Another Of Congress' Worst Blue Dogs, This Time Mike Ross (AR), Is Leaving

This morning, after the President's speech to the nation last night, the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll showing that 77% of Americans think the Republicans aren't willing enough to compromise with the president over the debt ceiling problem. That's a kind of bipartisanship that transcends Beltway politics. But if you bother to listen to Boehner and Cantor and the other right-wing leaders arguing for more tax breaks for millionaires and more loopholes for companies that ship American jobs to China, you may have noticed that they claim that their my-way-or-the-highway approach has "bipartisan support." What are they talking about? Blue Dogs.

Although the GOP managed to devastate the Blue Dog conservative Blue Dog coalition last November-- less than half of them are still serving in Congress-- many of those who are left have consistently supported Boehner's and Cantor's approach on the vast majority of crucial votes this year. And with Boehner and Cantor insisting that July 19th's passage of their Cut, Cap and Balance Act in the House (it failed in the Senate) that's the proof that their plot to gut Social Security and Medicare is bipartisan. It passed 234-190... 5 mangy Blue Dogs voting with the Republicans.

The 5 culprits were Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), the only one of the 5 to represent a solidly Democratic district, Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC) and Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). This year Boren, who has already announced that he will be retiring from Congress next year, has, on crucial votes, sided with the Democrats 17.28% of the time. Yes, he's stuck with Boehner and Cantor on a whopping 82.72% of the key votes the House took this year. Just for the sake of comparison, that's more loyal to the right-wing line than 15 Republicans, including die-hard conservatives like Justin Amash, a teabagger from Michigan, and California nutcase Dana Rohrabacher. That dismal 17.28% adherence to Democratic positions is exactly the same percentage that California's most extreme right-wing congressional imbecile, Tom McClintock, voted with the Democrats.

Matheson, who is being wooed by the DSCC to run for a shaky Senate seat in Utah, isn't quite as bad as Boren. He's voted with the Democrats 27.50% of the time. The House Democratic caucus will be much better off without these two corporate shills-- if Matheson can be lured out of (or gerrymandered out of) a relatively safe seat and into a Senate race he's bound to lose. These two, and the rest of the Blue Dogs, are not just giving Boehner and Cantor cover to call their outrageous and extremist right-wing bills "bipartisan," they are consistently pushing the anti-family corporate line within the caucus, undermining cohesion and pulling Democratic positions further and further right, confusing the public about what it means to support Democrats.

Two days after the 5 Blue Dogs supported Cut, Cap and Balance, Cantor pushed through legislation to take the teeth out of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, basically giving the banksters a big wet kiss by ending the Consumer Protection part of the bill. It passed 241-173, 10 right-wing, corporate-oriented Democrats joining the GOP on this one. This is the kind of vote the DCCC likes to go out and raise money on, claiming the Democrats want to protect consumers and the Republicans want to make them easy prey for ravenous and greed-obsessed banksters. It's mostly true... except for the folks who live in districts represented by John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Bill Owens (Blue Dog lite-NY), Nick Rahall (Blue Dog lite-WV), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), and Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR). That's how they roll... on virtually every vote in the House.

Yesterday, while working-family champion Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was railing at the far right for demanding that Congress balance the budget on the backs of seniors, orphans and disabled veterans, there was another development, of a more partisan nature, taking place in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Mike Ross-- the second-worst Blue Dog (21.47% with the Democrats this year) after the execrable Boren-- was announcing his retirement, probably foreshadowing a run for governor in 2014.

Last year Blue America worked tirelessly to defeat the worst Blue Dog in the 2009-10 session, Bobby Bright (AL). We take some credit for his narrow 51-49% loss-- a less than 5,000 vote margin. Here's how we put it right after the election:

The silver lining last night, as I predicted a week ago, was the political demise of the Blue Dogs. Over half the caucus was defeated, including the most reactionary members-- those who voted most frequently with the GOP against working families: Bobby Bright (AL-19.83% with Democrats), Gene Taylor (MS- 22.50), Travis Childers (MS- 22.95), Walt Minnick (ID- 27.64), Harry Mitchell (AZ- 28.46), Glenn Nye (VA- 30.08), Charles Melancon (LA- 32.17), Jim Marshall (GA-32.52). In fact all the Blue Dogs who voted less than a third of the time with the Democrats except for arch-reactionary Dan Boren (OK- 26.50), were defeated, as were so many of the ones who voted against the Hate Crimes bill, for the Stupak Amendment, against the health care bill, against the Wall Street reform legislation. And in the Senate, reactionary Arkansas bootlick to the Walton family, Blanche Lincoln wound up with a stunning 37.2% of the vote.

