It's because the Democrat Party has been so damn electorally successful!
As I wrote earlier this month after Al Franken was finally awarded Minnesota's Senate seat:
Contrary to the knee jerk, superficial analysis of cable blowhards, the impact will have little to do with preventing filibusters or giving Obama & the Dems a blank check to easily get whatever they want passed ... To understand why, we have to go back in time to this 19 February 2009 post:
I've written extensively in A Blue View about how the GOP has been reduced to a rigidly conservative, ideologically pure rump of its former self. The flip side of this contraction of course is that the Democratic party has expanded its ideological basis to encompass many of the liberal to moderate Republicans turned off by the GOP's far right bent.
So if you were to diagram this out ...
... if you were to diagram this out, you'd have a wide range of views--from liberal to conservative--within the Democratic party and a very narrow range of views--from very conservative to nut case conservative--within the GOP. And there wouldn't be much overlap between the two:
I then elaborated on this meme in a 29 April 2009 post about Senator Spector switching to the Democratic Party:
The range of political ideology in the Senate (and the country) did not change yesterday, nor did the "depth" (e.g., the popularity of any position along that spectrum). All that happened was that a Senator on the center right part of the spectrum changed his colors from red to blue. The Democratic Party now encompasses an even wider ideological range and so Obama's legislative strategy will now involve more inter-party than intra-party negotiating.
In fact, as I pointed out in the same post, Senator Spector is a perfect, symbolic example of my argument:
Obama is now going to have to convince Democratic Senator Specter to support a bill instead of Republican Senator Specter (true, he'll have a few more buttons to push but Specter's ideological positions--nor those of the overall Senate--will not be fundamentally changed by Spector's switch).
While Spector's political label changed to Democrat, his ideological positions generally did not. Over the last few election cycles, the Democratic curve has broadened a bit to cover more of the right end of the political spectrum while the Republican curve has contracted.
The expansive ideological range now within the Democratic Party essentially guarantees much inter-party negotiating and fighting over the tough issues making the filibuster proof argument irrelevant (the fact that Franken is the 60th vote just means the bulk of the GOP can be ignored). All the action now will focus on the Democrats (and few Republicans) in the middle.
Those "Democrats in the middle" are now commonly called "Blue Dogs" (btw, anyone know why?). Here's a WaPo profile of the group that seems to confirms the thesis:
Since Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) vowed last week to block health-care reform unless Democrats make major changes to the legislation, the lawmaker's phone lines have been flooded with calls from people on both sides of the issue, most of them from outside Arkansas.
Yet Ross exudes calmness and a confidence that his fellow Democrats will bow to his demands, which include adding provisions to reduce health-care costs and including a more limited version of the government-insurance option ...
The group, whose members hail mostly from small, often Republican-leaning districts in the Midwest and South, has become one of the most powerful forces in Washington, gaining influence after elections in 2006 and 2008. Many of them defeated GOP incumbents in tight races, helping Democrats win and then enlarge a majority in the House.
With 51 House members, the Blue Dogs effectively have a veto on legislation, as Democrats cannot pass bills the Blue Dogs vote against as a group. Many of the Blue Dogs, including Ross, have been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and won't back gun-control legislation that some more liberal Democrats want passed.
Party leaders have told the Blue Dogs and other Democrats that Obama's success is important to the party winning competitive House seats next year. But some Blue Dogs say that they are comfortable with separating from Obama on key issues.
"After the election, [Obama] was more popular, but people are coming home" to the Republicans, said Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), a Blue Dog on the energy committee who is joining Ross's opposition. "On health care, there has been a perception things are too partisan and moving too fast. People in my district want me to be independent."
Like Gordon, Ross has managed to become very popular in a conservative-leaning state. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won in the presidential race with 59 percent of the vote, but Ross won 86 percent of the vote in a district with a mix of rural towns and small cities such as Hot Springs.
Ross says the Blue Dogs' occasional rebellions with party leaders are in part about "ensuring this Democratic majority still exists in future years."
"Some of the more liberal members of our party may not like the way we vote, but they need to realize we too are Democrats," Ross said. "And without us, they would be in the minority."
Bottom line: As a progressive, I'm not thrilled that these folks are now so powerful but it is a direct result of all the hard work we've put in over the years to get more Democrats elected. So I now find myself mulling over these two bits of folk wisdom:
* Be careful what you wish for
* Democracy: the worst political system, except in comparison to all the others
Comments?