Yesterday I argued that the netroots were funneling millions to the Blue Dogs every cycle, and needed to completely turn off the spigot. Today, I spent some time trying to figure out just how much money the netroots were donating to the Blue Dogs every cycle. As it turns out, the totals are not very high.
First, 9.15% of all donations to the 35 House Democrats who were first elected in 2008, and who are still in Congress, came from Act Blue. For eighteen of those House newbies, Act Blue was the top donor overall. For another eight, Act Blue was the second largest donor. Overall, the totals are $5,820,075 was raised for these 35 Democratic Representatives on Act Blue, out of a total $63,583,306 in donations from a source other than self-financing.
Among the six Blue Dogs first elected in 2008 and still in Congress (Bright, Childers, Griffith, Kratovil, Minnick, Nye), $188,374 of the $9,422,494 they raised from a source other than self-financing came from Act Blue. Overall, this represents only 2.0% of their total fundraising.
Among the seven Progressives first elected in 2008 and still in Congress (Carson, Edwards, Fudge, Grayson, Lujan, Pingree, Richardson), $1,348,659 of the $8,800,177 they raised from a source other than self-financing came from Act Blue. Overall, this represents 15.33% of their overall fundraising. This is a far higher percentage than Blue Dog Act Blue fundraising, even if it is heavily concentrated in Pingree and Edwards.
There are at least 15 freshmen members of the New Democrat coalition. However, the only name I can confirm at this time is Andre Carson, who is also a member of the Progressive caucus. Removing both the Blue Dogs and the Progressives from the overall list, but keeping Carson, the remaining Democrats raised $4,374,144 of their $47,012,948 non-self financing from Act Blue. It is likely that this 9.30% is close to the overall percentage of New Democrat freshmen money raised on Act Blue, given that more than half of the 23 freshmen included in these totals are now in the New Democratic caucus.
So, this analysis suggests that the netroots aren't really funding the Blue Dogs much at all, but are instead pumping millions of dollars into New Democrat coffers (they use the term New Democrat, not New Democratic). While the netroots are a higher percentage of Progressive fundraising, overall we give more money to New Democrats.
This situation is not ideal, but it is better than funneling millions into Blue Dog coffers. Although I don't have updated numbers, previous analysis has suggested that the New Democrats are almost precisely equidistant from the Blue Dogs and Progressives in terms of voting patterns, and very slightly to the right of the Democratic caucus overall. Given the disproportionate Act Blue donations to Progressive frosh compared to Blue Dogs frosh, overall this probably means that netroots money is being spent on keeping the ideological balance of the caucus roughly at the status quo. As such, it is not the disastrous situation I made it out to be yesterday, but it is still something that must be improved upon in 2010. Our money needs to be going to push the caucus to the left, not keep it where it currently is.
(Notes: Numbers taken from Open Secrets. Freshman fundraising totals can be seen here. ActBlue contribution totals can be seen here. Candidate self-financing not included in overall contribution totals. Current server troubles have prevented me from uploading the chart I made with all these numbers.)
During the final weeks of the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama had a high profile meeting with the Blue Dogs. After the meeting, the Blue Dogs made a patently false claim about their power. Even though it takes 218 votes to reach a majority in the House, the Blue Dogs claimed they were important because, with 49 members, they supposedly had the power to either block or clear legislation:
But the three could play a big role in the success or failure of the next president, one reason Obama took a break from campaigning last week to call each of them, among the leaders of the "Blue Dog Coalition," a group of conservative-leaning Democrats who are committed to balancing the federal budget. The group's 49 members already wield significant power in the House, and their ranks are expected to expand in the next Congress.
"He said he planned to be the next president and he wanted to work with us," Ross said in recounting his conversation with Obama before the House approved a $700 billion economic rescue package. "He also recognized that we had the numbers to block or clear" legislation coming from the White House if he is elected.
