In Defense of Blue Dogs. Mostly.

Dammit A-man, I keep getting sucked into the same debate with you, but I can't help myself. Yes, Democrats can't win in some places unless they're Blue Dogs. Yes, the Blue Dogs are far better than their Republican oponents. Yes, we have shared goals. Yes, there is a patina of elitism and more than a patina of self-righteous dogmatism in some of the criticisms of Blue Dogs.

But still...

You write, "We Democrats should not be a party of purity trolls that turns out our Mike Castles."

And I say, why not? Republican purity trolls have been turning out heretics since 1978. Has it hurt them?

Once upon a time, the GOP was the big tent party. It included big government liberals, small government libertarians, anti-communists, religious folks, and pragmatic moderates who led the party. That party lost and lost and lost for 40 years. The trolls got to work in 1978. They turned out the Mike Castles of their day, but Republicans still picked up seats. By 1992, those purity trolls had cleaned out the Republican liberals and displaced the moderate leadership, yet in 1994 conservatives accomplished what the big tent moderates had failed to do for four decades. They won control of both houses of Congrss in a landslide vote. Even after their big Republican losses in 2006 and 2008, the purity trolls kept at it, and here they are back again in 2010.

In short, the rise of Republican purity trolls corresponds to rise of Republican political fortunes. At the very least, it does not seem to have hurt them. So why shouldn't Democrats follow the Republican example and become a party of purity trolls?

Nicely put.  Having moved from the Northwest to the Midwest  has definitely altered how I view national politics.  One of thread in all of this is that a core of the Democratic power in the rust belt is the unions, and while I support the union movement, we have to admit, if we're being honest, that there is what we would call a very socially conservative strain that is woven into it.  From homophobia to islamaphobia to the old standbys of racism and sexism.

The best speech during the 2008 election in my opinion was given by Richard Trumka because he so beautifully put what it is we are running up against and what it really means to say I am a Democrat, I am for the people, I am liberal.

And this is not to even talk about things like cap and trade which has absolutely no support in places like where I live because not only will individual household energy costs go up, but will make it harder to attract to business to relocate or expand into the area (and being the rust belt, it is definitely a hard sell to begin with).

If we want to be a minority party for a few years (decades) while we alter the collective dialog, that is one thing.  But if we want to get something done now, we have to accept the blue dogs.  And maintain the hope that once in the tent we can slowly shift them on things like gay marriage.

The problem with blue dogs is they're undisciplined; they tend to stray. They have no obedience. They just meander from one trash can to the next looking for a free meal and look for whatever is available for shelter in bad weather. In other words, strays have no loyalty but to themselves and their only objective is themselves. The only reason why they caucused with Democrats was because they left the door open for them to come in. Just because they settled down within the caucus didn't necessary imply they would follow...they were just looking for a warm place to relax. So the Democrat shouldn't have been too surprised when they found their attempts to create legislation was held back...blue dog loyalty lies elsewhere. Too bad he GOPer's won't have these issues with tea-baggers...tea-baggers are farther to the right than your typical GOPer so when they do stray it will be farther away from both GOPer's and Democrats.

A couple of points: I think you are only looking at progressive caucus members who are returning. When looking at the entire results I believe there will actually be more progressives than last congress. As you note, since the Dems lost the house it's not a huge thing in terms of advancing policy, but it appears there are more of 'em not less (likely new members: HI-01, LA-02, AL-07, RI-01, MI-13).

I kind of find the frame of #2 off-base to an extent. You are treating these caucus members as if they are a label and not people. Blue Dogs are a fiscal caucus. It isn't the only caucus a rep. is a member in nor is it an entire definition of a person's beliefs. It's used as a lazy sort of verbal shorthand for conservative democrats in general conversation, but when trying to do math with it and draw specific conclusions the issue should probably tighten a bit.

There really wasn't a 50/50 chance any random blue dog would vote for something. If you are talking about Minnick, he was a tough sell - he was doing "kill grandma" teabagger rallies on HCR Because he had bigger issues only tangentially related to fiscal conservatism (but did vote on FinReg and DADT). In contrast Harmon made an amazingly articulate case for the Public Option on fiscal conservative grounds (but half of 'em voted against it anyhow) because she's a fiscally conservative yet generally a proud Democrat. So, I think it's safe to call it a mixed bag on a person-by-person basis. Some were better than others, so depending on the loss it would either improve or worsen the 50/50 thing.

