A lot of big stories percolating out there. The oil spill continues to be an unmitigated disaster. Elena Kagan is Obama's Supreme Court nominee, and the Republicans are upset that she is against slavery (you gotta love these guys' historical consistency, not to mention their political bravery. I mean, who else has the guts these days to be pro-slavery). The financial reform bill goes into its second week of debate, with tons of interesting amendment fights yet to come. No one can figure out if the Greek/Euro crisis is really beginning to be solved or whether the contagion will start spreading. The war in Afghanistan is back in the news with big talks scheduled for the next couple of days.
With all this going on, no one is noticing the political goings-on in the quiet little state of Utah over the weekend. Trust me, though: it's big news. Robert Bennett won't be on the Republican primary ballot. And Jim Matheson will be having a primary. Incumbents of all parties, all political persuasions, all regions and states are in trouble.
Even a lot of people who follow politics closely haven't heard of these two incumbent elected officials from Utah. Neither one of them is especially visible outside of their small, out-of-the-way state. Neither of them is in a major leadership role in Congress, or has played a central role on the biggest issues in recent years. Neither has been on the national political radar screen for being in a competitive re-election race in recent years.
One of them is a conservative Republican Senator, one is a moderate Democratic House member. They both got very unpleasant news via their parties' respective weekend conventions. Bennett, after voting as a loyal conservative Republican Senator for 18 years, got summarily dumped from the primary ballot. He not only wasn't popular enough among Republican activists to get first place in the voting, he wasn't popular enough to get second place, either, so he's out. Keep in mind when pondering this that Bennett is as solidly and loyally conservative a Senator as there is. He didn't hug Barack Obama, or support him- or even flirt with supporting him- on the stimulus bill, the health care bill, or anything else. Bennett is a 98%, true to the bone conservative. But that wasn't enough to protect him from the insurgent uprising in his party.
Matheson is more of a moderate. He has taken more votes to upset the liberal base, but in Utah that base isn't so huge, and he has never had anyone threaten a primary before. To the entire party establishment's great surprise, he failed to get 60% of his convention vote and now finds himself in a primary fight.
One of them is a conservative Republican who has done nothing serious to tick off his base. One of them is a moderate Democrat in a state where there aren't that many progressive base Democrats to tick off. But they both find themselves in trouble. Just like Gov. Crist starting his campaign for Senate as the overwhelming favorite and now is bounced out of the Republican primary, just as Arlen Specter- who has been Senator for a very long time and whose party switching act won him the fervent support of Obama, Biden, Gov. Rendell, and every other establishment politician- is suddenly trailing insurgent challenger Joe Sestak in the polls. Just as Chuck Grassley in Iowa has had a 75% approval rating for the last 30 years, and is now in the 40s
Incumbents in both parties are in trouble for one simple reason: the jobs aren't coming back and the perception among voters is that the incumbents aren't doing anything about it. While there are some encouraging signs on the economy, the official unemployment rate went up to 9.9% last week, and if you add in everything that you should (including farm and self-employed workers, those too discouraged to look for jobs, those who are part-time by necessity not choice) the real unemployment rate is 18.9% and went up by .2% last month. As long as the jobs picture is that weak, the economy overall is very weak too. Very few people are feeling the effects of the GDP growth that has elites proclaiming an improving economy. Check out this new ad by a coalition of unemployed workers organized by the Machinists Union: it isn't supporting or opposing any particular politician or party, it just makes clear that those without jobs are pissed.
Most working families in this country are still hurting, and are still scared there are more economic problems yet to come. They don't think either party cares about them or is fighting for them. As long as that is the case, incumbents of both parties are going to keep getting into political trouble.
That may be something we all are used to hearing about a Democratic candidate in other states, but here in Utah, this is truly a first. We have but one Democrat in our federal delegation, and on FISA, Matheson has proven himself a true Bush Dog. Now it appears a new candidate is ready to step up and show true leadership on a key issue.
Morgan is the Democratic candidate for Utah's first congressional district, a seat currently held by school voucher supporting, "drill here, drill now" parroting, warrantless wiretap backing Rob Bishop. In addition to the 2/1 odds Morgan faces unseating the corporate funded incumbent, he also faces a battle with in-state leadership as a result of Rep. Jim Matheson, our only sitting Democrat, and faithful Blue Dog.
As the campaign to reform "Bush Dogs" led by Matt Stoller and the Open Left team moves forward, I wanted to pause a moment to point out something that, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I couldn't help but notice: Of the 40 Bush Dogs, fully half of them are southern white Democrats. (The "South" defined here as the 11 Confederate states.)
Presently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi leads a 230-member Democratic House majority. Of those 230, just 32 are white southerners. That leaves 198 non-southern or minority (black, Hispanic) southern Democrats. And that means the splits for Bush Dog coalition are as follows: About 10% (20 of 198) of the non-southern or minority southern Democrats are Bush Dogs, but a striking 63% (20 of 32) of southern white Democrats made the list. (See chart.)