Blue America started the ball rolling against Blanche over a year ago by letting loyal Democrats in Democratic parts of the state know what she was up to. And we just did the same thing-- with equal success-- to Bobby Bright in Alabama. With 217,777 votes cast yesterday, Bright won 106,455 (48.9%) to Martha Roby's 111,322 (51.1%). We were able to depress his vote in 4 counties crucial to Democratic candidates, Lowndes, Barbour, Bullock and Butler. Below is a comparison of the votes Bright got in each of these candidates when he won in 2008 and when he lost last night:

Lowndes- 5,667 (79%) in '08 and 3,874 (74%) Tuesday
Barbour- 6,889 (61%) in '08 and 4,822 (59%) Tuesday
Bullock- 4,203 (79%) in '08 and 2,980 (77%) Tuesday
Butler- 5,601 (59%) and 3,878 (55%) Tuesday

We hope right-wing Democrats willing to shill themselves out to Big Business will know there's a price to pay for their perfidy. We'll be thinking carefully about Ben Nelson's race in 2012-- as well as Jim Cooper's, Joe Donnelly's, Mike Ross' and John Barrow's. And then there's our fearless leader.

Our first choice for this year was Boren and our second choice was the grossly corrupt Ross. Donnelly has been redistricted out of a seat and will make some silly run for the Senate and then go to work on K Street. We're looking closely at Barrow and Cooper, each of whom represents a Democratic district. McCain only took 45% of the votes in Barrow's Georgia district and only 43% in Cooper's Nashville district. Either of those Republican-supporting corporatists can be beaten in a Democratic primary. If you'd like to help, please surf over to our Bad Dogs page and lend a hand. We have several leads in across the country for progressives willing to challenge Blue Dogs.

Last year 28 Blue Dogs-- and another dozen or so Blue Dog allies like Ann Kirkpatrick, Suzanne Kosmas and Melissa Bean-- were either forced into retirement or were defeated at the polls. These were the Blue Dogs who were voting with the GOP in 2010 but are no longer in the House:

Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
Robert Marion Berry (AR-1)
Allen Boyd (FL-2)
Bobby Bright (AL-2)
Chris Carney (PA-10)
Travis Childers (MS-1)
Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3)
Lincoln Davis (TN-4)
Brad Ellsworth (IN-8)
Bart Gordon (TN-6)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL)
Baron Hill (IN-9)
Frank Kratovil (MD-1)
Betsy Markey (CO-4)
Jim Marshall (GA-8)
Charlie Melancon (LA-3)
Walt Minnick (ID-1)
Harry Mitchell (AZ-5)
Dennis Moore (KS-3)
Patrick Murphy (PA-8)
Scott Murphy (NY-20)
Glenn Nye (VA-2)
Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL)
John Salazar (CO-3)
Zack Space (OH-18)
John Tanner (TN-8)
Gene Taylor (MS-4)
Charlie Wilson (OH-6)

Several are trying for comebacks. We'll be doing our best to make sure that doesn't happen, particularly in the case of the mendacious Chris Carney, who's looking to move down to a bluer district and challenge GOP racist Lou Barletta.

UPDATE: Bleak Future For The Blue Dogs

This morning Aaron Blake and Rachel Weiner laid out a scenario for the likely extinction of the Blue Dogs as a species. There are only 25 left-- although they neglect to mention there are plenty who vote with the Blue Dogs but fear affiliating themselves with the hated caucus-- and prospects for the future look very dim. They make Altmire, Boswell, McIntyre and Shuler as the mostly likely to face defeat in 2012 but point out that John Barrow, Sanford Bishop, Dennis Cardoza, Ben Chandler, Jim Cooper, Jim Costa, Adam Schiff and several others could be redistricted into oblivion. There are only 6 "safe" Blue Dogs by their calculations-- and I think they're being overly generous to Mike Thompson, although that depends on which district he winds up running in.