We also can't forget the art of whipping. If Pelosi already has the votes, it's OK to cross over if it helps someone win. What happened in the committees is where many issues with Blue Dogs in relation to negative policy impact come into play. That's a big piece to the issue. If they are playing on the team, they are supposed to be generally loyal in committee and then cross on the final vote if the whip count allows it. If *someone* in the party is going to get wiped out, I can understand how progressives would be happy it was mostly the Blue Dogs.

But regardless if blue-state progressives are happy or sad about how it went, it wasn't progressives on the coasts who said screw the Blue Dogs. They can't vote here. If the Blue Dogs are us, and they are our Dogs ... don't you figure the Democrats you assert love these guys would have turned out for them? I don't want to go too deep here, because I'd like to make another comment specifically focusing on my little corner of "fly over country".

It is a HUGE country. Arizona isn't Idaho isn't Tennessee. I really think there are as many specifics behind the reasons for defeat as there are states. I know this is more a "hey, don't hate on these guys so bad" than "why did these guys lose" post ... but complaining about them isn't the same as defeating them at the polls. They really did help damage the brand from time to time which is probably the most significant factor in many of these losses. I don't think it's too out of line to gloat a bit that they got a comeuppance for it. It's not like it changes anything.

You are right about Dean. Folks are pining for him out here ... he mounted a articulate case for progressiveness along with his 50 state strategy. He didn't do what he did by dumping on liberals like Rham's strategy calls for. But Kaine is just totally MIA -  he's giving Dems out here nothing to work with. And you are also totally correct to point out that the house really did pass stuff that initially delivered on Democratic promises despite ending up kind of lame by the end - especially on Stimulus and HCR (fin reg is more nuanced IMO).

Wow.  People actually believe this self-rationalization.  So if someone could just figure out for me why with the Democrats retaining pretty much all the support of democratic liberals/progressives and bleeding independent support like they did when they got shellacked last Tuesday how it still becomes the fault of progressives that Blue Dogs lost I'd much appreciate it.  I was told that all this caving to the GOP was 11ty dimensional chess playing and would win over Obamacans and Independents.  How'd that work out for you?  

I am not in opposition to Blue Dogs entirely.  I am in opposition of Blue Dogs being allowed to run the entire party with no input from moderate Democrats or progressive Democrats.  If you are really so enthused by the last 2 years, well then I guess you should probably vote for Mitt Romney in 2012. Because the same magical thinking that declared there would be permanent New Democratic Majorities after Election 2008 & the GOP was dead is the same magical thinking that the election results from Tuesday meant good things for Obama in 2012.  Take a step back from the Obama kool-aid.  Get some fresh air.  This turning the Democrats into the Moderate Republican party does not seem to be working for anyone, least of all those independents you guys predicted would rally to the president & the Democrats when the disaffected democratic constitutents who got continually backslapped by Obama were less than enthused by Democratic party betrayals of what used to be some pretty core principals.  And now somehow it's all the fault of disaffected democratic voters who got out to vote anyway when you lose the independents based on shitty Moderate GOP policies.  Would be halfway funny if it wasn't such a fucking waste of the last two years.

A-Man, did you see, Rick Larsen won... yahoo, it was close, down to the wire... I am glad.

And nice blog, as usual.

Mac.

I think my issue with the Blue Dogs (and other conservative Democrats who come to the House and Senate from Republican-leaning states and districts) is that they're so damned high maintenance.  They're always in danger of being tossed out of office because deep down their constituents want some one from the other party.  So they're always braying about this or that or we always have to water down bills to get their lukewarm support (or even, sometimes, just their lukewarm rather than fervent opposition).  They're just a real pain in the butt most of the time.

A-Man, thanks for a very informative blog. I find your ground-up approach pragmatic and sensible--taking into account the game board we have, district by dictrict, what does it take to win a Democratic majority? Frankly, I don't care what labels you give to candidates from any of the districts, call them purple cowboys or pink harlots if you want. It's the district, stupid. Is the winner going to caucus with Democrats or the other guys? If it's with Democrats, at least we have a shot at some progress.

I couldn't agree with you more about the pointless denigrating of half of the electorate with the use of the term "flyover zone". The Republicans have eaten our lunch appealing to the flyover zone's fear of losing their "culture". Cultural voters-- like my own daughter who went to a top flight prep school (maybe that was the problem)and who scored in the 98th percentile in her Biology SATS. I have found it useless to talk about economics with her. That's an "away" concept for her. She wants her rural Mayberry. But recently I have found it useful to say to her, "Look, I know you are voting your culture. But will you consider some of the economic consequences as well?" My point is that the onus is on Democrats to better explain economics, not to dismiss culture.

