One of the interesting things about the Blue Dogs is that very few of them are actually vulnerable. In fact, the Republicans don’t even appear to be overly eager to defeat most of them.
One of the Republican leaders in [Mike] Ross’s district, Garland County GOP Chairman Glenn Gallas, was less pessimistic about defeating Ross and suggested that the “political winds are blowing” for Tim Griffin, a Republican lawyer who was briefly a U.S. attorney for the state but resigned after the release of emails he’d sent about “caging” (sending mail to expired addresses as a way of challenging the residence of voters) during the 2004 election. But even Gallas did not think a strong Ross challenge was in the cards. “If you want to go super-big picture, there are much worse guys who need to be defeated.”
It doesn’t sound like Chairman Gallas’s heart is really in the fight to unseat Mike Ross. And I can kind of understand. I don’t really get excited about defeating Olympia Snowe. I like Olympia Snowe and I wish she had more moderate company in the Republican Party. But the Republicans can’t win back control of the House unless they clean out at least some of the Blue Dogs. Their only target-rich area is in the South. Southerners, for whatever reason, have not warmed up to our new president. More than half of them aren’t even sure the president is legally eligible for the job.
That makes it kind of hard for a southern Democrat to get reelected, don’t you think? There’s a reason that Rep. Parker Griffith (D-AL) just said he won’t vote for Pelosi as speaker next time around. It’s the same reason that Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) declined to endorse Obama over McCain. Their constituents really don’t like having a black president and it’s making them insane. Well, that, and they’re deluged with right-wing hate radio all day long. Classic racist appeals are no longer tenable, so you don’t see too much of that anymore. Instead, you hear that Obama was born in Kenya and he wants to compel everyone to circumcise their children, and he wants to kill your grandma and all the veterans. They’ll say any fucking thing except what they’re really thinking. It almost makes me long for the days of Paula Jones and Troopergate and Whitewater and the Mena Airport and Vince Foster. Those lies at least had the aura of plausibility.
But I was talking about the Blue Dogs. And the way I see it, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for the Blue Dogs to go running away from Nancy Pelosi and the president. Not on health care anyway. When more than half your constituents don’t even believe that the president is a natural born citizen I think you need to show some tangible results to convince them to reelect a Democrat. The Democratic Party was pretty popular in Arkansas until Obama came along. The people there voted for Democrats for a reason, and I think health care was one of those reasons. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that the Democrats dominated the federal elections in Arkansas because they’re so good at protecting a women’s right to choose and pushing to end Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.
It shouldn’t be so hard to get the Blue Dogs to vote for Obama’s agenda. They really are pretty safe in their districts, and if that is going to change it isn’t going to be because Obama passed health care reform. In fact, the weaker Obama is, the more of a drag he’s going to be. The problem, as I see it, is that a lot of these Blue Dogs are really just Republicans who ran on the Blue ticket. They are thwarting the president because they don’t believe in the agenda of the national party. Political survival has little to do with it.
Off Topic, sorry.
Ted Kennedy has just died as a result of his brain cancer.
Now is the time to honor his memory and introduce a NEW healthcare bill offered in his name. Perhaps the president should do a joint session of congress with an emotional speech and a deadline of a few days to bring it to a vote. Make it as close to single-payer as possible and name it after Senator Kennedy.
I would bet most of the Blue Dogs are Republicans .. who are Democrats only because it happened to be easier to advance their career that way … see Max Baucus in the Senate
Here in Illinois, there was a massive shift of sitting Republicans (state level) to the Democratic Party after the top of the ticket melted down in 2004. All that is left is the true believers. This may explain partly why Rod Blagojevich had so much trouble getting anything populist, like S-CHIP expansion through. I say partly, because Blagojevich’s personality and Speaker Madigan’s ambitions had a lot to do with it also. But corrupt politicians have no true ideology, they just want to stay on the gravy train.
One of the things about the Blue Dogs is that they aren’t really being obstructionist. Some of their members like Mike Ross, Charlie Melancon, and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin are using the Blue Dog label to cover for the fact that they are in the pockets of the insurance companies. Business Week had an article that among other things outlined Ross’s relationship (and Steny Hoyer’s as well) with United Healthcare’s lobbying efforts.
This fight is not about ideology. To continue to play into this media narrative is to ignore those Blue Dogs who very well might support the public option.
No longer represent a geographic and ideological core. It’s deficit hawk sheep dip.
Booman, you miss the reason that the Blue Dogs are pretty safe in their districts. It’s the fact that they don’t always go along with Obama on everything. They are not a rubber stamp for this administration, and that’s the way it should be. Call them what you want, but most of them aren’t simply going to roll over and placate Obama. There are so many questions that the Blue Dogs want answered before they can support this.
Forgetting the fact that the “deathers” and “birthers” and the other crazies out there in Republican land don’t want this passed simply because they hate Obama, but the fact is that there are a lot of normal people out there who are wary of anything the government gets involved in, and most of those who are worried live in areas where moderate and conservative Democrats live.
Look, I think the health care system needs a major overhaul. I am one of the 47 million who are not insured. But I want this done right, and not passed for the sake of just passing something. But I am skeptical and remain so, just like so many do too.
I think you have it partially wrong. If the Blue Dogs don’t support any of the Democratic agenda, why are they Democrats? Sure a few Blue Dogs vote their conscience, but most of them are corporate whores. Not only that, but guys like Gene Taylor are content to lie to their constituents about health care.
Part of why they’re safe in their districts is that they buck the national party and part of it is that certain elements of the Democratic platform are popular even in red districts. Abortion rights are probably unpopular in some of these districts. Gay Rights are probably unpopular there. But access to health care isn’t a drag on the Democrats in red districts. It’s one of the reasons they got elected in the first place.
The choice presented in the primary was clear. Continue to chase an aging, declining voter base in the upland South or run to an emerging Democratic coalition in the Atlantic coast states.
The idea that Clinton had an alternate path to the White House is fantasy. The machine could have MAYBE drug her across the line in Arkansas for old times sake but she wasn’t winning any other state that Obama didn’t win. Plus the Clinton-Penn propensity for half-assing it would have shoved NE-02, IN, VA & NC off the table.
The five Senate seats in the “McCain belt” will be lost regardless of who is President or whatever the issue du jour.
It may well be Lincoln in 2010 and the open seat in KY is fools gold. The plays are the FL and NC Senate seats and the state races in SC, FL and GA. That and take the Texas House.
When fully one half of our national political parties has gone freaking insane, the natural result (as we saw in 2006 and 2008 and ongoing polls) is that independents and “reasonable” conservatives flock to the other party.
So now the Democratic Party is essentially responsible for advancing everyone’s agenda, moderates and reasonable conservatives included. This cannot hold, and the tension we see today between Progressives and Blue Dogs will continue for as long as the Republican Party is engulfed by Palinism.
Everyone needs the Republican Party to get its act together, if only to responsibly shoulder the burden of some of the nation’s constituents. Either that, or the GOP will go extinct and the Dem Party will split up. This coalition cannot hold.