How could 49 members of the House claim that they have the power to "block or clear" legislation, even though it take 218 votes, or 169 more than the Blue Dogs possessed at the time, to actually block or clear legislation? There is only one answer: they will join with Republicans.
As David already discussed earlier today, President Obama has not yet met with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, even though he has met with every other group in Congress (Blue Dogs, New Dems, House Republicans, etc). Some Progressive (capitalized because it signifies a member of the caucus, rather than just anyone who calls him or herself a progressive) are feeling slighted by this. I am going to chime in and agree with the general sentiment in the comments to David's post: rather than feeling slighted, Progressives need to start throwing more weight around so that such a meeting is required, rather than an act of politeness.
There are lots of ways that Progressives could be throwing their weight around, but are not. The most obvious current misuse of Progressive strength is the inability to maximize their, and our, strength among small donors. Progressives have enormous potential fundraising ability that can match the large donor and corporate PAC money other ideological caucuses and networks can provide to their members. This fundraising is a major reason why candidates join these groups, and progressives can do the same thing. Unfortunately, we don't use our networks as well as we should.
The blogosphere gets pretty angry at Blue Dogs and New Democrats on a regular basis. This isn't surprising since, according to the best information I have seen (some of which is not public) about 80% of the people who read progressive blogs and / or who are members of progressive email list organizations self-identify as either "liberal" or "progressive." However, from 2004-2008, and even in the excitement over the NY-20 special election next Tuesday where the Democrat has already declared himself to be a Blue Dog, I'd wager that a similar proportion of netroots congressional donations have gone to electing Blue Dogs and New Democrats (specific numbers are not available right now because the current caucus membership lists are not available). It is kind of a perverse cycle: we give huge amounts of money to Blue Dog and New Democratic candidates, and then we spend a huge amount of our time complaining about Blue Dog and New Democratic members of the House. We are funding our own complaints.
Just in case there was any doubt about which wing of the Democratic Party President Obama sides with, he put that to rest yesterday. While he has long resisted ideological labels, President Obama declared himself to be a New Democrat:
President Barack Obama firmly resists ideological labels, but at the end of a private meeting with a group of moderate Democrats on Tuesday afternoon, he offered a statement of solidarity.
"I am a New Democrat," he told the New Democrat Coalition, according to two sources at the White House session.
The group is comprised of centrist Democratic members of the House, who support free trade and a muscular foreign policy but are more moderate than the conservative Blue Dog Coalition.
It is worth noting that the Democratic Leadership Council and the New Democrat Coalition (their own phrasing is "Democrat," rather than "Democratic") are openly affiliated with each other. From the DLC's website:
The New Democrat Coalition was formed in 1997 by Congressmen Cal Dooley (D-CA), Jim Moran (D-VA), and Tim Roemer (D-IN) to establish an ideological home in the U.S. House of Representatives for the New Democratic movement started by the Democratic Leadership Council in the late 1980's and led nationally by President Bill Clinton in the 1990's
Recently, when faced with losing their tax-exempt status for being a partisan political organization, the DLC claimed that "its exclusive purpose is to develop and promote its "Third Way" agenda and that some causes it has lobbied for--e.g., welfare reform, fast-track approval of free-trade agreements--got more Republican than Democratic votes in Congress."
The New Democrat Coalition was founded in 1997 by Representatives Cal Dooley (California), Jim Moran (Virginia) and Timothy J. Roemer (Indiana) as a congressional affiliate of the avowedly centrist Democratic Leadership Council, whose members, including former President Bill Clinton, call themselves "New Democrats." As of February 2005, the House New Democrats are chaired by Representative Ellen Tauscher (California), with Representatives Artur Davis (Alabama) and Ron Kind (Wisconsin) serving as co-chairs. Representative Adam Smith (Washington) serves as chair of the group's political action committee.
The Senate New Democrat Coalition was founded in the spring of 2000 by Senators Evan Bayh (Indiana), Bob Graham (Florida), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Joe Lieberman (Connecticut), and Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas).
