clearly show that it's the members, not the districts that are the problem.
Spurred on by David Kowalski offering Progressive Punch scores in a comment, I've done another iteration of this table, which is now dominated by the Progressive Punch scores for all the issue categories. Color coding is used for Progressive Punch scores, grouping by deciles, descending from moderate to light blue, and then from light to moderate red.
I have two versions of the table over the jump. The first maintains the alphabetical order within battleground tiers, the second is in descending order of Progressive Punch total scores, again within battleground tiers. The second is particularly helpful for seeing the relative conservatism of different members at a glance.
I believe this provides the most comprehensive visual overview of the overall political orientations of the Bush Dogs to date. It is very clear that the Bush Dogs are particularly bad on Family Planning and on Civil and Criminal Justice issues. Average scores on other issues range from the low 90s (Housing) to the low 70s (Human Rights & Liberties, Corporate Subsidies), but then drops precipitously to the mid 50s for Civil and Criminal Justice and the high 40s for Family Planning.
However, even for Government Checks on Corporate Power, where the overal average is in the mid 70s, there are three Safe District Bush Dogs who score under 50%--Boren, Peterson and Cuellar.
Notes [Chris's originals]
PVI = Partisan Voting Index, produced by Cook Political Report
* = Non-consecutive terms in Congress
** = Received significant national blogosphere support
Also, Tim Walz did vote in favor of the McGovern amendment. All others voted nay on that amendment, and are clearly ideologically opposed to progressives in this area.
A few observations.
First and foremost is that the 16 Bush Dogs in tiers one and two are outnumbered by 22 Bush Dogs in safe districts.
Second, the 16 Bush Dogs represent less than half of the 35 Democrats in battleground states.
Third, although the safe Bush Dogs have an average PVI in their districts of R +3.6, they are incredibly safe, winning re-election with an average 78%, and a low of 59%--just one member below 61%.
Fourth, safety is clearly related to how long people have been office. Aside from the averages, only two of the Tier One officeholders weren't challengers* [*or running for open seats] in 2004 or 2006 (though two challengers* had previously served in Congress). Just one of the Tier Two officeholders wasn't a challenger* in 2004 or 2006 (though one had previously served in Congress). But just 6 of 22 safe district officeholders were challengers* in 2004 or 2006, and five of those were elected in 2004.
One obvious conclusion from all the above is that generically the best prospects for running primary challenges, if it comes to that, are against the 6 newbies Bush Dogs in safe districts: Wilson (OH-06), Salazar (CO-03), Cuellar (TX-28), Costa (CA-20), Boren (OK-02), Lipinski (IL-03).
These six are the safest seats from a partisan perspective, but the least entrenched officeholders, from a primary potential perspective.
Of course, specific situations will over-ride general considerations. But the big picture tells which prospects are most promising on general grounds, and which are not.
Notes
PVI = Partisan Voting Index, produced by Cook Political Report
* = Non-consecutive terms in Congress
** = Received significant national blogosphere support
Also, Tim Walz did vote in favor of the McGovern amendment. All others voted nay on that amendment, and are clearly ideologically opposed to progressives in this area.
Who is out of step with their districts here? Well, basically everyone, considering only a dozen congressional districts have either majorities or pluralities opposed to withdrawal. The most egregious offenders are Lipinski, Cooper and Costa, who come from solidly Democratic districts. Boswell, Ross, Tanner and Wilson come from districts that, as of 2004, leaned slightly Democratic, and probably lean even more so now. Altmire, Barrow, Boyd, Cuellar, Lincoln Davis, Etheridge, McIntyre, Synder and Walz all come from districts with partisan voting indexes that lean Republican, but which do so by a smaller amount than Democrats won the national House vote in 2006 (in other words, districts that a probably slightly lean blue these days). Those are the 16 districts where it strikes me that the most pressure, including both potential and real primary challenges, can be successfully applied.
I'll stop the analysis there, for now. The purpose of this post was to identify the core list of Bush Dogs, as well as provide information on their districts, their relationship to centrist (New Dem) and conservative (Blue Dog) House caucuses, whether or not they are freshman, and whether or not they received national blogosphere support when they first won their seats in Congress. Hopefully, this can serve as a reference point for the upcoming fights we face on Iraq and FISA. For now, I will leave the rest of the analysis to you.
