A quick glance at Progressive Punch's lifetime rating of Democratic Senators suggests a conclusion that is quite the opposite of the dominant narrative on new Democratic members of Congress. Overall, the freshman class of Democrats is more progressive than the caucus as a whole. Here are the ten freshmen, ordered by their lifetime progressive ranking:
1. Sheldon Whitehouse-RI, 98.79
2. Sherrod Brown-OH, 97.14
3. Ben Cardin-MD, 96.75
5. Bob Menendez-NJ, 96.13
6. Bernie Sanders-VT, 95.93
10t. Bob Casey Jr.-PA, 93.93
10t. Amy Klobuchar-MN, 93.93
27. Jim Webb-VA, 86.84
33. Jon Tester-MT, 83.40
39. Claire McCaskill-MO, 82.45
That comes out to a mean of 92.53, behind only the lifetime scores of well-known progressives Jack Reed, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Frank Lautenberg, and Carl Levin. Remarkably, it puts Bernie Sanders as the median for the new class, and I doubt that anyone would consider Bernie Sanders a centrist. So far, this seems to be a pretty progressive group, at least in terms of voting habits.
In the Senate, the main problem does not appear to be Democratic voting habits. Instead, it seems to be mainly a problem of leadership, centering on Republicans needing only 50 votes to pass legislation and Democrats needing 60. This is demonstrative more of a lack of fight and of leadership in the Senate than of a lack of progressivism. At 89.51 and 86.57, Russ Feingold (22nd) Chris Dodd (28th) might be in the middle of the pack for Democrats among lifetime progressive scores, but I'm more than willing to trade a couple of votes for a series of principled fights. Progressive voting records are good, but if they come in the form of an Ono, opposition in name only or "Oh, no!," then functionally they are less valuable than a slightly less progressive voting record because they hand Republicans 10 free votes.
We don't just need more progressive Democrats-we also need feistier Democrats. Even if we win the White House and pick up six Senate seats in November, and even the new President and all six new Senators are progressives, we will still have a problem passing legislation unless we pick more public fights. This is still why I favor John Edwards, pending at least the results of the now close Nevada caucus. The press may not like him precisely because he has become so feisty, but I think that these voting records show that more Democrats and more progressive Democrats aren't enough to pass progressive legislation. On top of more and better Democrats, we need fighting Democrats, too.
"We will and we must pay for whatever cost to protect the American people," said House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "But tragically, unfortunately, incredibly, the war is not making us safer."
Incredibly? Hoyer, who voted for the war five years ago, is clearly speaking from the perspective of someone who thought invading Iraq was a good idea and would work smoothly. This perspective goes a long way toward explaining why he pushes Democrats in Congress to avoid more aggressive tactics to end the war, or at least show that they are trying to do more to end the war. I wonder how much of a divide there is between the roughly one-third of the country who opposed the war from the start, and the roughly one-third of the country who thought he war was a good idea, but have seen changed their minds. People like Hoyer are barely willing to admit they are wrong, much less pursue aggressive tactics to bring the war to end. Somehow, they either don't want their noses rubbed in it, or they remain stuck in the mindset that voting for the war five years ago was a smart move politically.
At the time, I was less than convinced of the merits of Chris's suggestion of designating a group of Dem senators, equivalent to the Bush Dogs, as the ONOs.
There, I was arguing on general principles: in particular, that it was wrong (if not delusional) to think that Dem senators who regularly help the GOP in their hours of need did so out of fear or venality: it's clear beyond a peradventure that they are really most sincerely non-progressive.
However, having spreadsheeted Senate voting information for the 110th for the period up to the August recess, I thought I'd run some numbers to see quite how the ONOs match up to the non-ONOs when it comes to hurting the Dem party in the Senate.
The handiest way of doing this is to look at votes on Democratic rolls.
