Why does Gerald Seib sound surprised?
The upshot is one of the great political ironies of the year: A national conservative wave will hit hardest not at the most liberal Democrats, but at the most conservative Democrats. The Democratic caucus left behind will be, on balance, more liberal than it was before the election.
Meantime, a similar dynamic, only in the opposite direction, will be unfolding within the Republican House caucus. The election figures to bring to Washington some 50 newcomers on the Republican side—some of whom will replace retiring Republicans, others who will take over Democratic seats—and few of them are from the political center.
Instead, the tea-party movement has helped produce a crop of Republican newcomers who are ideologically to the right, and often quite intense about their views. “These people aren’t interested in coming here to compromise,” said one senior GOP House aide.
This is what progressives have been telling the Blue Dogs for two years. We’re not going to lose, you are. If you want to win elections in conservative areas of the country, you have to stand up for what you believe in. You have to sell your ideas to your constituents. You can’t just stick up for the pharmaceutical, insurance, and financial services industries. Their money is helpful, but people have Republicans to vote for if they want to serve corporate America. Watering down progressive population made it unpopular even on the left, and now voters don’t even care if the candidates voted for it, so long as their party did.
Nothing the Blue Dogs did over the last two years made any sense from a political point of view. They either should have killed the president’s agenda or they should have made it as popular as possible. They did neither, and now they’ll join the ranks of the unemployed (at least, until corporate America starts hiring again).
And so will Russ Feingold and Nancy Pelosi. So really what’s your point? This shit is just fucked up all the way around. There is no damn upside to it!
I’m not ready to concede the House or Feingold’s seat.
If he were to somehow win it would be very interesting to see how it came about.
I take it you think we’re keeping the Senate?
I think the House is a foregone conclusion, to be honest.
I just cast my vote for Heath Schuler and considered it as a vote for Pelosi, thanks for the justification, it was a hard vote to cast. The poll attendant said that the early voting in the city has been strong for a mid term. We spoke about the large selection of judges and how important those votes were to our lives on a more local level, he agreed but said that most people don’t bother to vote for them. I guess some people can’t be bothered to do their homework but that sure doesn’t stop them from bitching.Go America
I made that point on Daily Kos just the other day – what the hell is the purpose of a Ben Nelson? He votes against his own party and yet if he was to run for election as a Republican, he wouldn’t even get 25% of the vote. What is his purpose, other than to piss off EVERYBODY?
I think we will retain the House. I still can’t figure out why it is so easily dismissed as a good possibility when we only need to get 23 of the 42 Tossup districts and all the Lean Dem. !!! They are tossups! So it could go either way and getting half of them are straight odds. Have they so convinced us with the Rove and Scott Rasmussen propaganda machine about the bs “enthusiasm gap” and that we don’t see the numbers right in front of us?
http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/house
Rahm had to recruit the blue dogs to get Dems a majority in 2006. It has come with a price. With what Dems have managed to pass in the 4 years since ’06, I think it has been a good trade. We sometimes focus too much on the downside. Take the long view.
I’m not trying to be a smart ass or nothing, but wasn’t the point of the “50 State Strategy” to fund and try to elect candidates in all 50 States even the reddest of the red? Is this the strategey that many credit Howard Dean with? So how does Rahm E fit into that narrative?
I ask cause I am generally new to politics, and I really don’t know much about the DNC/Liberal environs back then?
Actually, I’m not attacking Rahm at all. I actually commend him and Howard Dean for doing what they had to do to get Dems a majority in 2006. Rahm deserves credit.
My point is, the bigger the tent, the harder it is to control party discipline. The GOP is slightly better on this front than the Dems. Nothing comes free.
I think Dems will learn from this experience.
It’s Rahm’s fault because he recruited the most Conservative candidates possible. It didn’t matter the district. And there were plenty of district(like the one Boo and me live in) where Rahm recruited crappy candidates(or no candidate as was the case two years ago .. in a Democrat leaning district)
In fairness, Van Hollen is responsible for the Roggio fiasco.
The answer to that questions is ‘yes.’
The 94 elections were a major realignment that finally made the Republican Party the party of the South. Prior to that election, we had lots of people like Sen. Richard Shelby or former Sen. Zell Miller or former Sen. Phil Gramm in the Democratic Party. And they were the good ones. All the dead-ender segregationists were in our party, too, although they’d learned to whistle real high.
The Blue Dogs were formed in 1995, in response to the wipe-out of southern Democrats the prior November. They are a major improvement on their predecessors, at least on issues of race. On economic matters, it’s more complicated. The old Southern Democrats tended to few the New Deal more favorably than the Blue Dogs.
The problem with the Blue Dogs is not that they represent the culturally conservative views of their districts, but that they tend to rely on outside corporate funding to compete with their local chambers of commerce and religious groups that fund the Republicans. Being neither culturally conservative enough nor economically populist enough, their only route to victory is to have vastly more money than their opponents. And the poor Democrats in their districts don’t have that kind of cash.