Having gotten that off my chest, A-Man, may I ask you if you think there is a National Democratic message which also fits, or is at least is not antithetical to, these particular R leaning and swing districts? Did the Blue Dogs have a message? Can the next generation of Democratic candidates have a better message? What can be done in the next two years to improve the message without sacrificing core principles?

I hear you Articleman. And I accept that we can't win without the Blue Dogs. The intramural bloodletting is too easy, and too stupid.

But I have two complaints about the *recent* versions of the Blue Dogs, who have forgotten what their job is.

A Blue Dog has two basic purposes in the ecosystem:

1. To win in places where traditional liberals can't.

2. To keep the national party focused on issues that win in the swing districts.

Now, that second one may rub conservatives the wrong way, but we do actually live in a democracy, and you don't win elections by doing things that voters hate. Blue Dogs do have a legitimate and important seat at the table. Their job is to keep the party from focusing exclusively on its base, and make sure its headlines some legislation that helps it in those conservative-leaning districts. This does in fact mean "moving the party to the middle" on certain issues. I don't have a problem with that. But their job is not to move the party to the center in a kneejerk way; their job is to help focus on the specific issues that can win over voters in their districts.

A blue dog like Harold Ford is all right with me when he's running for Senate in Tennessee. That's seriously the best we can do in Tennessee. When Harold decides that Tennessee is too hard to get elected in, and floats the idea of running for Senate in a deep blue state, such as New York, then there is absolutely no point to his political existence. His basic proposal is "Let's give up some Democratic priorities in order to keep a seat that Democrats are going to keep anyway."

Worse, the Blue Dogs as a group have failed, badly, at the other part of their job, undercutting the party on exactly the lunchbucket, bread-and-butter issues that should have been sold hardest in the Blue Dog's districts. The Democrats just got stomped for their lack of populism, and certainly the head of the party shares the blame for that, with his elite team from Goldman Sachs still focused on protecting The Man's sacks of gold.  But the Blue Dogs, many of whom come from fairly poor districts, actually made the Democratic agenda less populist. They had more allegiance to Wall Street than Tim Geithner, Chuck Schumer, or Kirsten Gillibrand, who all in their various ways represent Wall Street. And that's the disaster.

You had Blue Dogs with lots of uninsured and underinsured voters in their districts making health care reform less generous to their constituents and more generous to the insurance companies. You had Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas watering down financial reform. You had Blue Dogs trying to shrink the stimulus package, although their districts needed stimulating. How hard is it to get behind credit card reform, and sell it? How hard is it to get behind saving GM when you're campaigning in Michigan? But instead they make their big issue income tax cuts for the super-rich. A Blue Dog is supposed to represent blue-collar voters, not blue-chip portfolios. But these "centrists" are actually about the Beltway and the banks. I'm okay with Blue Dogs bucking the party. That's what they're for. But when Blue Dogs work against their party and against their own voters' interest, they deserve to lose. And lots of them did.

If our defintion of a Blue Dog is "Congressman who can't sell government health care to poor voters without insurance," then a Blue Dog can't hunt. I'm not against all Blue Dogs, to borrow a centrist phrase. I'm against dumb Blue Dogs.

Thank you.

This is one thing I like about the internet: hang around it long enough and eventually someone else more passionate about it will summarize your views for you (mostly, that is,) in a well-wrritten essay. You can than point to it and say in a discussion: this is mostly what I think.  And you don't have to do the work of writing up a tight argument about what you think, and you can move on to thinking about other things. (For the life of me, though, I can't fathom people actually enjoying writing up tight arguments about what they think. It's much more fun to move on to something else.)

A-man. At the heart of the difficulties in thinking about the Blue Dogs lies the difference between micro-politics and macro-politics - in exactly the same sense as there is micro-economics vs macro-economics. And it produces exactly the same problems: micro-political solutions do NOT aggregate into macro-political solutions, and macro solutions may fix micro problems, even though they use philosophically-opposed approaches. 

e.g. In economics, if an individual family or firm tightens their belt during hard times, that may be the right thing to survive. But for the economy as a whole, you have to run exactly the other way, and start borrowing.

Same holds for politics.

This difference in perspective can give you a completely opposed take on what can result from putting down the Blue Dogs, or on the Republican move to the Right.

The best political example I can think of is your ex-avatar, Barack Obama. Now. Forget the actual mood at the time (because some Blue Dogs liked him), but just imagine, today, and think in generics, what characteristics would be best for a Blue Dog, in the way of Presidential candidates?