In addition to the Rove Dogs, otherwise known Democrats who support legislation that is damaging to long-term Democratic electoral interests, I would like to close today's writing efforts by offering up another caucus, this time in the Senate: the Onos, or Opposition in Name Only caucus. Who are the Onos? They are Senators who claim they oppose something conservative, and who even vote against that conservative something, but who refuse to actually filibuster that conservative something. Ono's also can be spelled "Oh no," as in, "oh no, I'm not actually going to stand up for what I believe in."
So, the nucleus of the Ono caucus are those fourteen Democratic Senators, plus Lieberman who voted against Alito, but didn't filibuster him. The Onos are the answer to Glen Greenwald's question from earlier today. If Democrats claim they need 60 votes to do anything, then why wasn't 44 votes enough to stop Mukasey?
Thus, at least 44 Senators claimed to oppose Mukasey's confirmation -- more than enough to prevent it via filibuster. So why didn't they filibuster, the way Senate Republicans have on virtually every measure this year which they wanted to defeat?
It is because of the Onos, the name I have given to Democrats who claim they oppose conservatives, but who are not willing to actually put themselves on the line in doing so. This is a group that hands Republicans ten free votes on every issue before the Senate. This is very much the wimpy, frightened, paper mache caucus, whose opposition to conservatives is only skin deep. Sure, they will vote the right way, but beyond that they won't do a single damn thing to actually stop the conservative working majority. I have little doubt that the "Oh, no!"s were the difference on Mukasey, too, since thirteen of the fourteen Democrats identified in the caucus voted against Mukasey. Although a cloture vote was never held, I have little doubt most of them will unwilling to filibuster. Also, in this instance, Mary Landrieu left the caucus entirely, in order to join Ben Nelson in the more overt "I just prefer voting with Republicans" caucus. (Granted, in her case it can also be known as the "FEMA destroyed by voting base" caucus.)
Even if Ono's, or "Oh, No!"s is not the right language, we need to develop a narrative around this group of Senators. We need a narrative about them that has popular resonance. By handing ten free votes to Republicans on every issue before the Senate, their unwillingness to take further action to stop conservatives is a serious detriment to the Democratic and progressive causes. However, they can always defend themselves in town hall meetings, or even primary elections, by pointing out "I vote with the party all the time." In order to change that, the necessary procedural steps that are required to really oppose Republicans and conservatives need to start having popular resonance. Right now, half the country thinks that Democrats need to be doing more to, for example, end the Iraq war, but most of them probably don't know exactly what "more" means. They want Democrats to do more to stop Republicans and conservatives, but no one is getting out the message on what more means, and on who isn't doing that more. Of course, there is plenty of more to do, as even the Politco pointed out a couple months ago. In the Senate, it is the Onos preventing this "more" from happening. In the House, it seems to be Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer. But how does one get a populist message out as to who the problem is and why, much less run a primary campaign against these Democrats, when they can simply fall back and claim "just look at my voting record and you will see I am with you?" In other words, how does one put pressure on Democrats who are not taking the proper parliamentary maneuvers to forward a progressive agenda? That is not an easy question to answer.
This is a serious problem. Our disagreement with a large number of Democrats is primarily procedural, and that it is very difficult for a message like that to make a major, populist impact. We political junkies in the blogosphere know what the problem is: they (the Onos) are not filibustering, they are not forcing the other side to actually filibuster, they are not calling enough votes, they are intentionally recruiting conservatives, they are shifting party money to target red districts that will be difficult to hold, etc. However, all of these disagreements are mainly procedural and insidery. As such, they are not the sorts of things that it is easy to put pressure on someone for not doing. I would love to run primary challenges against Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer on these grounds, since they are the major roadblocks to a more aggressive Democratic caucus in the House. However, how do you convince the Democratic base to reject their own leaders when those leaders seem to have very good voting records? That isn't easy, as bringing mass public pressure on behind the scenes operations never is. And yet, these are the same brand of Democrats who are responsible for Republicans only needing 50 votes, while we need 60 votes. They hand ten votes to Republicans on every issue before the Senate, but the arguments to be made against them are very much inside baseball.
Personally, I am simply going to start by naming them, and then documenting their actions as time goes forward. Any ideas beyond that point are more than welcome.
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