No, let sleeping "Blue Dogs" lie

Activists are calling for the heads of conservative congressional Democrats. Wait till George Bush is history, and then decide.

Editor's note: Read Glenn Greenwald's related article here.

By Ed Kilgore

Read more: George W. Bush, Democratic Party, Joseph Lieberman, Opinion, FISA, Barack Obama, Daily Kos, 2008 election, Blue Dogs

July 29, 2008 |

DINOs. Vichy Democrats. Bush Dogs.

Anyone who listens to the regular talk among progressive activists on- and offline is familiar with such terms of opprobrium for Democratic politicians, particularly in Congress, who are alleged to be ideologically unreliable, insufficiently partisan, too cozy with corporations, or subversive of efforts to fight the Bush administration. These terms often involve members of the official congressional Blue Dog Coalition, which houses many party dissidents while exerting starboard-side pressure on the Democratic leadership. But discontent with Democratic incumbents frequently goes deeper.

Such talk reached new levels of intensity last year during futile efforts to cut off funding for the Iraq war, and again just last month when sizable Democratic defections paved the way to reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

And naturally, the unhappiness is leading to revived talk about a systematic effort in the future -- presumably in 2010 -- to intimidate or even defeat selected Democratic members of Congress, preeminently Blue Dogs, through primary challenges.

As DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas said on June 25:

As DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas said on June 25:

2010 is going to be the year we pivot from taking control of our government, to holding out [sic] accountable. Like Al Wynn this year, the corrupt, the tone-deaf, and the reactionary within Democratic ranks will face the possibility of primary battles. The infrastructure we're building will be available for those courageous enough to take on the entrenched elite. But when we have candidates that inspire, and can develop the alternate funding sources to finance them, the combined might of the Pelosis and Hoyers won't be enough to effect change. Just ask Donna Edwards.

Glenn Greenwald has articulated the case for that strategy -- in combination with a generalized determination to make congressional Democrats as a group "pay a price" for perfidy or failure -- quite forcefully.

There are three big problems with such a campaign: defining the targets amid wildly varying estimates of the necessary degrees of Democratic unity and progressivism; mustering the means to carry out primary challenges in territory not always hospitable to the net-roots point of view; and most of all, dealing with a post-Bush political environment in which many of the long-heard complaints about Democratic "timidity" may be far less relevant.

Greenwald seems to think that it's self-evident that "complicity and capitulation" by Democrats are responsible for the extremely low approval ratings of the current Congress, and that the entire Democratic "base" shares his own feelings of betrayal on issues ranging from Iraq and FISA to the confirmation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

If Congress' unpopularity (the norm rather than the exception, regardless of party control, over the past two decades) is mostly attributable to Democrats, why then (as Greenwald himself points out in rationalizing immediate efforts to reduce their numbers) are Democrats poised to make significant gains in both houses in November? Such limited polling as exists on perceptions of the two parties in Congress invariably shows higher ratings for Democrats than Republicans. Moreover, the disappointment and frustration of self-identified Democratic voters (the actual party "base," as distinguished from the "activist base," according to most definitions) with Congress' record undoubtedly encompass some recognition of the residual power, via the veto pen and other executive powers, of even the weakest president. And aside from continuing public ambivalence about how, exactly, to end the war in Iraq, there's simply not much evidence that issues like FISA or habeas corpus, much as they should matter to voters, actually do, even in the ranks of the Democratic "base."

So if the "base" is supposed to bring congressional Democrats to heel, who gets to draw the lines separating the essential wheat from the disposable chaff?

It's not as though there's a stable and easily identifiable band of rebellious right-leaning Democrats in Congress who are screwing up everything. According to Congressional Quarterly's (subscription-only) voting analysis, House Democrats achieved the highest level of party unity in history last year, with 92 percent sticking together on party-line votes (as compared with the low of 58 percent back in 1972). Senate Democrats' party-unity rating in 2007 was 87 percent, just below their all-time high of 89 percent (achieved in 1999 and 2001), and far above the levels common in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

Next page: Do proponents of a culling exercise have sufficient resources, intellectual, organizational or financial, to kick ass?