Check out a list of Senate New Democrat here. At some point, it would be nice if we had a serious contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination who wasn't in this group. With the exception of Howard Dean, who was once in the DLC, I believe, that hasn't happened since, oh, 1984. Nice.
So, there you have it, from President Obama's own mouth. He considers himself a "New Democrat," not a left-wing progressive. That is his labeling, not mine.
There seem to be only three instances where the New Democrats have made a public splash over the last six months: passing the $700 billion bailout, vowing to prevent too much regulation of the financial industry, and taking the industry's side in the current housing bankruptcy fight. The Wall Street connection between these three areas of policy is pretty obvious, and leads one to ask: do the New Democrats do anything, as a caucus, except funnel money to Wall Street and limit financial regulations? It is just a Wall Street protection racket?
Here are three thought experiments on the bankruptcy fight:
Representative Ellen Tauscher is bragging to Politico that the delay on the Help Families Dave Their Homes Act (for details on the bill, click here) is a show of strength from House moderates:
"It shows we have bench strength, and it shows we can flex," said California Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, who chairs the New Democrat Coalition and played a central role in negotiations over the bankruptcy bill.
First thought experiment: if you are bragging to the Politico that delaying a bill is a show of political strength, then how exactly are we to know that you have good faith policy disagreements with the bill? Seems to me that once you start bragging about delaying legislation as a show of political power, any claim to good faith goes our the window.
The financial services industry and House Republicans are fighting back against a bill pushed by House Democrats that would empower bankruptcy judges to write down mortgage interest rates and principal.
The financial-services industry has vigorously opposed "cramdown" legislation that would let bankruptcy judges write down the principal and interest payments on mortgages for primary residences. The industry says the bill, as written, is too broad and would allow homeowners to head to court before attempting to work out a modified mortgage with their lender.
Second thought experiment: what are the odds that the financial services industry and House Republicans actually have the public's best interests at heart in opposing this bill? What about their behavior over the last few years would lead one to such a conclusion? Given their track record, isn't it far more likely that they are trying to make themselves wealthier at the public's expense?
That prompted lawmakers, like Tauscher, to limit the scope of the bankruptcy bill as much as possible, even though this measure is only loosely related to the president's broader proposal.
Third thought experiment: if you are bragging to the Politco about showing off political power, and if you are aligned with the financial services industry in their attempt to narrow the scope of the bill, then what are the odds that you are working on behalf of the public interest in this fight?
Thought experiment over--now, let's take some action. Firedoglake has a couple of great ways to make a difference on The Help Families Save Their Homes Act:
These are great tools that give you an easy way to make a difference, today. There is still time to sway minds on this one, as President Obama is sending is new Housing Secretary to talk to wayward Democrats on this matter tonight. Before that conversation, let members of Congress know there is popular support behind the President's plan.
The House vote on "cramdown" housing legislation, which allows bankruptcy judges to re-value mortgages according to current market prices, swill take place on Tuesday. In advance of the vote, The Center for Responsible Lending has a useful chart up showing that 800,000 homeowners, or 10% of all American homeowners facing foreclosure,. could be saved from foreclosure by "cramdown" legislation. Among the 86 congressional districts represented by either a New Democrat or a Blue Dog, 143,672 homeowners are projected to be saved from foreclosure by cramdown legislation.
143,672 is a pretty big number. It is such a large number that, if the legislation does not pass, it would be pretty easy for organizations like ACORN to find multiple families from all 86 of these congressional districts whose homes could have been saved by cramdown, but which instead were foreclosed upon. Once people find these local families, it would be pretty easy for organizations like Brave New Films could get them on camera, and get them to say something like this:
Last year, I lost my home. President Obama supported legislation that would have let hundreds of thousands of families like mine save their homes in bankruptcy court. Sadly, Congressman X voted with Wall Street banks instead. We lost our home, even though Congressman X could have saved it. So, in this year's Democratic primary, I am voting to kick Congressman X out of office.
