Rep. Lincoln Davis says he's planning a run to become Tennessee's next governor, despite reports of Harold Ford Jr.'s interest in the race, according to a story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Davis, who represents Tennessee's Fourth District, served as Ford's campaign chairman during his unsuccessful 2006 Senate bid against Republican Bob Corker.
"I've made up my mind to run for governor," said Davis. "I don't think (Ford) is going to run because Lincoln Davis is going to run. I would imagine that if I'm in the race, he'll step aside."
But an adviser to Ford and the head of the Tennessee Democratic Party confirmed that Ford is "seriously considering" a gubernatorial run to succeed Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen in 2010. Bredesen cannot run for a third term.
OK, so Lincoln Davis likes to refer to himself in the third person. Also, I would be lying if I said I cared all that much over who was Governor of Tennessee. I mean, I care a little bit, but mainly it is a local campaign that does not affect me and where I have no particular hopes for progressive governance statewide in the short term.
Personally, I hope that Lincoln Davis runs and wins. It would certainly be an effective means of freeing up is swing congressional district (R +3.2 in 2004) for a non-Bush Dog to take over. Much the same happened when Harold Ford ran for Senate, freeing up his heavily Democratic House seat (D +15.7) for takeover by a progressive (Steve Cohen). The Ford Cohen exchange added about half a seat for progressives in Congress in actual voting power. If a non-Bush Dog can take over Davis's seat, that might mean progressives pick up a quarter of a seat.
Bush Dogs like to run for higher office, and do so on a regular basis. This is quite unlike progressives, who pass up 18 point leads (see #6 in the link) and large cash on hand advantages in order to stay in the House. The open seats created by these vacancies are a key location for progressives to target. If we can't encourage progs to run for higher office, at the least we can start to mop up on House seats. Looks like in 2010, we will have one more opportunity to do so, and a long time to prepare.
As we observe the weakest Congress in at least 50 years, one that won't stop the war, torture, illegal wiretapping, or anything else, it's useful to understand just how and why the place has been neutered. There are really two groups, each of which bears responsibility. The first is the 'liberal' leadership, people like Carl Levin, Pat Leahy, John Conyers, and Charlie Rangel. The conventional wisdom is that voting for or pushing authoritarian legislation, like the FISA expansion or war with Iran, is necessary in a center right country. For instance, John Conyers is the reason the FISA expansion happened. He pushed Bush's bill because he didn't want to be blamed if a terrorist attack happened in August, and he didn't think it was a 'big deal' because it's only a six month temporary fix. That speaks to a weakness of character, but also a conventional wisdom held even among 'liberals' in DC that 'getting reelected' involves taking right-wing positions. Conyers thought he was protecting vulnerable Democrats, and therefore, his gavel as Chairman.
So where does this conventional wisdom come from? Well, it comes from the second group, the Bush Dog opinion leaders who have their own motives for pushing conservative legislation and speak of their districts as 'tough'. John Tanner (TN-04) is one such opinion leader, as Jonathan Weisman pointed out in the Washington Post after the 2006 election.
And regardless of leaders' intent, conservative Democrats worry that Democratic old bulls, returning to chair committees after so long in the minority, could drive a partisan agenda. Some fear that Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), at the helm of the education panel, and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, may be too quick to pick fights before Democrats can cement their gains.
"We increased our market share by going where the market was, to moderate, even Republican districts," said Rep. John S. Tanner (Tenn.), a leader of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, which has grown to become one of the largest House Democratic factions. "If we're going to hold and consolidate that, we have to understand the reality that the face of the Democratic Caucus has changed from where it was in late '80s and early '90s."
Let's take a look at some of these districts, these Bush Dogs that vote badly, as Vibinc did a bunch of Bush Dog profiles over the weekend. Gene Taylor (MS-04) is probably the worst Democrat in the House, but he's also from a very Republican district (R+16.3). Lincoln Davis (TN-04) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) are both entrenched rural Democrats from conservative districts, while Jim Cooper (TN-05) is from a safe (D+6.2) district who nonetheless acts like a reactionary. Cooper can be challenged to be better, and so can Gordon and Davis.
The Bush Dog Democrat who is most interesting, though, is opinion leader John Tanner, from Tennessee. Tanner, as far as I can tell, represents nothing but business interests and himself. His district went for Gore in 2000, and Bush in 2004, and he won in 2006 with over 70% of the vote. He's in fact faced token opposition for many years, yet in 2006 he spent $800k on his reelection campaign. That money came almost entirely from business PACs. How he's spending his money is an interesting question, and I would encourage people to go into his FEC filings and start digging. I imagine there's a lot of duck hunting involved.
Regardless of how he spends the money, he definitely pays his business backers back. John Tanner (TN-08) is bad on CAFTA, the Bankruptcy Bill, Free Trade, the estate tax, the Federal Marriage Amendment, the ban on "partial-birth" abortions, limiting death penalty appeals, and of course, net neutrality. In terms of good votes, he votes well on separation of church and states issues, flag burning, stem cell research, and is against renewing the controversial portions of the Patriot Act. In other words, Tanner is voting for stuff that is good for business elites, and on everything else, he's making personal decisions. The flag burning amendment, church and state, and the Patriot Act are no less polarizing than the death penalty, abortion, or gay rights. And CAFTA isn't popular anywhere.
