Category: Democrats

Berman: Boot the Blue Dogs

Over the weekend, journalist Ari Berman had an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Boot the Blue Dogs.” Berman writes:

Democrats would be in better shape, and would accomplish more, with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus. It’s a sentiment that even Mr. Dean now echoes. “Having a big, open-tent Democratic Party is great, but not at the cost of getting nothing done,” he said. Since the passage of health care reform, few major bills have passed the Senate. Although the Democrats have a 59-vote majority, party leaders can barely find the votes for something as benign as extending unemployment benefits.

A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)

Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.

Berman concludes:

Republicans have become obsessed with ideological purity, and as a consequence they will likely squander a few winnable races in places like Delaware. But Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way. Polls show that, despite their best efforts to distance themselves from Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, a number of Blue Dog Democrats are likely to be defeated this November. Their conservative voting records have deflated Democratic activists but have done nothing to win Republican support.

Far from hastening the dawn of a post-partisan utopia, President Obama’s election has led to near-absolute polarization. If Democrats alter their political strategy accordingly, they’ll be more united and more productive.

I think this is really the right task. What’s been clear over the past two years is that the size of the caucus is not as important as its quality. A conservative bloc within the House and Senate has the ability to stop legislation that the overwhelming majority of Democrats wants from moving forward, or if it is allowed to move, it’s only after it has been made markedly worse. Democrats are left to negotiate with themselves while Republicans laugh at our ineffectiveness.

Having a big caucus with representatives from all parts of the country is great. I hope we continue to win elections in traditional Republican districts. But the Democrats who come from these places, a meaningful minority in the caucus, should not have their interests placed ahead of Democrats who actually believe in the Democratic agenda. The offer to Blue Dogs should be this: wear the D after your name and vote for a progressive Speaker or Majority Leader and you’ll get the added power that comes with serving in the majority. But you don’t get to undermine the ability of the party to hold onto the majority by sabotaging legislation. If that arrangement works, Blue Dogs should absolutely stay with the caucus. If not, the party infrastructure should cut them off from all support and seniority and this cohort should slowly wilt at the election booth.

Better Outlook for Midterms

Jane Hamsher has a comprehensive post on why Democrats are poised to do better than you’d think in the midterm elections. It’s great to see a lot of varying strings of thought pulled together in one place, particularly as the elections are getting closer and contrary to Conventional Wisdom, Democrats are starting to look stronger at the polls. While there isn’t any reason to expect Democrats to gain seats, races around the country are tightening and places where Republicans should be walking away with pickups are becoming places where Democrats can hold onto seats.

Hamsher writes:

It’s indisputable that the Democrats will have a tough time this fall. There is just no way you can escape the fact that the party in power is going to take the heat when the country is experiencing 10% unemployment.  Higher turnout will help the Democrats, but it won’t save them.  However, small margins in key races may make a big difference, and when it comes to the kind of intense ground game we’re going to see in key races over the next few weeks, I’d have to say the incumbent Democrats are better prepared than most of their Republican challengers.  And if everything breaks towards the Democrats between now and election day, and control of the House comes down to 2-3 seats, that could provide the margins they need.

This is going to be really close. Democrats really don’t have any business being competitive now, especially given how the last three months have gone. But they’re still in this thing, not just in the Senate but the House too. A failure by the GOP to capture both the House and the Senate (let alone the House), should go down as one of the greatest missed electoral opportunities in American history.

Singly Assured Destruction

Ryan Grim of Huffington Post reports:

Senate Democrats are looking to punt the tax-cut debate past the November elections, facing pushback on voting from Democrats facing election in 2010, senior Democratic aides say. The party will gather this afternoon for a caucus-wide meeting to set the pre-election agenda, but it appears increasingly unlikely that it will include the much-hyped tax-cut vote.

The White House has been pushing hard for such a vote, circulating polling showing that a majority of Americans, including wide margins of independents, support extending the middle-class tax cuts. Ultimately, though, Democrats up for election feared an assault from the GOP that the party was raising taxes on “small businesses,” even though a vanishingly small portion of those who would face a tax hike are real small businesses. But, in an age of 30-second commercials, it only takes one to stare into the camera and lament the effect of the tax change on hiring.

2002-2004 called. They want their Democratic chickenshittery back.

Seriously, it’s hard to not react to this by screaming and pulling your hair out. The Obama middle class tax cut was a brilliant squeeze play on Republicans that would both provide a strong electoral boost and show that the Democrats are acting with working Americans’ interests in mind. While Democrats are on the verge of pushing through a month-long electoral surge that has effectively put the House back in a holdable place and made keeping the Senate nearly certain, not holding a vote on Obama’s middle class tax cut package will surely cost Democrats seats in both chambers in November. And it’s all because they’re afraid of what attack ads Republicans will run if Democrats vote against a Republican tax cut for the wealthy and big business. News flash: the whole reason this strategy was going to work was that Democrats were the ones who were going to hit their opponents with ads of them voting against middle class tax cuts!

It’s really hard to want to work for people who are so hell-bent on losing the few legislative fights they choose to pick and losing their seats in the process.

Nationalizing the Election

Greg Sargent writes:

[T]he best way for Dems to nationalize the elections right now is for Congress to hold a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts. If Dems did this, it would reinforce the national strategy that Dems already have in place: Making the case that a vote for the GOP is a vote to return to the Bush policies that ran the economy into the ground.

Actually, rather than “hold a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts,” Democrats should hold a vote on Obama’s middle class tax cuts. If the goal is to really draw contrast with Republicans is not to even include a hint of a frame that implies the middle class tax cuts were ever something they cared to support.

