A small number of legislators, the BlueDogs, have conspired with the repulsive Republicans to try and destroy the American economy and the economic future of American workers for the sake of political gamesmanship. They must be punished.
The unquestionably brilliant, extraordinarily insightful, astoundingly creative tristero sees what is happening and asks if there is any organized effort being made by Liberal
groups to punish BlueDogs for their actions, by threatening to support primary challenges by more Progressive candidates.
The answer:
I didn't think so. And until we do, the nonsense we've seen over the stimulus bill will continue.
The Republicans know how to bring pressure through openly challenging members of their caucus who don’t behave. Here’s Scott Wheeler, executive director of The National Republican Trust PAC:
"Republican senators are on notice. If they support the stimulus package, we will make sure every voter in their state knows how they tried to further bankrupt voters in an already bad economy.
"[Sen. Specter] crossed the line one too many times. We're now going to get involved in finding a conservative alternative."
The Republicans are also going after those BlueDogs who did support the sad compromise stimulus after forcing Obama, Reid and Pelosi to bow to their demands for inclusion of massive tax cuts and removal of anything remotely Progressive. Not good enough, says NRCC spokesman Ken Spain:
“Early in the debate, Democrats arrogantly proclaimed that Republicans who voted against the stimulus package did so ‘at their own peril,’ but now it appears that in many Democrat-held districts, there could be greater risk in actually having voted for Pelosi’s pork-laden package.”
Democrats are choosing to attack some Republicans, although it isn’t exactly clear who. According to Sam Stein, an unnamed official from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says DSCC Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez will go after vulnerable Senate Republicans on Thursday:
"The basic message will be about stimulus and how Republicans still don't get it," said the official. The goal, the official added, is to make GOP Senators "pay a price for their stimulus vote."
But nearly all of the Republican Senators who appear vulnerable in 2010 have already announced their retirement, mooting any Democratic attacks on them personally, so to what purpose is this DSCC campaign?
Meanwhile, who is attacking the Conservative BlueDog obstructionists from the Left? No one is. And if they aren’t dealt with, they will continue to assert their influence and control the destiny of America in undesirable, counterproductive, and disastrous ways.
It is the BlueDogs, in league with the Republicans, who seek to privatize Social Security and not just obstruct any move towards national health care but reduce the guaranteed health care that now exists. They know they have the power, and they intend to use it. From the WSJ, last summer [emphasis mine]:
One of the first acts of the next Congress should be approving a bipartisan commission to tackle the deficit and the growth of entitlements, such as Medicare and Medicaid, argue the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who say they will have the numbers to make the demands.
"We've got 49 Blue Dogs, maybe 61 after the election," said Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas. "We don't need [to do] much persuasion. We've got the votes."
The critical action for preserving Social Security, implementing UHC, and reversing the 30 years of systematic looting of the public purse for the benefit of the Top 1% is not going after Obama or Pelosi or Reid. It lies in attacking the BlueDogs; they are the subversive element, and they are out of control.
I’m the last person to advocate cruelty, or pointless destruction. But some creatures are so vicious, so dangerous, and so completely unredeemable that nothing else can be considered but to do away with them. The perfidious nature of the BlueDog Democrats has reached such a nadir; they must be curbed or destroyed.
The BlueDog coalition in the House numbers about 55, and in the Senate about 11. Yet by allying themselves with the Republicans, they form a cabal of sufficient strength that they can defy the combined will of the Democratic Congressional Leadership, a highly popular Democratic President, and the majority of the American people. That so few people can control for the worse the destiny of our nation is intolerable. Their power must not be allowed to stand.
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Act Blue doesn't count?
http://www.actblue.com/
I donated to a few candidates they recommended.
Hmm, maybe it's not Act Blue I'm thinking of...
IIRC, the anti-"Bush Dog" people recommended some primary challengers whom I supported.
ActBlue is non-specific
Pretty much. In general, they'll support any D over any R. In previous years, this was a good strategy. But now, with ostensible majorities in both houses but in fact with functional minorities, the best strategy for the 2010 election is to go to Step 2: Replace Conservative BlueDog Democrats with Moderate Democrats. I’m not sure Act Blue is equipped for doing that. MoveOn could, if they grew decided to go Progressive.