• A Black man.
• From Chicago.
• Named Hussein.
• Lawyer.
• Harvard.
• Famous for anti-War position.

From a Micro-politics level, tough to see those wanting a Blue Dog revival picking this guy. And yet, if the Dems had run Evan Bayh in '08, we might well have done WORSE in Blue Dog seats than by running Obama, right? 

Because Obama's set of appeals, and a PR/communications and organizational machine built to expand upon that, enabled him not just to "appeal to the middle" or to conservaDems, but also to change the electorate slightly - it only need a few % points shift - by drawing in and enthusing more young and minority voters, and by helping to dampen down a bit of the juice, the $, the voice, the confidence, and ultimately the turnout, that the other side felt.

Look at the exit polls on this just-past 2010 election. People are gonna go on about grand left-right-center-moderate-TP shifts or whatever, but what I saw in the Exit polls was the change in the electorate - young people stayed home, and older rightwingers felt easier and more enthused about turning out and voting. It WASN"T that so many people stopped called them selves "liberal" and shifted, it's that there was a few % point swing in who turned out. 

So, a national-level appeal can change the electorate, by changing who's motivated to vote, and with that, the likelihood of national winning shifts, and with that, all sorts of individual seats shift.

None of which is to say it isn't useful to have Blue Dogs in Congress, especially if you can get some, or even 50/50 votes out of them! It is. BUT. There's one way it has potential to help. INSOFARAS the make-up of the Dem caucus produces different, more liberal (and perhaps better) bills, then that changes what Obama stands for (or against!), changes the nature of the national debate to some degree, and thus, MAY change the nature of this national stance.

Now.... WILL the putting down of the Blue Dogs accomplish such a change in the nature of the Democratic Bills and Messaging, and will that be picked up - or opposed - by Obama? I have no idea.

A wider version of this argument is, I believe, precisely how the Tea Party has worked. They don't just go after winnable seats for micro reasons, but they aim to make big noises, nationally, through a range of spokespeople and opinion shapers and think tanks and religious groups and so on. The noises they make may well doom the liberal Republicans in those seats. They don't care much though. Because they are changing the debate, changing the meaning of the labels, and changing the electorate and its enthusiasms. 

Personally, I'm convinced this needs to happen at the National Democratic level. It's been done before, both with the Dems, as well as with the parties of the center-left in other nations - New Labour, for instance.

I was originally hoping that the electoral machine Obama and Plouffe and company built might be intended to accomplish that sort of an ongoing task. Apparently not.

The primary impediments within the federal government to getting more good--and, I believe, broadly popular--stuff done the past two years are the White House and the Senate, the latter so easily tied up in knots by its own rules.  Not Nancy Pelosi's House, Blue Dogs and all.  That is one of the things that bothers me the most about last week's results.  

Nice piece and some great comments spawned here, A-man.  Generally, I feel like the Blue Dogs are getting over-analyzed.  That the party holding both the Legislative and Executive lost a midterm election during a down economy should be surprising to no one.  That most of the seats lost were in marginal districts should also not be surprising to anyone.  I think the most significant takeaway is that for many Blue Dogs, their conservative streak, such as it might have manifested individually for each one of them, was not enough to keep them in office.  But generally the results were very, very predictable.

Two more things your post brings to mind: Political labels make us dumber.  Or they at least make us sound dumber.  Generalizations can of course be useful, but the term "liberal" is no more meaningful or precise than "progressive" - or "conservative" for that matter.  The recent resurrection of "progressive" is pretty much just a workaround in the face of the right-wing maligning "liberal" as a term of abuse.

To exemplify why I think the quibbling about labels is so ridiculous, let's consider that the roots of the term "liberal" are in the Enlightenment.  Essentially, the basis for our entire political and economic system is "liberal" in that sense.  For that reason, economic and foreign policies that reflect these values are referred to as "liberal" or "neo-liberal."  Except that many times these policies don't at all appeal to people who might self-identify, or be identified by others, as liberal.

Example?  The Battle in Seattle.  I'm not going to go digging for it, but I bet I could find Rush Limbaugh calling the WTO protestors "liberals."  Except, as I've described above, the policies they were protesting are fairly described by many as "liberal" or "neo-liberal."  So, if someone told you that the protests were the result of a clash between liberals and neo-liberals, would that resonate with you?  Because it just makes me think, "WTF."

