The Nation: Blue Dogs Bark

[marmar]

Blue Dogs Bark
By Christopher Hayes

February 11, 2009


The House of Representatives is a body that produces few stars, but Jim Cooper of Tennessee is a household name inside the Beltway. David Brooks has called him "one of the most thoughtful, cordial and well-prepared members of the House." He is viewed by the well-funded budget-hawk constituency as one of its most articulate advocates. Among his colleagues he has a reputation as a wonk and an intellectual--he even teaches a class at Vanderbilt University on health policy--and as the philosopher for the caucus of forty-nine conservative House Democrats known as the Blue Dogs. He gives off the slightly martyred air of someone who believes himself to be smarter than the people he works with.

In the past few weeks Cooper has emerged as the dissident-in-chief among House Democrats (a role he's been rehearsing since 1994, when his refusal to pull his "compromise" healthcare proposal helped kill the Clinton plan). Cooper was one of eleven Democrats--ten of them Blue Dogs--to vote against Obama's stimulus package. A few days after the vote, Cooper caused a stir when he suggested to a local radio station that Obama's aides had encouraged him to vote against their bill, a statement he had to walk back the next day.

When I spoke to Cooper the week after the vote, he defended it as counterintuitively pro-Obama, cast against "certain Congressional old habits and bad practices. A lot of our colleagues have not gotten the change message." He expressed frustration with the speed of the process, as well as the fact that the leadership had forgone the normal committee mark-ups, saying that members were "just told how to vote." .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/hayes?rel=hp_picks

[Captain Hilts]

1. It made me ill Obama spending so much time with Cooper during the campaign. Cooper killed...

healthcare reform - personally obstructed it - for over a decade. He's a total shit.

[annabanana]

2. Does a real Democrat have a chance in his district?

. . or are we talking about a red cesspool?

[Wiley50]

3. The answer is NO. I live in his district

He and his tag team partner, Bart Gordon, fellow Blue Dog, districts overlap in my county. Half of the county is in one district and half in the other's. They are the reason I won't work for my county Democratic party. I will not work my ass off to elect a repuke
even if they have a D after their name.

That funding from Big Business that is talked about in the article is half the reason that a progressive, or any challenger, has no chance here. The other half is the idiots who vote for them because they are conservative or are just a familiar name they always vote for.

I would do anything for anyone who would help me get out of this political hellhole. Life's too short for me to be stuck here.