Once these films are ready, it would be pretty easy for PACs like Accountability Now to turn them into ads, and to make sure those ads are seen on television. I'm sure that voting to foreclose on local families, at the behest of Wall Street and against the wishes of President Obama, would go over really well with Democratic primary voters around the country.
Just sayin'. Maybe this is something Democratic members of Congress should think about before voting against HR 1106 next week.
Still unclear as to who is pushing the delay: The culprit behind the delay can still be best described as "centrist Democrats" and "the financial services industry." As of this time, there are still few other specifics. I have heard second hand rumors that the New Democrats coordinated the delay in order to "flex some muscle." This would make sense, since the New Democrats have been public about feeling left out of the state of play in the House recently, and have indicated that they are going to target financial services regulations as a means of regaining influence. However, trying to get even more specific than "New Democrats" has been difficult, as the individual names I have heard behind the delay and water down effort are contradicted by my different sources.
On Ellen Tauscher: Two days ago, I asked Open Left readers to contact Representative Ellen Tauscher's office, urging her to stop listening to the financial services industry, and start listening to threatened homeowners. Her communications director contacted me today to point out that she voted in favor of the rule on HR 1106, which implies support. Also, I was told that Tauscher has not met with one member or representative of the financial services industry on this bill, but did work closely with the Judiciary committee which sent the bill to the House floor. In the extended entry, I provide a list of ways that her office indicated she was working to "strengthen" the bill, rather than "water it down."
A more complicated relationship: This week, on a couple of occasions, I have implied a crude, quid pro quo relationship between centrist Democrats and corporate PACs. The actual relationship, of course, is a bit more complicated. In particular, many centrist Dems simply see eye to eye with the corporate lobbyists who funnel PAC money their way, and no real arm twisting is needed. The corporate PACs are simply supporting like-minded individuals, many of whom have a background in the industry (such as Representative Tauscher, who worked on Wall Street). These Representatives are rarely working at the behest of the industries in question, and are instead simply working toward shared, usually pro-corporate goals on their own.
Durbin's slip-up: Yesterday, Senator Durbin , the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, told a reporter that he was willing to water down the legislation so that it would only apply to sub-prime loans. While he might have been taken out of context, or simply been speaking in error, given the 60 vote threshold in the Senate it is likely that is what will happen to the legislation by the time it is delivered to President Obama's desk. Because of the current political climate, the goal of centrist Democrats and the banking industry is not actually to defeat the bill as they did in the past, but simply to narrow it and water it down. Depressingly, that effort is likely to succeed.
Obama administration to the rescue?: The best chance for keeping the legislation strong and applicable to as wide a range of homeowners as possible comes from the Obama administration itself. On Monday, Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan will speak to House Democrats, and make a direct appeal for not narrowing or otherwise watering down the cram-down legislation. The administration does hold a lot of sway with congressional Democrats right now, and is riding high in the polls, so this appeal might just work. Let's hope so.
This bill is another test of the Obama administration's ability to sway center-right Democrats and Republicans. Unlike the stimulus, let's hope that no concessions are made without an actual promise of votes. Also, this vote should be a great test of whether or not members are voting with corporate interests, or with the interests of their constituents.
One of the key policies needed to solve the housing crisis will be mortgage "cram down" legislation. "Cram down," which is probably poorly named, will allow bankruptcy judges to reduce mortgage payments to match current home values, rather than the inflated values of the housing bubble era (read more on "cram down" here). This legislation, introduced by Representative John Conyers (D-MI) in the House (HR 200), and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) in the Senate (S 61), will allow hundreds of thousands of people to stay in their homes at this critical juncture in our economy. It is supported by President Obama, andincluded as a principle in the administration's housing plan (see page 4).