Or, in the words of Wayne Campbell, speaking in fluent Cantonese, "Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said, 'If you label me, you negate me.'"

(Also: A poll about what political labels people identify with, out of a possible three, tells us nothing about the electorate.  It only tells us what labels people prefer to self-apply.  It doesn't even tell us why!)

The other thought I had after reading your post is just that, despite your analysis, which I think is accurate, neither the economy nor the climate care about passing signal legislation.  The stimulus bill wasn't big enough.  HCR's effects on actually controlling costs are dubious.  And cap and trade, even if it passes (and the bill contains some good stuff aside from just the cap and trade part) has targets that are nowhere near aggressive enough if the goal is actually to mitigate climate change before more serious effects are seen.  If the goal is getting to effective policy, we're just not getting the job done, with or without Blue Dogs.

Oh, and the financial sector remains essentially unregulated and uninvestigated.

American Dreamer pretty much sums it up. Complaints against the blue dogs are misguided. There wasn't any big-ticket item that the White House wanted passed that they blocked. The White house didn't want a public option any more than the Blue dogs. The White House didn't want a bigger stimulus than what they got. They didn't want stronger financial regulations. The White House made the deals with the relevant lobbies and then pretty much got the legislation they wanted. The Blue dogs did the job demanded of them and then were sacrificed as the policies in question failed to improve the economy.

So I'm not disagreeing with you A-man. But I haven't seen much anger at the blue dogs around the internet. I've seen a lot of blame directed at the White House. And that criticism I think has merit. Especially now as they seem poised to out-dog the blue dogs...

+/-: Yes & No

Blue Dogs give voice to what is more liberal in the locales where they're from.  We now arrive at what the arguments against the Blue Dogs really are, at heart:  coastal and megacity obliviousness to the maligned, ignored, and, when-discussed-from-the-bastions-of-the-deepest-blue, ineptly channeled parts of America -- those parts between California and Chicago, between Austin and Philly.  The flyover country that doesn't behave, electorally or culturally, like the Kerry states.

Yes.  Hurrah!

Sen. Evan Bayh-rly a Democrat laments where the party is going.  Good.  He can take his $10M and his slinking away from a hard fight, from any fight, and keep it.  There's no one more pernicious with national stature within the Democratic Party.  To hell with him. 

WTF?  How is this consistent with any of the rest of your post?  How does Coats help you in the least?  Do you imagine that hoosiers will get sprinkled with faerie dust and elect someone to Bayh's left?  The most electable candidate (in a non-wave election he'd have probably been an even bet) to take his place was Brad Ellsworth.  In the post-Reagan-era, that's as good as it's going to get for liberals.  Birch Bayh's days are over. 

Articleman:

GOP's midterm gains concentrated in blue-collar areas

By T.W. Farnam
Washington Post, November 20, 2010

Results from November's midterm elections have exposed a deepening political divide between cities on the coasts and the less-dense areas in the middle of the country.

The Republican Party's big gains in the House came largely from districts that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole. Democrats kept their big majorities in the cities.

That's a contrast to the last GOP wave in 1994, when Republicans' share of the vote was consistent inside and outside metropolitan areas, according to a Washington Post analysis. That year, Republicans captured seats in a broader array of places.

The analysis, based on a review of the House vote in counties across the country in both years, has good and bad news for both parties.

The Obama coalition remained intact. Democrats remained strong in areas with the party's core of minorities and higher-educated whites. But movement of white working-class voters away from the party is a concern for Democrats, especially because of President Obama's traditional weakness with those voters.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/20/AR201011...

Just ran across the above, thought if you ever came back to the thread for research or whatever, you might appreciate finding it.

As to Farnam's suppositions there about Obama himself--it reminded me about the hullabaloo about the "guns bibles" Hollywood speech during the campaign. I always worried that would come back to haunt; Obama never managed to rectify that too well, mho. Hillary won over a lot of that demographic in the later primaries. And then the whole Wall Street meme with the bailout just piled on more of an anti-flyover elitist image. In this vein, it is interesting that a Latino block is seen as currently helping both the Dems and him--if the issues of immigration reform are raised, and he is seen as supportive of immigrant workers in any way, that could hurt him with this demographic, too. Biden was chosen to help on this, but on communication, he ends up doing a lot of foreign policy as far as I can see.

portrait of a Blue Dog:

For Giffords, Tucson Roots Shaped Views

New York Times, January 14, 2011

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and William Yardley

In Tucson, it is clear how much Gabrielle Giffords’s political views have been shaped by her hometown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15profile.html