Tanner's politics have nothing to do with electability, his district, or appealing to Republican or moderate voters. Tanner just has friends who run business PACs, and is a Southern white guy who on social issues has some liberal instincts and some reactionary instincts. Tanner, a founder of the Blue Dog Caucus, just likes his place in Congress, a place where he has supplicants, friends, influence, money, relatively little criticism, and invitations to the Blue Dog cocktail parties.
Jonathan Weisman's account of Democratic approach to national security issues in the Washington Post today is worth reading in its entirety, because it shows the mindset on Capitol Hill and why we aren't making progress. The biggest problem are the Bush Dog Democrats like Allen Boyd (the only Democrat to support Social Security privatization in 2005) and Lincoln Davis, who both believe in warrantless wiretapping and use fear of Republican attacks on the issue to justify their authoritarian impulses.
But conservative Democrats and some party leaders continue to worry that taking on those issues would expose them to Republican charges that they are weak on terrorism...
Conservative Democrats, including Rep. Allen Boyd (Fla.), argued just as vociferously that Democrats dare not leave on vacation without passing the White House bill.
"The most controversial matters are the ones that people use to form their opinions on their members of Congress," said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), who voted for the administration's bill. "I do know within our caucus, and justifiably so, there are members who have a real distaste for some of the things the president has done. But to let that be the driving force for our actions to block the surveillance of someone and perhaps stop another attack like 9/11 would be unwise."
Davis, in this quote, slips and slides between two different explanations. He argues that voters form their opinions based on controversial votes, and then says that the FISA vote was necessary to block another 9/11. The mixture of fear and reactionary instincts is quite revealing. The political evidence for Davis's position is thin. Bush has net negatives on his handling of terrorism, and the public is overwhelmingly opposed to warrantless wiretapping according to recent polling data. In fact, Rove and Bush made terrorism the centerpiece of their 2006 election strategy, and not one single Democratic incumbent lost.
Remember this ad against Chris Murphy, a so-called 'devastating' ad arguing that Murphy's stance against warrantless wiretapping would enable terrorists? The ad moved numbersagainst his opponent, and Murphy crushed his opponent by 12 points. It is simply ridiculous to think at this point that Republicans have an advantage on this issue. It's empirically untrue. But even if you believe the Republicans do have an advantage here, to assume that the Republicans won't run on this issue simply because you threw away civil liberties entirely ignores modern media. The GOP will run on whatever they want to run on, you can't stop them by voting for their proposals. Did Max Cleland's example mean nothing to these people? Apparently.
But it's not just Bush Dog Democrats that are the problem, it's much more pervasive than that. Here's Ben Cardin, a 'liberal' Senator from Maryland.
"If you just say you're standing up for civil liberties, the American people are with you, but if you say terrorism suspects should have civil liberties, it stretches Americans' tolerance," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who along with Hastings represents Congress on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a human rights monitor. "It's a tough issue for us."
Among Bush Dogs, the problem is fear and slavishness to Bush. But among liberals like Cardin, it's a poll-driven adherence to conventional wisdom.
If anything, the habeas corpus and Guantanamo Bay issues will be tougher. In June, nearly 150 House Democrats signed a letter by Moran urging the shuttering of the prison. But Moran said last week that he no longer thinks he could muster the votes to pass the measure, even though the move is supported by former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Republicans appear to have won the argument with their accusation that Democrats want to import terrorists....
"We can do this, but you have to keep in mind Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear."
The slavishness to fear and conventional wisdom, the misreading of polls and politics, and the unwillingness to lead are remarkable, among liberals like Cardin, strategists like Emanuel, and Bush Dogs like Davis and Boyd. But there's there's also this.
And advocates of a strong push on the terrorism issues are increasingly skeptical that they can prevail.
"I don't think it's that we're reluctant to take on Bush," said Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), a senior member of the House intelligence committee. "I think it's we are reluctant to take on each other. . . . If I can fast-forward to September, October, November, December and see where we'll be, we'll be nowhere."
Congress is pretty small, with a little over 500 people. They get along with each other, they are 'office-mates' in some sense, they play basketball together, and they are in many cases friends. Public criticism from a Democrat to another Democrat is quite rare, because it ruins these relationships and makes it personally harder and more lonely to be in Congress. That's actually how you can tell that Brian Baird's 'the surge is working' is quite costly to him, because a fellow House member, Ellen Taucsher, is openly scornful of Baird's judgment.
Building a different set of incentives for decision-makers is going to take a lot of work. The problem is a mixture of conventional wisdom, poor judgment, bad values, a lack of coordination with activists by progressive members, and inertia. Fortunately, the ACLU is now getting very aggressive against Democrats, Nancy Pelosi is showing a harder line, Moveon is cracking down on people like Baird, local activists are becoming much less tolerant of flouting our values, and we're starting the criticism necessary to identify and fix the problem.
STATE BLOGS