Tomorrow, the House will vote on Representative Conyer's bankruptcy cram down. The whip count is unclear right now, but some Blue Dogs and New Democrats, including Melissa Bean (D-IL), Dennis Moore (D-KS), and New Democratic chair Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), are working on behalf of the financial services industry to water down the legislation. Tauscher in particular is problematic, both because of her leadership role in one of the ideological caucuses, and also because rumors are that she has organized up to two dozen members thus far. It is about time that Tauscher, and the Representatives she is organizing, stop listening to industry lobbyists who do not have the public interest in mind.
So, let's make Representative Tauscher listen to someone else right now. Contact Ellen Tauscher, and urge her to stop organizing other Democrats to water down HR 200. She needs to listen to honewoners, not to the financial industry that got us into this economic disaster:
Email form (California residents only)
D.C. office: 202.225.1880
Not only is helping struggling homeowners the right thing to do, but if we don't turn the corner on the mortgage and economic crisis, then Democrats will find themselves in the same bad electoral position Republicans currently face.
Tauscher is key to this vote, and she can be influenced. After she was threatened by a primary challenge during much of 2007, her voting habits distinctly changed for the better. As such, if you are feeling cheeky enough, it might not hurt to mention that when you call.
Contact Representative Ellen Tauscher on HR 200!
Email form (California residents only)
D.C. office: 202.225.1880
Occupying a place roughly equidistant between the Blue Dogs and the Progressives, but slightly to the right of the House Democratic caucus as a whole, the New Democrats are an often overlooked third (and now fourth) ideological group within the House Democratic caucus as a whole. Ideologically speaking, the New Democrats are closely aligned with 1990's Clintonian policies, and the Democratic Leadership Council. Generally speaking, it is a corporatist group that is left-wing on cultural issues. Of any ideological group in either major political party, the New Democrats were consistently the staunchest supporters of the Wall Street bailout, for example.
Arguing against David Sirota, Nate Silver argues that voting in favor of the bailout was progressive, and opposing it was conservative:
Nevertheless, the vote may be interesting from the standpoint of figuring out where the different coalitions in the Congress stood. There is a notion, which I think is a misguided notion, that the proper "progressive" stance is to oppose the bailout. Occasionally, you'll come across an issue that splits the political spectrum literally down the middle, with the most progressive members and the most conservative members of the House uniting on one direction on a measure, and moderates in both parties taking the other stance. Is the bailout one such issue?
No, it isn't. On the contrary, this was a fairly conventional vote in which the more a Congressman tends to define themselves as liberal or progressive, the more likely they were to vote to extend the bailout. The Congressional Progressive Caucus voted in favor of continuing the bailout by a 49-15 margin; by contrast, the more conservative Blue Dog Democratic Caucus voted 27-17 to block the bailout. And nearly every Republican voted against the bailout.
The problem with these claims is that Nate only looks at one of the three bailout votes in the House, and the one that he admits was "entirely symbolic" at that. Further, he leaves out one of the three ideological caucuses: the moderate New Democrats who are affiliated with the DLC. Looking at all three votes and all three ideological caucuses, the picture becomes a lot more complicated.
One little noticed part of the corruption problems encompassing Democrats like Rod Blagojevich in Illinois and William Jefferson in Louisiana is that they come from the more conservative/DLC/New Democratic wing of the party. Blago, when he was in the House, was the only Illinois Democrat to vote for the war, and as Governor pursued culture war issues like cracking down on violent video games. Jefferson was one of the few CBC members to vote for the war in Iraq, and has a well-trod history of voting against corporate regulations.
New Democrats are kind of struggling to find their niche at this point, ideologically speaking. There's not a lot of oomph left in the free market Democrat mantra, and the corruption scandals here suggest that this is in some ways simply about low rent pay to play.
Crisitunity analyzes who flipped by caucus. Here are my stats. My original caucus breakout is here, though it's slightly different than Crisitunity's and based on this spreadsheet.