Some Blue Dogs have the endorsement of their local Chamber of Commerce over the Republican opponent although the US Chamber has become a front group for the Republican Party. Which makes those Blue Dogs very concerned about “business climate” issues like taxes and regulations that might hit local industries.
Ah, I put that response in the wrong place. It was an answer to rosebowl. Your question was on Rahm.
When Rahm served as DCCC chairman in 2006, he did an outstanding job. He recruited very well, and he was a tough son of a bitch who rode his candidates to raise money and campaign hard. He was on the phone harassing them constantly. And the results spoke for themselves. We took back the House.
But there were a handful of cases where he put his fingers on the scale to help a conservative Democrat win a primary against a more liberal Democrat in seats where either could have won. That is what won him the acrimony you see from the progressive community. Well, that, and he had a rather large and loud disagreement with Howard Dean about his 50-state strategy, which Rahm thought was a clueless misallocation of funds. The truth is that the two strategies wound up working rather well together, with Dean helping Rahm win some seats he probably didn’t expect to win. And then Rahm wanted all the credit, of course.
The Democratic strategists did not have to recruit Blue Dogs to have a majority in 2006, they had to recruit candidates who could win. Their conventional wisdom was that they had to recruit Blue Dogs.
That said, it is not as much a failure of Pelosi’s leadership to get them on board with significant change and defining the center of policy as it is with their mentor in the House, Steny Hoyer. Hoyer let them be fraidy cats instead of taking principled stands. That left them open for the “they don’t stand for anything” attack and then the “they helped Obama attack.” Of course they didn’t help at all, but when have facts gotten in the way of Republican campaign rhetoric.
Sorry to be OT Boo,
But I just wanted to give an update on what’s going on in my neighborhood.
So I know historically, Afr Am don’t’ really vote in large numbers in midterm elections, but I’m thinking this year may be different.
Now let me say that I don’t’ expect some astronomical numbers come Nov 2, it’s just that I only have anecdotal evidence that the Dem and particularly President Obama’s push for Afr Am to vote this midterms are actually working. Are they working in large enough numbers to avert a tidal wave? I’m not sure.
I can only tell you, that in conversations I’ve had, and listening to local “urban” radio and national “urban” radio, people are listening.
Anyway, I thought I’d give ya’ll a little scope on what’s going on. DNC and allies really do have a presence on “urban” radio. I listen to both my “urban” radio stations/program, and also to the 3 major nationally syndicated radio programs. So here’s a breakdown, I’m sorry if it’s too long.
Sept 10, 2010: President Obama calls in for an interview on the Tom Joyner Morning Show (TJMS is a nationally syndicated radio show that can be found in essentially every market where there is a significant enough Afr Am population. It’s pretty true, that you can probably reach more Afr Am voters/listeners/communities going on the TJMS than you can on the internet or TV). A transcript of the interview can be found here: Sept 10, 2010: President Obama on the TJMS
October 06, 2010: President Obama calls in for an interview on the Michael Baisden Show (MBS is nationally syndicated and can be found in most major urban areas where there is a large or fair enough population of Afr Am, including NYC, Miami, SC, NC, NOLA, Chicago, etc. If you want to get “in touch” with city-dwellers in urban hotspots, MBS is maybe 2nd best to TJMS.
October 13, 2010: Michelle Obama calls into TJMS. Here is a transcript of that interview: Michelle Obama on the TJMS
October 14, 2010: President Obama calls in for an interview on the Steve Harvey Morning Show
October 26, 2010: President Obama does another interview on the TJMS today; he also did an interview on Rev Al Sharpton’s “Hour of Power” radio show. Here is a transcript of President Obama’s interview on the TJMS: October 26, 2010: President Obama on TJMS
October 27, 2010: President Obama will be doing an interview with the Rickey Smiley Morning Show. The RSMS is also nationally syndicated. Its listeners are heavily populated in the Southern states though. If you want to reach younger people in GA, AL, SC, TX, etc, then the RSMS is the way to go.
Of all the shows President Obama does, it’s the Ricky Smiley Morning Show that is usually heard on the majority of the “hip-hop” stations which of course means they are geared towards the younger urban population, which includes not only Blacks, but some younger Hispanics as well.
This is only the interviews that I can remember off hand, which does not include the interview with Rep Clyburn, DNC Chair Tim Kaine, Dem Pollsters, congressmen, union organization, etc. This also does not include all the radio ads that I heard beginning with Obama’s opening salvo on the TJMS in September. I listen to my local station and the national syndicated programs, and I can honestly say that there is an ad either from the local Dems (Dallas-Fort Worth), the state Dems, or the DNC. Also, everyday not matter what the topic dujour, all these programs I mentioned have allocated segments to GOTV and encouraging people to “don’t sit out”. One really effective one I’ve heard, uses clips from Beck, Rush, Hannity, Fixed News, etc and follows the extreme rhetoric with a simple “OUR President needs you”.
Now that I see how large this comment is, I realize that I maybe shoulda made it into a diary.
Sorry
Far as I can tell, for some members of society, corporate America is always hiring.