Further, we have a lot of legislation left to deal with before the 2010 elections. Pressure needs to be brought to bear on BlueDog Dems NOW, NOW, NOW to try and put some fear in them and sway their behavior over the course of this Congress.
One of my arguments which IIRC got some begrudging acknowledgement here, as to why it is better to have Dems in office rather than R’s, is that Dems are at least persuadable. Given enough pressure, and it doesn't take much, they will cave. We need to be putting the pressure where it will do some good and that is on the BlueDogs.
Pressuring Obama, Pelosi and Reid does no good; they don't control the BlueDogs.
Pressuring Moderate
and Progressive Dems does no good; they are already with us.
Pressuring Republicans does no good; they are batshit crazy.
By subtraction, that leaves only the BlueDogs as targets. Squeeze 'em, I say; squeeze 'em hard.
I belkieve their goal was
much like Kos' "More AND better Democrats"
More where there were none. And the Charter Oak Maneuver on any of the Lieberman's that we could take out. That, I believe, has always been a purpose of Act Blue.
ActBlue is a conduit
They don't so much take an ideological position as allow people or groups to fundraise through them. They don't fundraise for Republicans, but they do allow anyone to fundraise for Dems and also for what I guess I would call "centrist to progressive" causes, and provide the infrastructure for doing so. For example, I contributed money to the coalition pushing back against the Dems who caved on FISA last year via ActBlue. I also, belatedly, set up my own fundraising page for candidates I was supporting.
So if we can figure out a structure for pushing back against the BDs on health care and other issues, ActBlue can provide the infrastructure for raising the funds. Primary challenges are one idea, but as the FISA example demonstrates, it isn't the only one.
Sorry I'm so late on this comment, but who knows, it might help somehow.
I like the idea of setting up one's own fundrasing page
That sounds interesting....
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Why not do both?
Surely these are not mutually exclusive ideas? (With the exception, of course, that primary challenges won't take place this year.)
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Do both what?
I'm a literal processor, lambert; lay it out for me, please.
Both...
Shoving Obama left and attacking the Blue Dogs are not mutually exclusive.
First, there's very little reason to think that it's only the Blue Dogs who are preventing Obama from adopting more left-ish positions; he's a calculating centrist, after all.
Further, shoving Obama left can begin today, while attacking the Blue Dogs, as I understand the proposal, requires primary challengers.
Moreover, focus on the Blue Dogs necessarily involves the most effort from voters in the states the Blue Dogs represent (though funding can come from anywhere). That leaves a lot of the country on the sidelines. However, Obama can be attacked from any point.
And finally, shoving Obama left and attacking the Blue Dogs could turn out to be mutually reinforcing.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Ah; that “both”
They aren’t mutually exclusive. The question for me, though, is where the biggest Bang-for-the-Buck lays. I think it is with targeting and threatening the BlueDogs, because I don't see how to persuade Obama without persuading them.
If we press only on Obama to move Left, he cannot do it on his own even if he wants to; the BlueDogs squat in his way, and the more they obstruct him the more power they amass. This path will not move him, or them. If he succumbs to the Left and proposes a more Progressive agenda, it will only empower them to oppose it.
If, on the other hand, we frighten the BlueDogs NOW by threatening to field more Moderate Dem primary candidates unless they get with at least a Moderate Dem program and they become amenable to moving to the Left, the enormous pent-up frustration in the Moderate and Progressive Democrats* in both the House and the Senate will press the agenda to the Left and Obama will move Left as well. Obama will go where the congressional power is; he really has no other choice, as we saw with the stimulus bill.
There are about 55 BlueDog House members and about 11 Senators. Contrary to some belief, they are not all concentrated in the South but are fairly well scattered. That is why I am endorsing tristero’s call for a major Leftist organization to take them on. It does need to be a national effort, with specific targets, augmented by local activists willing to picket and pamphleteer and generally raise a ruckus by calling them out as America-Haters and Greed-Heads and Tools of the Rich. Getting on the local news with that message is a huge plus, becasue they need to feel local pressure.
