Ronnie Shows, former 'Democratic' representative of Mississippi's $th Congressional District, argues that bad news for Blue Dogs is bad news for progressives.
Anyone who has been following my blog on the Huffington Post knows that I believe that what is bad for the Blue Dogs is also bad for the progressives. Why you may ask? It's very simple; retaining Blue Dogs in swing congressional districts are the key to keeping control of Congress and all the benefits that come with being in the majority.
Mr Shows was a Blue Dog during his short tenure in Congress, and some of you may remember him for introducing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Congress in the spring of 2002.
Blue Dogs may bear the brunt of midterm losses on the Democratic side of the aisle next week; a loss of fifty-three seats, as projected by Nate Silver, would see the Blue Dogs reduced to thirteen percent of the Democratic caucus, as compared to twenty-one percent at present.
So why does Mr Shows argue that liberal Democrats should be concerned about losing control of the levers of power?
While there are some Blue Dogs in key positions of power in the House, many of the most powerful positions are held by prominent progressives. These include Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the chairmen of several very influential congressional committees, including: Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Judiciary, Financial Services and Appropriations. Being chairman allows the majority -- currently, Democrats -- to call hearings, launch investigations and even issue subpoenas for witnesses and relevant information that companies or government agencies won't give up nicely. Today, the Republicans on those committees cannot do any of those things. Having been in Congress, trust me, having that power means a lot.
After witnessing the ineffectual investigations of the 110th Congress, of subpoenas ignored and hearings mocked by Republicans, it's hard to take this claim too seriously, but of course Republicans seem to be made of sterner stuff than Democrats, so it's entirely possible that a Republican-controlled House could succeed in gumming up the Administration works with frivilous investigations and hearings, provided the Obama White House goes along with the ploy.
Mr Shows goes on.
Something else to consider, on the House side, only the majority can bring legislation to the House Floor for an up or down vote. This means that many bills important to progressives simply won't ever have a chance of becoming law because the Republican Speaker of the House simply won't allow it.
Legislation important to progressives didn't have a chance to become law in the current Congress, either, though to be fair, this was far more of a problem with the House of Lords Senate and Tammany Hall the White House than Speaker Pelosi's House of Representatives.
Nonetheless House Blue Dogs forced bills to be weakened and perhaps more importantly spoke out against liberal policy and legislative intiatives while repeating conservative talking points, giving cover to Republicans and feeding raw meat to wingnut punditry. The difficulties faced in Democratic messaging are grossly exacerbated by Blue Dogs undermining their party.
Mr Shows conclusion?
Well, if we lose the House of Representatives, it will be precisely because many of those Blue Dogs have been replaced by extremely conservative Tea Party supported candidates. This won't be good news for progressives, and frankly, it won't be good news for our country either.
Let's take a moment to remember that "Tea Party candidates" is just another name for Republicans - it always has been, and it alwasy will be. Tea Partiers are dupes led by the nose by Republican oligarchs.
With that out of the way, Mr Shows' bedwetting overlooks a few key points.
First, current midterm projections show Democrats retaining control of the Senate by a slim margin. The presence of conservative Democrats in the Senate may in fact shift the balance of power to the Republicans, but here's where the 'failure' of filibuster reform looms large; even with as many as ten Democrats defecting to the Republicans, those remaining Democrats will be able to prevent cloture votes the same way as their Republican counterparts for the passing session. Democrats will still be able to place holds on bills in the Senate as well, to stymie or at least delay the sudden but inevitable betrayal by conservaDem senators.
Second, the White House still holds veto power over legislation coming from Congress. Even the most ridiculously optimistic (Rasmussen) midterms projections don't provide Repbulicans with a veto-proof majority on The Hill. To me this is the weak link right now; the President's quixotic bipartisan fetishism and his conservative conviction in private market solutions to public problems may result in further damaging the Democratic brand by giving additional credence to the failed conservative ideology and methods.
Losing the House would suck. Ending the tenure of the first woman Speaker of the House would be a damned shame; one of my great comforts is knowing that Nancy Pelosi is third in-line for the Presidency in the event of an unimaginable national tragedy. Republicans will take every opportunity to show their asses to Americans once again if they win the House; the strong resemblance between conservatives and a troop of baboons will never be more apparent.
But passing liberal legislation proved to be insanely difficult precisely because of House Blue Dogs and their Senate counterparts. The Republicans did what any sane person expected the Republicans to do: obstruct and baldly lie at every turn. That they were enabled in this by deficit peacocks and DINOs of every stipe is the real tragedy of the 111th Congress. The Republicans presented a primer on how a minority faction can succeed in asserting itself in Congress, and if Democrats can inject enough calcium into their spines to master parliamentary procedures, and if the White House will fill the veto fountain pen early and often - the big 'if' in all this - then we can look toward installing an actual liberal majority in both houses come 2012.
Once again we have an ace in the hole. The Republicans are sure to overplay their hand, just as they did in the Nineties. In fact I'm guessing that the Republican congresses from 1995 on will look pretty sane in comparison to the current crop of loonies and reprobates which make up the Republican ranks right now. It ended badly for them then, and it has the potential to end up worse for them now, if Democrats remember who they represent and why, something the Blue Dogs clearly fail to do.
Ari Berman agrees.
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.
Again, it would suck to lose the House. Life is easier in the majority. But a majority should not be the goal, if it means that we must sacrifice liberal policies to achieve it.