Should Congressional Democrats Run Against Obama?

Blue Dogs have been running away from Obama since the day he was inaugurated. In fact, when you compare the Blue Dogs tendency to cross the aisle and vote with the GOP since Obama was elected with that tendency over their whole political careers, you see the Blue Dogs have been far less likely to vote with the Democrats than ever before. Let's look at the half dozen most GOP-leaning non-freshmen Blue Dogs and the half dozen least GOP-leaning non-freshmen Blue Dogs. The number indicate first their career-long scores on substantive legislation and, second, their scores since Obama became president. First, from bad the worse, the Blue Dogs most in Boehner's pocket:

Travis Childers (MS)- 22.55/15.15
Joe Donnelly (IN)- 33.90/27.27
Jason Altmire (PA)- 36.95/25.76
Brad Ellsworth (IN)- 37.97/36.36
Heath Shuler (NC)- 38.78/30.30
Chris Carney (PA)- 39.31/30.65

Even more extreme are Blue Dog neo-Confederates Gene Taylor (MS- 47.17/17.19), Dan Boren (OK- 44.75/19.70) and Charlie Melancon (LA- 55.45/21.54). Below are the Blue Dogs who have voted a bit less often and less automatically with the Republicans, again, from bad to worse:

Jane Harman (CA)- 71.53/62.90
Joe Baca (CA)- 74.85/65.62
Loretta Sanchez (CA)- 81.15/70.00
Mike Michaud (ME)- 81.17/65.15
Mike Thompson (CA)- 81.19/75.76
Adam Schiff (CA)- 82.03/78.79

In both cohorts every single member-- including members in overwhelmingly strong Democratic districts (Harman, Baca, Sanchez, Schiff and Thompson)-- has voted more frequently with the GOP this year than they have across their already miserable career averages. This is true of the entire Blue Dog caucus. Eerily, when one of these Blue Dogs bitched to Obama that his agenda was too liberal for red district Blue Dogs, and that his support of healthcare reform would result in the loss of dozens of seats in the Midterms, the way it has in 1994 when Clinton tried passing healthcare reform, Obama pointed to his (then) high personal approval ratings and said "Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me." Yesterday, that Blue Dog, Marion Berry, citing health concerns, announced his retirement.

But Obama doesn't seem content in just making congressional life not worth it for Blue Dogs-- at least a dozen are likely to be defeated in November, although it could easily rise to over two dozen; his latest swing to the right is untenable for progressives! There was already the Rahm thing and the Afghanistan thing making more and more progressives uncomfortable and now... the clueless and insupportable Herbert Hoover routine, one that not only emulates Bush Economics but even mimics the deception that surrounded it then. Like most progressives-- at least so far-- Krugman is appalled:

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness.”)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view-- and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

Now, I still cling to a fantasy: maybe, just possibly, Obama is going to tie his spending freeze to something that would actually help the economy, like an employment tax credit. (No, trivial tax breaks don’t count). There has, however, been no hint of anything like that in the reports so far. Right now, this looks like pure disaster.

Now that he's embraced the McCain approach to the economy that he vanquished during the election campaign, the man who is already embracing the inevitability of being a single-term president is also trying to embrace the resistant Republicans themselves! I don't know how many progressives are going to want to run on Obama's reverse coattails; probably not many more than the Blue Dogs. Apparently everyone in America has learned the adage that voters, when forced to choose between a fake Republican and a real Republican, will go for the real thing.

And I would expect progressive challengers to be the tip of the spear on this. Today Marcy Winograd's campaign sent out a press release disagreeing with the whole idea of a budget initiative that once again highlights bloated military spending over anemic education funding and other essential government domestic programs.

Though the majority of school funding comes from the states, the Obama proposal could freeze spending on items funded with federal dollars: supplementary books, reading programs, English as a Second Language classes, and modifications for students with disabilities.

"Public schools need more stimulus dollars to preserve music programs, reduce class size, and pursue quality professional development.  A three-year spending freeze on education sends the wrong message to our children, who should be considered our nation's greatest resource for innovation."

..."If the President wants to appease the neo-conservatives, the deficit hawks," says Winograd, "I would encourage him to cut our bloated military budget, which is now paying for multiple perpetual wars that create new enemies." 

The President's deficit reduction plan would not touch military spending, slated in 2010 to include 30 billion for Iraq & Afghanistan, 700-billion for the defense budget.  Spending on air traffic control, education, and national parks would, however, be frozen. 

Though the freeze, which the President hopes will save 250-billion over 10 years, does not affect Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, Winograd warns those mainstays of our safety net could be next.  "Watch out," says Winograd, "for anything billing itself as a bi-partisan independent commission to restore the nation's fiscal balance.  In English that translates into cuts for the poor who rely on Medicaid and for seniors who worked their entire lives to receive Medicare and Social Security.

In 2008, Blue America was happy to see McCain defeated in his bid to extend Bushism for another term. We never collected one dime for Obama, but, I admit, we never expected him to be also looking to expend so many elements of Bushism! In 2008, we urged our readers and our donors to support genuine progressives and leave the blue corporate team and the red corporate team to fight it out among themselves. That's what we're doing again this year. And Sending the Democrats A Message They Can Understand is the first step. You wanna help"

I know they're not exactly Bob Dylan, but these three guys from behind the Orange Curtain seem to be saying it better, albeit inadvertently, than anyone today:

So sorry it's over
So sorry it's over

There's so much more that I wanted and
There's so much more that I needed and
Time keeps moving on and on and on
Soon we'll all be gone

Let's take some time to talk this over
You're out of line and rarely sober
We can't depend on your excuses
Cause in the end it's fucking useless

You can only lean on me for so long
Bring your ship about to watch a friend drown
Stood over the ledge
Begged you to come down
You can only lean on me for so long

It's just about the lyrics. Forget the video. Although... I guess you can think Rahm, Geithner and Summers if you want to. It works.