If we can turn the BlueDogs, it means that we only have to have one Republican Senator – ONE – come over to our side on votes and we control Congress and the Presidency. How to get that one? How about a back-door deal with Specter? Dems promise to field a token candidate if he votes with us on everything big, and all he has to worry about is his primary which he should walk through. Dems don’t need PA, they’ll pick up a couple of seats net without it, so no harm in the 112th and he would probably win the general anyway. Make it a slam-dunk for him, a walk in the park to One More Term, and we will own his bony ass.
We don’t have any leverage on Obama now. He isn’t up for election for a long time, and Progressives do not control either chamber of Congress or enough money to matter. The only place we have leverage that will work is with the BlueDogs, and if we get them through fear we get Obama too.
(*That includes Pelosi and Reid; I know you don’t believe me, but it does. ALL of the Progressive provisions in the stimulus bill were put in by the influence and under the approval and authority of Pelosi and Reid. Obey wrote it, but they approved every Progressive component and brought the muscle to back them - as much as could be done with the makeup of this Congress.)
Inclined to agree
with your analysis of Obama and Congressional power. This strategy looks like it might work, if the threat is credible. I am happy to see someone here noting that there are Blue Dogs other than the Southern ones. I will be glad when they are all defeated.
Sure, but...
"If we press only on Obama to move Left," you slip right back into presenting this as binary.
I'm not saying that attacking Obama is the only way; but I disagree with thesis that absent the Blue Dogs, he'd be any more left than he is, given his natural inclinations (FISA; TARP; BARF). The constituencies that Obama threw under the bus in the primaries are those who drive the government left, because they need government to work. It's exactly because neither Obama nor the Democratic establishment wanted to be beholden to those constituencies any more (or a lot less) that Obama was installed. As I kept saying: Vote the base. [And if you don't believe that, then try believing that attacking Obama provides covering fire for Reid and Pelosi.] It's Louis that's the problem; and though unrest in the provinces is wonderful, ultimately it must return to the capital for "change" to come. I'm not saying that the results are instant, but I do say that Obama's feet do have to be held to the fire -- and that nothing induces me to believe that he will deliver. I would expect the same level of effort it took to discredit Bush -- around three years. And, unlike Bush, Obama can always make the problem go away by putting the right policies in place.
Another way of saying this is that Obama seems to be playing a remarkably passive role in your schema. Why isn't he investing any of his political capital in leashing the Blue Dogs? Didn't in the primaries, isn't now, and (my prediction) won't -- unless it turns out to be more painful for him not to, anymore. That won't come from primary challenges....
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Sorry, I am a bit thick and very, very linear
Sentences like this:
I'm not saying that the results are instant, but I do say that Obama's feet do have to be held to the fire -- and that nothing induces me to believe that he will deliver. [If nothing would induce you to believe that he would deliver, why waste time trying to hold his feet to the fire?]
and this:
It's exactly because neither Obama nor the Democratic establishment wanted to be beholden to those constituencies any more (or a lot less) that Obama was installed. [Installed? The forces that extruded Obama are much more pervasive than the events of the primary, and for hell's sakes face reality there; Hillary had a huge lead and she blew it, through arrogant overconfidence and strategic ineptitude. It never should have been close, and she was/is a product of the same forces as Obama.]
leave me boggled. I simply do not understand what it is you are saying, and so I cannot formulate a response. Restate and expand if you wish.
Rant:
There seems to be an assumption that somewhere there is a large reservoir of Leftward voters who were robbed of the opportunity to select a candidate more in tune to their thinking. I don’t know where those voters are; I don’t see them. They certainly didn’t appear during the primary when people like Kucinich and even the quasi-Populist Edwards never got any traction, precisely because theyhad no substantive following.
It is, of course, tempting to blame the media or strategic gaffes or any number of bogeymen, and there were such contributions, but the plain fact is that the Democratic primary voters were excited by two and only two people both of whom are Centrist Conservatives without a lick of policy difference between them. With Hillary at SoS, presumably by her choice, we now have an BHObama/HRClinton Unity Executive. Hip, Hip, Hoorah.
If the majority of Democratic voters wanted a Liberal, a Progressive, a Populist, why did they vote for Centrist Conservatives? Neither of them hid who they were; what seems to be distressing many people now is that Obama is behaving in office exactly as he said he would.
