Larry Sabato: House dem caucus 'more liberal--blue dogs were slaughtered'

[book_worm]

It’s been a bad night for Democrats in the House, where Republicans are poised to pick up between 60 and 75 seats – the biggest gain by any one party in an election since 1948.

But in particular, it’s been a bad night for moderate and conservative Democrats, who saw their ranks in Congress decimated in race after race.

Longtime, once-impervious incumbents fell: John Spratt in South Carolina. Ike Skelton in Missouri. Paul Kanjorski in Pennsylvania. Rich Boucher in Virginia.



In many cases, those Democrats lost despite amassing relatively conservative voting records and opposing key Obama Administration initiatives.


“The Democratic caucus in the House is going to be much more liberal,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told Fox News. “The moderates, the Blue Dogs, were slaughtered.”


In dozens of races, those Blue Dog Democrats found that even being an independent voice couldn’t protect them against an anti-Democrat wave in the more conservative districts they represented.

Gone: Chet Edwards in Texas, Baron Hill in Indiana, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in South Dakota, Charlie Wilson in Ohio, and many others.

A few survived, barely. Sanford Bishop, in Georgia’s Second District, squeaked by, as did Joe Donnelly in Indiana’s Second.

But even as Obama is expected to call for more bipartisan cooperation in his address Wednesday, House members can look forward to a membership that has lost its most moderate voices and shifted to the two extremes in both parties.


http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/1103/Amid-big-Republican-gains-House-gets-more-polarized

[Mass]

1. This is the only silver lining.\nt

[TBF]

2. +1 - well that and the teabaggerati didn't do that well either. nt

[de novo]

21. Agreed. A good, albeit painful, cleansing.

[xchrom]

3. It's really very interesting. Nt

[bigdarryl]

4. I'm sick of Obama's bypartisanship BULLSHIT it didn't work for two years

so what makes him think it's going to work now

[indepat]

5. Bi-partisanship, sheesh! It will be BOner's way or the highway

;)

[mimitabby]

6. oh VERY interesting

thanks!

[GOTV]

7. Isn't that just because there are many more of them?

I mean, if a bomb went off on the house floor you would find it killed more men than women. It doesn't mean women are less susceptible to bomb blasts than men.

[Teaser]

12. no, it's because they are in marginal districts

there's a reason blue dogs exist: because their districts often have republican and democratic characteristics. But when there is a shift in the composition of the electorate in those districts, the people representing it are likely to get bounced.

[chill_wind]

8. Given the choice between a Republican and someone

who acts like a Republican, people will vote for a real Republican all the time.

"The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."

Harry S. Truman

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. But At Least Those "Phony Republicans" Allowed Us To Control The House

A member of the minority party has as much power in the House as an ant in an elephant tent.

[chill_wind]

22. A result that swing voters and Independents

are not particularly concerned about when they're trying to send a message.

[frylock]

25. unless the minority party is republican..

they never seem to be hampered by minority status.

[Igel]

23. Isn't that rather evidently and patently false?

I mean, when the Blue Dogs were elected did they really run unopposed, with no repubs on the ballot? So perhaps Truman hadn't contemplated negative voting, where a repub in dem's closing is preferable to a repub in repub's clothing just to avoid the dreaded fashion statement the repub's clothing would make.

On the other hand, let's not overlook another option, that Truman was right and that your intent in posting Truman's comment is wrong: That the electorate considered the Blue Dogs to be true Democrats--just not True Democrats (tm). After all, *they* (and not us) are also members of a supposedly democratic Democratic Party and, consequently, get to define themselves and their candidates as they want.

[socialshockwave]

10. Even though it did not go well,

The overall impression is right. The House caucus is much more liberal then it was before. We can see this as progressives as a victory - though I don't like how they worded it as "extremes". Again, drawing to my living in Canada, our Liberal Party is much more of a conservative party then it is a true liberal party, and thus "opposition" is much more muted.

Be happy that you have a smaller but more progressive caucus. I would kill for that to happen here. It can only go uphill from here for progressives in America in the future.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. You Have A Parliamentary System

In our federal system the minority party and its members in the House are essentially powerless.

[socialshockwave]

15. It's almost the same here -

Our Liberal Party - being in opposition - does not use their time wisely to attack the Conservative government's policies.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. I Am Not Familiar Enough With Your System

In our federal system all laws originate in the House. If the Republicans wanted to they could literally stop President Obama and the Democrats from passing one law; save those passed by executive order.

[onenote]

20. not exactly right. all bills raising revenue shall originate in the House

US Constitution, Art I, Sec. 7

Other bills that are not "revenue raising" bills can originate in either the House or the Senate.

But the point you make is effectively correct in the sense that all legislation must pass both the House AND Senate and thus, no matter where a bill originates, it has to get through the House to become law.

[BurtWorm]

11. Good riddance to them.

Let's just hope the Democrats who survived will develop some thicker armor and sharper fangs and claws.

[socialshockwave]

14. Agreed!

It's what they need to do in order to survive. I mean, I see most Democrats now are just jumping over themselves in order to appease the Right because they got lucky. A true progressive would not compromise our values - it's something that would send a true progressive up the wall in frenzy.

I see so many Democrats agreeing with privatization, outsourcing, etc...and I shake my head in wonder. You call yourselves progressives?

[krawhitham]

17. Du got what DU wanted, most blue dogs are gone. Are you happy now?

[onenote]

18. does anyone think that if Congress had 185 Kucinich's and 250 repubs

that anything the Kucinich's want will happen and that the Kucinich's could stop anything the repubs wanted? Seriously?

The notion that some here are, in effect, celebrating our loss of the majority in the House, something we can only regain by having a number of moderates/blue dogs given the demographics of the country and the redistricting policies of repub controlled statehouses.....how naieve and/or shortsided can some people be?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

19. It Seem A Lot Of Posters Here Slept Through Civics Class

See Post Sixteen

[Igel]

24. We have competing ideas of the "good".

Some are of the "half a loaf is better than none" mindset.

Some are of the "go big or go home" mind-set. Better warfare and turmoil than something that is less than ideologically pure--as long as the warfare and turmoil are ideologically pure. They spit on the "half a loaf" crowd--and on most others, too. They don't want the good--or anything less than perfect--to get in the way of their perfection.

Blue Dogs tended to represent their constituencies, and for it the purists spit on their constituencies. They enabled the purists' agenda to a large extent. Without them, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would have been pretty much castrated. Yet because they represented their constituents instead of the purists not only do they not receive some gratitude but they receive contempt. In other words, more spit flies through the air.

Given a little while, I'm sure there'll be lots of buckets of warm spit sitting around, for what it's worth. Or, if you prefer, you can un-bowdlerize that quote from a famous Texan Democratic Representative and Vice-President and "fix" my comments as well.

Of course, that Texan had the horrible trait of actually compromising on his candidacy, even though it cleared the way for FDR to have his first term in the White House.