Virginia held it’s democratic primary today and I voted for Creigh Deeds. He was not the most progressive candidate in the race. I voted for him because I think he is the candidate who will be best able to appeal to the center and center right voters we will need, in order to win in Nov. I write this diary to remind everyone, but especially blue dog bashers, of a few of the reasons we have control of congress and the executive branch currently.
We have control because of a fifty state strategy that recruited and funded pale blue candidates to run in red and pink districts and states. Many of those candidates were successful because they were deemed to be an acceptable alternative to either the right wing zealots that the base voted out of the primaries or the republican incumbents that were perceived to be part of the problem, not part of the solution. People in the center tend to be more pragmatic and less idealistic, or at least more willing to compromise and less intransigent.
Today Virginia is a blue state.......pale blue! It could easily become a red state again. VA is not MA, it’s not San Fran. I understand that northern VA has turned communist and that’s fine, but we have Appalachia in the west and a very large Navy presence in the southeast (our minor league hockey team is the Admirals). These people are not going to vote communist. We need a candidate that voters in the center and slightly right of center will be OK with, and the same idea translates to every other battleground state.
Ideally I would like to have a Senate of 100 Senators that agreed with me 100% of the time. That might be possible in the Magic Kingdom, but certainly not in the real world. Inevitably we have to deal with the real world, even though at times I’d prefer to dwell in the Kingdom.
Over the years, in the voting booth if I was unfamiliar with a candidate I would just vote against anyone on the Right to Life ticket. Both of my Senators today are fairly conservative but I voted for them anyway. Did I compromise my ideals? Perhaps I did, but unfortunately politics is the art of compromise. They caucus with the dems. They help put the gavel in the hand of a dem and keep it out of the hand of a repug. That is hugely important. It means Barbara Boxer can crack the knuckles of Inhoffe if need be.
I have been a registered democrat since I was eighteen, but up until ’04 I don’t think I ever voted a straight party ticket. Ticket splitting is a somewhat passive form disagreement. Changing one’s party registration is an overt and active form of disagreement. I’ve never been so pissed off at my party that it caused me to get off my butt and change my registration. Those republicans who switched their registration to indy or dem recently, were that pissed off. They were motivated to do so by the extremism of the lunatic fringe that has taken over their party. They are today, victims to a large extent of their own Frankenstein; talk radio. We of the liberal persuasion are more open minded, more willing to listen to an opposing point of view and engage in rational debate. That is exactly what the republican party of today can’t or won’t do. The spokespeople for the repugs today spew bigotry and hatred and gladly offer the door to anyone who disagrees with them. This is arguably the age of intolerance for the republicans and the primary reason they are at the low water mark.
They have tried to push intelligent, rational, reasonable people like Colin Powell and Chris Buckley away from their party. I rarely agreed with Bill Buckley’s politics. I remember reading a sketch in MAD Magazine once, where a character, "did a Buckley—-a series of right hand turns leading nowhere". But Firing Line was an honest, intelligent, civil, even amusing debate of meaningful issues. Where are the republicans that are capable of that today? If there are any still alive they are currently trying to dig themselves out from underneath the rubble of what was once BushCo. Eventually they will emerge and figure out that the only way back to the majority is by reaching out to moderates. Lush offered to resign as the titular head of the party the other day. Obviously someone other than Michael Steele told him that his audience alone isn’t going to elect anybody to anything thereby achieving a permanent republican minority. In other words, tone it down asshole. Even he will get the message sooner or later, but the later the better for our purposes.
We achieve the ideal of electing more progressive candidates by convincing the swing voters, because they are the ones who decide elections, of the merit and wisdom of our policy positions. We cannot push left wing candidates onto a centrist populace, or push an incumbent blue dog so far to the left that it gives a potential center right candidate an issue s/he can exploit. Push them? Yes, but not to the breaking point. That is a recipe for losing the gavel and the last thing we want to do is lose the gavel. Repeat after me, the last thing we want to do is lose the gavel!
Remember Jim Jeffords? Paul Gigot wrote a piece in the WSJ chastising the republican leadership for tolerating his independence and refusal to tow the party line. Slap him down, make him get in line he said. Well, the republican leadership was dumb enough to do just that. They slapped him down all right, but he didn’t get in line. As a matter of fact he crossed the line, to the other side of the isle, and flipped control of the Senate in the process. The repugs today are intolerant, that’s why they are in the minority. We shouldn’t make the same mistake. Hospitality, civility, tolerance are words that come to mind to avoid that mistake.
You might not like a policy position of a given blue dog, it might even piss you off, but
for all of you who grunt and grumble, rant and rave about blue dogs, just remember those elegant words of LBJ: "I’d rather have ‘em inside the tent pissin’ out, than outside the tent pissin’ in." And so would I, because it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on!