There are four pillars to the working conservative majority in Washington D.C.: Bush, Bush Dogs, timid Democratic leadership, and a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate. Despite commanding an overwhelming amount of attention, the presidential election actually does not deal with many of these. In less than a year, Bush is leaving town on his own. Also, neither the Bush Dogs nor the Democratic congressional leadership will be impacted by the outcome of the primary campaigns. However, two immediate elections, the IL-03 congressional primary on February 5th and the MD-04 congressional primary on February 12th, will make a huge impact on both Bush Dog behavior and on the Democratic leadership. Further, these two primary campaigns are just about the last chance we have to influence the behavior of either Bush Dogs or the Democratic Congressional leadership for another two years.
Democrats who facilitate the conservative working majority (Bush Dogs and timid leaders) don't care about what we write, but they do care about what David Broder writes. Democrats who facilitate the conservative working majority don't care about low approval ratings among progressives, because they know the vast majority of us will vote for Democrats in the general election. Further, they don't even care about the small number of progressives who choose not to vote in general elections, because they are no threat to their dominance of the Democratic Party. Democrats who facilitate the conservative working majority also don't care if we decide to stop donating to them, because now that they are in the majority there is more than enough corporate PAC money to make up for that lost revenue.
Throughout the Bush Dog campaign, we have seen that the only way to change the behavior of Democrats who facilitate the conservative working majority is to spend resources on them. Four Bush Dogs flipped on SCHIP only when BlogPac and Blue America ran ads against them. Only two Bush Dogs, Dan Lipinski and Leonard Boswell, flipped their support on Iraq, and they also happen to be the only two Bush Dogs facing primary challenges. Although he is not technically a Bush Dog, the often conservative and corporate Al Wynn only joined the Out of Iraq caucus after Donna Edwards nearly defeated him back in September of 2006.
The only proven way for grassroots progressives to change Democratic behavior in this Congress has been to spend actual resources that make Democrats who facilitate the conservative working majority feel a legitimate, left-wing challenge to their position in Congress. Simply put, we have had no success in flipping Bush Dogs against whom we have spent no money. This is actually a lesson we have known for some time, given that the progressive grassroots were not taken seriously until Howard Dean was a legitimate threat to win the nomination, and since Democrats only really started running against the war in 2006 after Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary. Nothing else has worked so far.
Now, only two weeks from today, two of the three legitimately threatening progressive primary challenges against Democrats who facilitate the conservative working majority will be over. In other words, once the Donna Edwards and Mark Pera campaigns are over, our ability to influence the behavior of Bush Dogs and indeed the entire Democratic Congress will virtually evaporate. It is now, or never. Donate to Mark Pera and Donna Edwards today.
Concerning the direction of the Democratic Party over the next two years, these two primary campaigns are just as, if not more, important than the presidential nomination campaign. They are also two of our last chances to really influence the direction of the Democratic Party for quite some time. Make these opportunities count. Tell Bush Dogs and Democratic congressional leadership that they can't take you for granted, and that grassroots progressives will not be ignored. Donate to Mark Pera and Donna Edwards today.
It isn't the largest area of legislation, but for the first time in a long time, the conservative working majority was defeated in D.C. as both the House and the Senate over-rode Bush's veto of the water bill. CQ politics writes of the event:
The Senate overrode President Bush's veto of a massive water resources bill Thursday, marking the first time since he took office that Congress has enacted a law over his objections.
With Republicans deserting the president in droves, the Senate voted 79-14 to override Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act. The tally comfortably surpassed the two-thirds majority required.
The Senate's vote, which enacted the bill, followed a 361-54 House vote on Nov. 6 to overturn the veto of the $23.2 billion authorization bill.
Bush has vetoed four other bills - two expanding stem cell research, one seeking to set timetables for a U.S. troop drawdown in Iraq, and one expanding a children's health insurance program. The House sustained his vetoes those four, but not this one.
The only Democrats voting against the over-ride in either chamber were Claire McCaskill and Russ Feingold. I admit, if Feingold opposed it, that instantly sends up a red flag where I worry that this might not be such a great bill after all. There are few politicians that I trust pretty much absolutely, and Russ Feingold is one of them. I'll see if I can find out why he voted against this bill.
