LoisC and Katherine wrote profiles of John Salazar (CO-03) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL). Both are worth reading. I found the profile of Herseth Sandlin fascinating, and felt that I really got a sense of the Congresswoman. She's part of a local political dynasty who has shuttled between DC and South Dakota since college, and has trained for the job of Blue Dog politician her whole life. She was also one of the first netroots candidates, a special election challenger in 2004 who won.
I found this fascinating as well.
The special election in June 2004 also established the outlines of Herseth's fiscal base. In each of her two elections in 2004 - special and regular - individual contributions exceeded PAC contributions by about 2 to 1. Of the PAC contributions, 40% was from "Ideological/Single Issue" organizations, which I took to be us. Of the PAC "ideological" total, three-fourths was from four feminist/pro-abortion organizations and one-fourth was from Democratic Party PAC's. EMILY's List generated contributions of $121,583, the largest single source. The 2nd-largest contribution was $30,850. About one-third of the June 2004 PAC contributions were from labor, and one-fourth from business, mostly law firms. MoveOn.org gave her campaign $5,000.
Sadly, Herseth's 2006 contribution profile is very different: PAC contributions 62%, individual contributions 37%. Of the PAC contributions, Business PAC's gave 50%, Labor 27%, Ideological/Single Issue 23%. EMILY's List, however, has sent another $196,718 Herseth's way since the 2004 elections. (Source of financial figures is Center for Responsive Politics.)
Despite the contributions from EMILY's List, here's Herseth Sandlin on the South Dakota abortion ban last year.
Finally, there is reproductive freedom. EMILY's List supported her heavily in both of her 2004 campaigns, along with Planned Parenthood, NOW and NARAL. Herseth missed the "partial-birth" abortion vote of 2003, but the following year she was described in the local press as supporting the ban. She is rated "100% pro-choice" because she voted for embryonic stem-cell research twice and against a smaller bill to restrict interstate transport of minors to get abortions. That was not good enough for local and out-of-state feminists, but was evidently too much for South Dakota Republicans. In 2006 the SD legislature passed a no-exceptions ban on all abortions, and SD citizens organized a successful initiative to rescind it. South Dakota was Ground Zero for abortion rights in 2006, and Stephanie Herseth was silent. The word "abortion" did not appear on her Congressional or campaign websites. Her position was reputed in the SD press to be that, although she opposes abortion personally, she favors abortion rights in principle. Hours of googling did not reveal a documented citation of that or any other sentiment on abortion. In 2006 there was no public word from her on the issue most fundamental to contemporary women's rights.
This is an awesome campaign so far, with just under 10,000 result when you google for "Bush Dog Democrats".
There are only nine more Bush Dogs to be profiled, so grab one if you can and profile him.
IN-02: Joe Donnelly
IN-08: Brad Ellsworth
IN-09: Baron Hill
KY-06: Ben Chandler
NC-02: Bob Etheridge
ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy
TX-17: Chet Edwards
TX-22: Nick Lampson
TX-28: Henry Cuellar
The Indiana folks are all freshmen and part of Rahm Emanuel's strategy, so they are fascinating. And Ben Chandler is probably going to run for higher office in Kentucky, either Governor or Senator, and he's way too conservative for his district. He was also the first netroots candidate, garnering a bunch of cash from the blogosphere during his special election in 2004. And Texas is Texas.
Holding the loyalty of evangelical Christians has become one of the most surprising problems for the Republican Party.
Support among white evangelicals neared 100% after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the White House used pastors, church membership directories and other tools to mobilize evangelicals for the 2004 election. But Bush's support among these voters dropped to 44% in a June Pew survey, sparking concern in GOP circles that an unmotivated base would cripple the party's efforts to compensate for losses among independent voters.
The Republican base is white non-Catholic Christians with an emphasis on evangelicals as their activist core . It's enticing to think that this white evangelical vote could be shifting, and I know Zack Exley among others believes this is so. There's in fact a nasty little industry of DC insiders peddling the notion that appealing to white evangelicals by throwing away choice is a good strategy. But there's also this.
An analysis of 30 competitive races found that the Democratic Party's voter turnout was strong, due in part to Republican troubles and unusual Democratic unity. But turnout of the hard-core GOP base was just as good.
In other words, right-wing white evangelicals did what they always do, which is vote for Republicans. The only effective strategy I've seen for dealing with the white evangelical base is spending resources convincing them not to vote. This worked in a few races around the country, based on some private data I've seen in 2006, but it also worked in 2000 when Chris Lehane got out opposition research on George W. Bush's DUI a few days before the election. The corruption of the Republican leadership, headlined by figures such as Larry Craig, is setting a nice atmosphere for this set of tactics.
Of course, the conclusion that 'Democratic strategists' draw, which is the conclusion they always draw, is that progressives are irrelevant.
Some Democrats tried the soft-sell strategy in last year's elections. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who took over a GOP seat in Colorado's 7th Congressional District, highlighted his moderate views on issues important to swing voters. In one direct-mail piece, he cited his daughter's epilepsy as his "personal" reason to back stem-cell research. The independent voters "call the shots," said Perlmutter, who stalks unaffiliated supporters at area supermarkets through his twice-monthly Government at the Grocery sessions.