Our problem is that True Progressives are a very small minority in this country. I know nobody here likes to hear that, but it is still factual and the proof is no farther away than the makeup of every elected President for two generations, either Conservative (Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Obama) or Radical Reactionary (Reagan, Bush, Bush again) and the makeup of Congress which has been in the grip of one or another Conservative/Reactionary coalition since the election of 1968.
We have the government we have because this is the government that the people of America want. That is the Progressive dilemma, and until we come to grips with the magnitude of our challenge we will not address it correctly.
End of rant. (Well, this particular rant, for now.)
Let me rephrase my argument with regard to the BlueDogs. There are three basic options for Progressives in terms of how we expend our immediate effort, excluding if I may the idea that anything can be done during this session (or ever) with Congressional Republicans:
A) Focus pressure on Obama while relatively ignoring the BlueDogs;
B) Focus pressure on the BlueDogs while relatively ignoring Obama;
C) Focus pressure equally on both Obama and the BlueDogs.
I say there is nothing at all we can do with (A); as long as the BlueDogs stay where they are, in the control of Congress by their ability to shift alliances without consequence, there is nothing Progressives ca do to move Obama to the Left – not now, not ever. If you have a way to shift him Left, I’d love to hear it. Grinding on him as was done on Bush for the first four years got us what? Oh yeah, another four years. I am not heartened by that.
I say that (B) has some promise, because we can bring pressure NOW on the BlueDogs to vote with the rest of the Democratic caucus. We can do this by threatening them. The threat is that come a year from now there will be an activist base that will support challengers in their primaries. We don't need to actually have a named challenger, and we certainly don't have to wait until the primaries to start. The time to threaten them is now, and the threat is that there are some mighty pissed off people who want them to act in concert with the Democratic caucus, not with the Republicans, and that if they don't we will defeat them in the primary and end their gravy train. It may not work, but doing nothing to try and shift their positions is guaranteed to fail.
I say that (C) is fine, but only because it contains (B). If we fail to achieve the (B) component, then (C) will fail. If we succeed in achieving (B), then the (A) component – Obama moving Left – naturally follows.
On the (A) component: Was it not here that I read the argument, repeatedly, that Obama was nothing but a puppet of the Dem Congressional leadership and would be little more than Pelosi’s BoyToy? I’m sure it was. I don’t think it is quite that stark, but I do believe that with the BlueDog House coalition under her control and the Senate BlueDog coalition under Reid’s control, the natural balance within the Democratic caucus shifts well to the Left. The Progressive faction would have a substantive measure of input on legislative makeup and I believe that Obama would go along with a more progressive program. Without the BlueDogs under whip, especially in the Senate, he and Pelosi and Reid will be forced to cater to them and Progressives can do very little.
As to Obama’s natural inclinations, I believe we are agreed that he is a Centrist Conservative. I hope we are also agreed that he can be moved in his positions; we have seen him shift rapidly under pressure, with Wright for one instance, when he felt it was in his best interest. What apparently we disagree on is where that pressure can come from. Be that as it may; I will gladly help you chew on Obama – when deserved – if you will help me chew on BlueDogs. What could be more fair?
I’m not at all unhappy with what Obama has done so far with Executive Orders. Some things need further development in specific details, no argument, but thus far the policy and the implementations are consistent and in the proper direction.
As well, much underappreciated IMHO are the victories with SCHIP and the Fair Pay Act. Both are soundly progressive and carried the Congress because the BlueDogs were persuaded by polls and calls from their home constituencies that they would be punished if they did not vote with the Democratic caucus. A few Republicans also went along because the tide was so overwhelming, the Dem caucus so united, that they could not all bring themselves to stand in the way of popular pressure.
Obama not only signed those acts into law, he reveled in the victories. We can have more like that, if we can corral and control the Democratic caucus and that means controlling the BlueDogs. Obama cannot do it, Pelosi and Reid cannot do it, without activist support from the home districts and states of the BlueDogs. I see no other way; if Progressives do not go after the BlueDogs, they will feel pressure only from the Right and the debacle of the stimulus bill will be repeated – or likely, much worse.
Well, hi there, BIO!
How ya doing?