I still wish the cards had fallen differently, and that an opportunity for Feingold to run would have opened up. He is a candidate I would have had no problem getting behind, and I think he would have left everyone else's grassroots operation in the dust. Also of note on lamentable Presidential non-runs: in 1999, Paul Wellstone didn't run because for health reasons. Can you imagien how differently the history of the netroots and American politics would have turned had Wellstone run in 1999? There probably would never have been a Nader split, and many of the changes that Howard Dean's campaign brought for progressives might have happened four years earlier. I don't know if we have anyone like that on our bench right now: maybe Eliot Spitzer, maybe Deval Patrick.
Even with these laments, it is nice to see a crack in the matrix. The conservative working majority just suffered a defeat. More will be coming.
[Yes, Virginia, I've been asked to frontpage on the weekends.]
While I dared to dream of a Democratic landslide last year a little earlier than most, I started talking about about realignment just the month before the election. I wrote a post, "What A Dem Landslide Could Mean," in which I argued that political realignments happen when one party wins two consecutive wave elections in the House, It always starts in the House, though the timing of the Presidential election that gets all the glory can vary. In 1896, in fact, the Republicans actually lost a fair number of seats-but nothing compared to what they'd gained in 1892 and 1894.
Yesterday, there were two posts here that touched on the issue of realignment, which made me think it was time to write about it again. Then Chris invited me to start front-paging on weekends, so the opportunity seemed perfect-even if one of the posts was by Chris, and I probably disagree with it more than anything he's posted in months. But that's fine, because Chris's post is clearly part of a thinking-through process, and what I have to contribute here is part of that same process.
The first post is Chris's "It Is Either Iraq Blurring Strategy Or Iraq Realignment" and the second is David Sirota's "1994 Redux: The Consequences of Dems' New NAFTA". While I agree with a lot of the points made in both posts, I think that both contain some errors in perceiving the nature of realignment, what it takes to acheive, and what the possibilities for it are. This post will open up that discussion, and I'll continue it in a couple of follow-up diaries this weekend.
The more the Republican Brand suffers, the more we'll see lobbyist and corporate money flowing to the Democrats. If as a result, the Right-wing of the Democratic Party is strengthened, progressives will continue to be hung out to dry. In light of this, I'm not sure that a destroyed Republican Party is good for us. Much as I like to beat Republicans, I'm wary of the changes we are seeing in Kansas where moderate Republicans are becoming Democrats. I'm also suspicious of the strategy where we tolerate or support Conservative Democratic politicians with the excuse that their district is somewhat red,
I understand the idea that we shouldn't dump on other Democrats, and it is true that in most specific cases the Democrat is better than the Republican. I also agree that we can more easily reduce Republican presence in the Congress if we permit Conservative Democrats to win in Red States. I'm just pointing out that the cost of getting more Conservative Democrats will be to compromise the progressive side of the Party.
The first proof of that is noticing how the Bush Dogs continue voting to stay in Iraq. The second proof will be the fight over Single-Payer Health Care.
You know the Republicans and the Bush Dogs will join forces to strip out the little detail about permitting people to buy into Medicare, which forces the insurance industry to actually compete with a government single-payer health plan. I have no doubt that the plan proposed by Clinton or Edwards will end up as a health insurance mandate subsidized to save the insurance companies profits.
But, there is a positive side to this. Our issues are really, really popular, and the Iraq war is de-legitimizing the Republicans as well as the Conservative Democrats. Let's imagine we are facing a major realignment, one that has legs. What issues help drive the realignment? What political strategies do we have to counter the Conservative side of the Democratic Party? Does realignment mean voters just swing to the Democratic Party, or does it mean that progressive ideas come to dominate the Democratic Party?
As a result of the Iraq war, the current coalition structure in America, which is dominated by the conservative governing majority for at least two decades and continues to be so now, has a reached a breaking point. Realignments in American politics take place when there is no compromise to be had on the major issues of the day, and when the current governing majority is actually in the minority position on those issues nationwide. Iraq is just such a dominant issue on which there is no compromise, and the current conservative governing coalition of George Bush, Bush Dogs, congressional Republicans, and anti-MoveOn, anti-Reid Feingold Senators is opposed to the will of 60% of the American people on Iraq.
We have come to a point where either we will witness the success of the last-ditch effort of the conservative working majority to stay in power, the Iraq Blurring Strategy, or we will witness the completion of the Iraq realignment in the 2008 elections. I explain in the extended entry.
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