Democratic analysts say the 2006 election underscored the importance of downplaying partisanship and campaigning to the middle.
This is just annoying. A lot of people, including me, have touted the Colorado infrastructure as successful. What I've seen since 2004 is a bunch of conservative Democrats, most notably but not exclusively the awful Salazar brothers, win office and screw things up. Now Jared Polis, Third Way funder, is running for Congress in a very liberal Colorado district. Anyway, go play to that middle, because apparently "independent voters are shifting their outlook on government, Pew found, putting them more in line with the Democratic Party in their concern about income inequality and belief in a government safety net for the poor."
We're all liberals now, you adorably anonymous Democratic strategists you. Also, can you stop quoting anonymous strategists? How hard is it to find someone to go on the record reciting conventional wisdom? Seriously?
I've been kicking around the idea with Chris that we should raise the costs of bad decision-making on things like FISA, or when they fold to Republicans on the supplemental or (insert fight here).
It's not much to put up some google ads criticizing these members for their position on FISA. The way Google adwords works is that the ad will only show up for the search terms we select. That means that if we select 'Chris Carney', then people searching for Chris Carney (PA-04) will see an ad criticizing Chris Carney for his vote on FISA. And the people who are searching for Chris Carney are people who want to know more about Carney, like reporters, activists, and constituents. We can even geotarget his state, so only people in Pennsylvania see the ad.
It'll probably run around $100-150 per member for a six month period, which is the amount of time until the law must be reauthorized.
Would you put a bit of money and effort to go after these wayward Democrats? 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.
Aside from money, this will take some work, since we'll have to get posts written about each member that did this. It's not worth doing unless you'd support it. So if you think this is a good idea, put it in the comments or send me an email at stoller at gmail.com. We need support in one of two ways. One, you could throw in a few bucks for this. Two, you could write up a problem Democrat, on this blog or on your own site, and we'd use that as the Google ad advertised link. Let me know if you'd be willing to do either.
Yesterday, I tested out the idea that what we are dealing with in Congress is a nominally Democratic majority but an effective Republican working majority. I mostly pinned this on the Blue Dog swing bloc and a conservative Senate, but there are other important factors at work. The conversation was really amazing, and punctured some holes in my piece.
The fact is, things have changed quite a bit. I'm friendly with a lawyer in a major executive branch agency, and she told me that the investigations going on by Congress are allowing her to do her job. Steve Novick, candidate for Senate in Oregon (who is really quite terrific), told me the same thing about friends he has in the Federal bureaucracy. Governance itself is getting better, or at least has stopped getting worse. So Blue Dogs are not Republicans.
There are other weaknesses in what I wrote, and the commenters pointed them out. In particular, this comment by Paul Rosenberg is I think accurate, as he argues that we are facing a conservative but not right-wing Blue Dog/DLC bloc combined with an anti-progressive elite consensus in the form of a hostile media establishment, a hostile think tank and academic structure, a hostile regulatory structure, a hostile set of cultural leaders and a set of old world economic incentives for elites.
I'm going to revise my earlier title, and argue that while we don't have a Republican working majority, we do have a conservative working majority to contend with. Most of the strategic problems I highlighted in the original piece remain, with the additional need to attack and/or subvert elite structures. The irony, or perhaps the not entirely-coincidental pattern of the Open Left, is that we're all at once going after the right-wing, their Blue Dog enablers, and the elite structures that love them.
I'm beginning to explore an idea that I'm not entirely sold on, which is that in the House, while Democrats are in control, there is effectively a Republican working majority. If true, this has a number of implications, both electoral and political. But first, I'll illustrate my thinking, which basically boils down to the fact that politically speaking, Bush is effectively using the surge model to govern in all policy arenas. Take tax policy.
President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.
Advisers presented Bush with a series of ideas to restructure corporate taxes, possibly eliminating narrowly targeted breaks to pay for a broader, across-the-board rate cut. In an interview with a small group of journalists afterward, Bush said he was "inclined" to send a corporate tax package to Congress, although he expressed uncertainty about its political viability.
It's a simple pattern. When Bush loses ground politically, he simply changes his ask. It's the equivalent of negotiating with someone to sell them a bike for $50, and when they find a problem with the bike, changing the price to $75 and negotiating the final price to $65. It's bad faith negotiating, but it's working, because Democratic leaders aren't able to walk away from the table out of a mixture of fear, incompetence, and insufficient liberal voting strength. They always stupidly buy the bike at the higher price.
The FISA bill debacle is a good example. I've been in email contact with a variety of sources inside the House, and there's certainly tremendous bitterness at what happened with FISA, as well as a recognition that the 'stand up and cave' rhetoric strategy is now a clear pattern for this Congress. Steny Hoyer is the weak link in the House leadership, and though I can't read tea leaves that well, I think that Blue Dogs are essentially threatening a revolt against Pelosi if she tries to impose real discipline. In addition, the Senate is making it nearly impossible for her to stand up for liberalism. With a reactionary Senate that has about 10 neoconservative Democrats and a neoconservative President, liberals cannot govern except on the most clear-cut and non-controversial issues, like poor children's health care (which itself might be vetoed).