CBC 69.7% (30-8)
New Democrats 79.3% (46-12)
Blue Dogs 63.8% (30-17)
Progressive Caucus 69.4% (50-17)
Basically, this was a caucus wide vote, with New Democrats leading the way. The Blue Dogs have the most swing members who were allowed to vote 'no'. The Progressives and the CBC really flipped on this vote, probably because of heavy lobbying from Obama himself. Meanwhile, on the right, the Republican Study Committee stayed mostly against the bill. The GOP leadership is basically powerless at this point.
Obama pushed Congress hard on this. It's his bailout now, my friends. Let's hope it works.
Update: Here's Will Roger's delivering a Colbert-like Roast to bankers in 1924. Really funny, and timely.
Blue Dogs: 59.57% yes
New Democrats: 62.71% yes
Progressives: 47.76% yes
Congressional Black Caucus: 46.15% yes
Lots of New York progressives voted yes, some surprising yes votes include Keith Ellison, Robert Wexler, and Maxine Waters. Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak continue their descent into Bush Dog territory. Some surprising no votes include Gene Taylor, Heath Shuler, and Mike McIntyre.
Most but not all of the 'no' votes from the Blue Dogs and New Democrats are freshmen or members in tight races. By contrast, the only contested race for a progressive caucus member in which the member voted 'no' was Tom Udall. That's roughly a proxy for who has to listen to public pressure; the New Dems and Blue Dogs go left because of public pressure, the Progressives go even further left out of conviction.
The bailout failed because of pure political cowardice. I used the Rothenberg Political Report to find the House incumbents who are in tough races (i.e. ones they could lose). There were 44 House members listed - 20 Democrats and 24 Republicans. Of those 44, only eight voted for the bill.
Who's interested in doing more analysis? I can give you access to the spreadsheet, or you can just download it and work on it on your own.
Regional pressures - New York which is heavily Democratic voted 25-4 for, Arizona which is split evenly voted - 0-8 against (David Kowalski)
Fladem points out that 34 of 50 members in close races according Cooke voted no
I added the Congressional Black Caucus onto the spreadsheet. They are roughly in line with the progressive caucus.
Recently, Chris Bowers asked if Obama represents a possible deal between progressives and the Democratic establishment. I suspect that this sort of analysis is oversimplified and that there are more than two main poles in the party. My hypothesis is that the Democratic Party functions as the sort of coalition that you might find in a parliamentary government.
On top of the Des Moines Register going for Clinton, The Boston Globe doing for Obama, and Joe Lieberman going for John McCain, there are yet more endorsements today:
Marie Culver, wife of Iowa Governor Chet Culver, endorses Edwards. In 2004, when Kerry won the endorsement of Tom Vilsack's wife, it seemed to help him out quite a bit.
Republican Iowa Representative Steve King said he would endorse Romney, but then endorsed Thompson. Romney's campaign officials were even in the room when he made the announcement. I know that I am cheering for Romney on the Republicans side, but this is still pretty funny.
It is difficult to say how much endorsements matter. My guess is that they matter a little bit, but not too much. Even the big ones from last election cycle probably coincided with surges from Edwards and Kerry, rather than causing surges by Edwards and Kerry.
Update Nice insight from Dave Kowalski in the comments:
Looking at the three House members: Braley was President of the Iowa association of trial lawyers. Natch, he goes for ex-trial lawyer Edwards. Loebsack is an ex college professor. Again, makes sense that he goes for the former part time law school instructor Obama. Boswell is old and ex military. Hillary is the choice.
I had a conversation with a Democratic staffer a few days ago about FISA, and he told me that, while I had a legitimate point that civil liberties are important, how could I know why the Democrats passed the evisceration of civil liberties and the expansion of executive power? I wasn't in the meetings, and the reason for the law was classified. So how could I object? After all, Director of National Intelligence Director and Republican Daddy figure that all the Democrats love Mike McConnell was telling high level Democrats about very serious chatter in August. It's a secret why Bush needs more power, but the Democratic leadership gave it to him anyway because Mike McConnell is an honorable man, like Colin Power and David Petraeus.
It turns out McConnell was lying. Awesome. Good job, Democrats.
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.