As I argued in Whistling Past Dixie, this is one of the painful tradeoffs of trying to be a "national" party. Liberals should keep that in mind the next time somebody spews feels-nice, but strategically empty phrases like "Democrats need to compete everywhere"-a "strategy" that is, in fact, the very absence of strategy. Not all Democrats vote the same way- and there are often very clear voting patterns by region. The South/non-South disparity should also be kept in mind when the inevitable arguments arise as to whether 2008 dollars and other resources should be directed toward trying to defeat or replace Republicans like, say, Randy Kuhl or Ray LaHood, or keeping the seats of Democrats Jim Marshall or Gene Taylor. Though Democrats may prefer to do both, politics is often about economics-the need to make decisions about scarce resources-and every seat is clearly not qualitatively the same when it comes time for floor votes in Congress.
Right now, Pelosi has those 198 non-southern and minority southern seats in her delegation; on the Senate side, Harry Reid already has 46 non-southern Senators in his, with upcoming opportunities in CO, MN, NH, OR and elsewhere outside the South. Say what you want about what Freedom's Watch is doing to moderate Republicans on behalf of the White House and the war, but as Eve Fairbanks compellingly argues in The New Republic, it is exactly this sort of clamping down on Republicans that has kept the Democrats from achieving much in the 110th Congress thus far. There's a lesson in that, as there is in the geography of the "Bush Dog" coalition.
We got a bunch of coverage for the Bush Dog Democrat campaign, and I'll go into reactions on Monday and what they mean. Let's just say the top two concern trolls were Fox News and their right-wing blogospheric toenail clippings, and anonymous Democratic senior strategists in the Politico (which did write a good article on the campaign).
UPDATE:Archpundit, a terrific and experienced Illinois blogger and activist, has some interesting things to say about Bush Dog Democrats Melissa Bean and Dan Lipinski. Larry is more politically cautious than I am, and tends to situate his politics in much less ideological and much more partisan terms. It's a useful creative tension, and he's a Bean supporter (I am not). Here's his read.
In the case of IL-8 we aren't likely to get a full throated progressive, but it's a significant problem that Bean has voted for issues trying to appear moderate that do not have the support of the political center even in her district. More than that, the 38 people Matt list are mostly in Republican leaning Districts, but even these votes aren't in the center of these Districts-they are well to the right.
With Bean this is especially relevant. It's true that her district is more concerned with taxes and budgetary issues than many others, but neither the bankruptcy bill nor the FISA changes are popular. They do get the attention of the Tribune which Bean uses to demonstrate she is a 'moderate' and so she ends up seeking their approval on everything. She's not going to change the triangulation pattern-it's a winning strategy in that District, but I think she can be moved towards targeting different issues that aren't nearly as destructive as these. In other cases, we just need to take people out-like Lipinski who is in a 59% Kerry District and votes horribly on just about everything.
However, in the case of Bean and presumably her consultants, we need her to be a strong voice for basic Constitutional Protections-protections gutted by the new version of FISA. We need her to not be voting for a bill that makes those in financial trouble because of sickness or the loss of a job even more vulnerable. We need her to stand up against torture. We need her to stand up against an incredibly unpopular President who not only got us into an unnecessary war, but continues to epically mismanage the war. When she does support such policies, she undermines the reason for Democratic control of Congress and the Presidency, but also, and more importantly, the country.
In a District like Illinois 8 I would never advocate a Democrat try and be Jan Schakowsky. I'll give them slack on tax and budgetary issues. I'll give them some slack on social issues to some degree. I'll give them slack on trade to some degree. But I won't give them slack on issues of fundamental fairness and Constitutional Rights. These are winning issues in all, but the very most conservative areas and even IL-8 isn't that conservative.
Jim Matheson (D - UT) won his first 02-District election in 2001, taking over a district that had remained strongly republican since 1994. Shortly after his election, state legislators gerrymandered his district (a move even the Wall Street Journal called "a Republican scam"), to include Utah's Washington County, with the conservative "retirement community" of St. George.
Matheson surprised them by winning again in 2002 (although by a very small margin of 1600). Matheson's support in Salt Lake City has grown in each election, while throughout the rest of his district the gap has been steadily shrinking, until 2006, with some of his worst margins overall gained during Presidential election years, with higher voter turnout.
Matheson reigned in a 67,000 vote advantage in Salt Lake County in 2004, taking his district by only about 20,000 votes. In 2006 he took Salt Lake County by 52,000 votes, and the overall district margin of over 49,000, clearly gaining ground in the state. Without Salt Lake County, which made up his entire district before the Dec 2001 gerrymander, he wouldn't have fared well in any election, but his acceptance in the reddest of states seems to be growing, as his election margins for the entire district show:
2000 - 38,000 votes 2002 - 1,600 votes (less than 1% of the district vote) 2004 - 20,000 votes 2006 - 50,000 votes.
His voting history leaves much to be desired. Chris Cannon he isn't, but he calling his record "leadership" would be a stretch. As a supporter of children's welfare (SCHIP), stem cell research, environmental protection, conservation land management, and government accountability, Matheson nonetheless broke with his party and supported handing even more authority to the tainted DOJ with his vote for the FISA (H.R. 3356) "fix." Several attempts to contact Matheson's office for a statement, since the vote, have yielded no response, and no press release resides on his official site regarding that specific vote. In his tenure, Matheson has missed only 23 votes, but has a troubling habit of following lock-step with the Bush White House when it comes to Iraq (a habit most local Democrats attribute to his R+ 16 post-gerrymander district). Surprisingly though, his district, in overall polling does support "some kind" of withdrawal when it comes to the war.
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