So while we may have thought we gained a check on Bush in 2006, we actually didn't. What we gained was a more progressive Democratic Party, but we started from such a low base that the Republicans essentially can still govern. Now, holding the majority is nice for subpoena power, and that matters. But when you combine a conservative Senate, a Blue Dog swing block, and an extreme White House, you may have a situation similar to the Boll Weevil Democrats in the early 1980s and their working relationship with Reagan. I'm not sure how well the analogy holds up since I've never studied that period in history, but regardless, Bush has realized that his conservative governing mandate is still intact.
In 2006, the midterms registered a clear antiwar message, but instead of listening, Bush surged troops, and politically speaking, it worked. No one stopped him. Bush, weaker than he's ever been as President in terms of popular approval and credibility, is governing this country through a mix of veto threats, bad faith negotiating tactics via surrogates like Mike McConnell and David Patraeus, and Blue Dogs. This is true with Bush's rampant lawbreaking and authoritarian criminal impulses. No one stops him. I'm no longer content to think that Blue Dogs are acting out of fear of being criticized, at this point I am going to take the Heath Shuler's at their word and recognize them as right-wingers.
To be clear, there's reason for optimism, as this is a temporary situation and we've made enormous progress since 2002. There are more self-identified liberals today than there have been since 1972, independents are swinging far to the left, and the base Democratic vote is making the difference in elections. The Democratic Party of 2007 is much more progressive than that of 2002, and at the rate we're gaining reliable liberal votes (10/year), there will be an unbreakable progressive House majority by 2012. The overall intellectual environment, the shattering of the right-wing careerist foreign policy community, the increasing efficiency of liberal advocacy groups, the increased participation of progressive economy sectors in the political sector, and the liberalization of the White House and Senate, can also have significant effects. Our politicians are obviously behind the curve, with Clinton quasi-supporting the surge and Obama in his most recent Iowa ad doesn't call himself a Democrat. But this is temporary.
I don't have a good strategy on how to 'fix' the Senate, but to get to a progressive working majority in the House, we need to pick up 41 more reliable votes, either by beating Republicans or by converting or beating Blue Dog Democrats. If we can get to an uncompromising progressive majority in the House, then the Senate will be dragged along through conference committees and a Democratic White House. In the Senate, we'll need 16 for a clear progressive majority, but because of institutional dynamics we'll probably need less to have a working majority.
There are several paths to making this happen in the House.
Pick Up Safe Seats Progressives: This is what we are trying to do in Massachusetts 5th, where a reactionary Niki Tsongas is facing four other candidates, including progressive Jamie Eldridge. There's also a primary in TN-09, Harold Ford's old haunt.
Convert Reactionary Democrats: Both Al Wynn and Ellen Tauscher are good examples of how this can be done, and this is continuing against Daniel Lipinski, Al Wynn, and Henry Cuellar.
Beat Republicans: In 2006, Democrats picked up 30 seats in the House. Out of those pickups, 11 voted for the FISA expansion, and 19 didn't.
Convert Republicans: I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq is trying to crack Republicans, but this is very very difficult. Republicans have run right-wing primary challenges against dissidents for 30 years, since 1978. Countering that is extremely tough, though recent moves by the Mainstream Partnership could have effects.
If there is a Republican working majority, with the Blue Dogs as the swing group, that should have one very significant effect on our strategy. In a House with a minority role for Democrats, electing a Blue Dog Democrat is far superior than electing a Republican. But in a majority Democratic House where conservatives have a governing working majority, electing a Blue Dog Democrat is little different than electing a Republican when it comes to public policy choices. Electing a Blue Dog is not going to help us restore out Constitutional fabric, hold these people accountable, deal with global warming, energy, health care, or restore a progressive tax code. More significantly, more Blue Dogs aren't going to give someone like Pelosi the leverage she needs to do any of these things.
What this means is clear. No longer should we as progressives particularly care whether a Democrat is in a swing district or Republican district when considering how to evaluate them. It is more important to elect progressives and destroy the power of Blue Dogs than to increase our partisan advantage in the House, though these goals are complements and not substitutes. The Colorado example, of turning a libertarian-esque red state into a Blue Dog state at the behest of wealthy billionaires, is not something to emulate. Rather, we should look at the New Hampshire example, which has turned a libertarian-esque red state into a deep blue progressive libertarian area.
There's one other important rhetorical consequence here. When Blue Dogs vote with Bush, they are not 'betraying' us any more than Republicans are when they vote with Bush. Blue Dogs just don't agree with us. And when they vote to expand wiretapping or to cut taxes for the wealthy or to support endless war, they are acting like Blue Dogs, and Blue Dogs support President Bush and the conservative movement.
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