The other side of the coin is that after the free-standing vote on Obama’s middle class tax cuts package, let there be a vote on the large tax cut for the rich that the Republicans want starting 1/1/11. The contrast will be clear: Democrats support tax cuts for the middle class and oppose them for the rich, while Republicans oppose them for the middle class and support them for the rich.

The Tea Party vs The Netroots

So yesterday a colleague and I were talking about how honestly envious we are of what the GOP base has been able to do this year – run dozens of candidates for statewide and federal office, rack up a decent win rate, and get real conservative movementarians to win major nominations. Contrast this what we’ve done on the netroots over the last six years, with not more than a handful of genuine movement candidates, let alone winners. Frankly it’d be fun to have the sort of wave the right is having now.But I think this is both an obvious analysis and the wrong one. The Tea Party and the Netroots are two very different creatures.First, the Netroots is a progressive, grassroots movement that does not have institutional support from the Democratic Party apparatus (neither nationally nor on the state/local level). The Netroots does not have major Democratic donors stepping towards us with millions of dollars to fund various grassroots entities – neither as astroturf outfits nor genuine movement training houses. The Netroots does not have scores of past failed nominees for Democratic offices, state level party officials, Democratic millionaires, established party activists and corporate donors providing the bulk of our candidates for office. In a word, the Netroots is a genuine grassroots movement defined by the lack of support from the various institutions and iterations of Democratic power.Second, the Tea Party is a conservative movement that includes genuine grassroots activists, alongside (or pushed by) major party leaders (Gingrich, Palin, Armey, Beck, Limbaugh), astroturf organizations (Freedom Works, Tea Party Express), and corporate donors (Koch). The Tea Party candidates have been primarily Republican office holders, party officials, major donors and operatives. It is a both real and astroturfed front for what have been traditional Republican goals (abolishing Department of Education, cutting Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits, reducing taxes on the wealthy). Yes, the candidates have tended to say things bluntly, making them appear more extreme than your average Republican. But this is purely something that arises from a willingness to stop hiding behind the polished messaging of Luntz and Rove-types. It doesn’t represent a new shift of the movement (though, in fairness, the Netroots has always pushed for ideas that were also traditionally Democratic, but never forcefully argued for by elected officials). The Tea Party’s success is almost completely explainable by the degree of support they receive from traditional Republican infrastructure and power bases – solely excluding the NRSC, NRCC, and RGA in some places.Anyway I think there’s a real story to tell about how making assumptions about Tea Party success versus Netroots failure (or dramatically slower rate of success) is wrong. This is not an apples to apples comparison, yet I expect lots of Beltway media types and Republican activists will be trying to imply that it is in order to further the narrative that America is a right-leaning country.Update:In the comments, Tim Jones points out another difference between the Tea Party and Netroots that has substantially helped the Tea Party succeed is they have major support from the mainstream media, including basically  complete allegiance from Fox News and formation based around the comments of a CNBC contributor.

Dayen, In Support of Dissent

I don’t have the time to blog as much as I’d like to and have, as any regular reader is probably aware, tended to focus on highlighting good commentary and analysis that I am reading and think others would enjoy too. It’s not the most exciting form of blogging, but it’s what I have the capacity to do and after nearly six years of blogging, I know I’m happier when I’m able to take a few minutes out to write something at least five days a week.

With that prologue, I have to highly recommend David Dayen’s article in Democracy Journal, “Advise and Dissent.” The piece pushes back on the somewhat prevalent notion that progressive dissatisfaction – on blogs, in the media – is hurting the ability of Democrats to enact a liberal agenda. Dayen goes through numerous historic examples of how pressure from the left helped FDR, JFK and LBJ achieve better outcomes. He writes, “Division is not only healthy–it helps us avoid especially negative outcomes.”

Much of Dayen’s piece is in response to an article by Michael Tomasky, wherein Tomasky calls for an end to vocal progressive despair. Dayen concludes:

Ultimately, progressive “despair” has more utility than Tomasky allows. It represents more than the smug carping of dilettantes who would rather take down a presidency so they can prove the correctness of their own nihilism. There’s some of that, of course. But progressive critics of the President are working to figure out the choke points in our busted democracy, and either leverage or fix them to achieve goals in which they truly believe. They also mean to present an argument for a grander progressive vision that can endure over time, through the next president and the one after that. They have yet to succeed, but they have no choice but to try.

Vocal dissatisfaction may be uncomfortable for those who want the base to just go along with whatever agenda Washington Democrats put forth. But it’s not about them and their agenda – it’s about broad principles for change, for making our society stronger by caring for the weakest amongst us and using the power of collaboration and of government to make life in America better than it was yesterday. In an ideal world, the policies and tactics pursued by Democrats in Washington would mesh nicely onto the goals of movement progressives. But that’s not the world we live in and as a result, there will inevitably and likely always be dissatisfaction from movement progressives with the things Democrats say and do. But as Dayen points out, the existence of progressive discontent does not mean much for the fate of the work of elected Democrats as compared to 9.5% unemployment and millions without health care. As a result, I really don’t have sympathy for people who complain about what bloggers are saying about elected officials or the policies they put forth. I’d rather see leaders focus on how they make government work for the American people and find ways to fix the things that don’t work in our economy, our society and our government

Must Read Moore

Michael Moore has a post up on Daily Kos in honor of Labor Day (it went up yesterday, I’m seeing it today). It’s really a must-read. The piece is a response to reports of Steven Rattner’s book & a story wherein White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said “Fuck the UAW” when discussing the auto bailouts. Moore makes the case that Emanuel’s disrespect of one of the America’s great unions – the United Auto Workers – is unacceptable, particularly for the work the labor movement in America has done to create and sustain the middle class.  In turn, Moore calls for Emanuel and the White House to do more to protect American jobs. It’s intemperate, but Moore is right: we need to do more to value working Americans, protect their jobs, and punish the people who destroyed our economy.