Checking Chicken Bones In Pennsylvania... Sifting Through The Blue Dog Ashes

If you've been reading this blog lately you probably have come to the conclusion that we were more than a little obsessed with defeating corrupt Blue Dog Tim Holden in northeast Pennsylvania, where I used to live. Holden was gerrymandered into the district and a native, a progressive native, Matt Cartwright, beat him decisively on Tuesday night. Since then Holden has been out trying to find a lobbying job while he's still got a vote in Congress and the media has been trying to figure out what happened. How is it possible that some guy who never ran for anything and backs marriage equality, a pro-Choice position and is decidedly anti-corporate and anti-Austerity could beat the dean of the Pennsylvania delegation who was actively-- very, very actively-- backed by Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Allyson Schwartz, Joe Crowley and most of the rest of the corrupt DC Democratic Establishment? Maybe they should glance up from Drudge once in a while and take a look at Digby's blog or even DWT.

A good deal of the coverage Wednesday emphasized that it was another Blue Dog Apocalypse, albeit a mini one. Across the state a Blue Dog even more conservative than Holden-- if not quite as corrupt-- was also beaten. That would be Jason Altmire. We paid that race almost no attention at all since there was virtually no difference between Altmire and his opponent, Mark Critz, who were thrown together by Republican gerrymandering in Harrisburg. Let me run three numbers by you-- the 2011-'12 crucial vote scores, tabulated by ProgressivePunch, of Holden, Altmire and Critz:

Critz: 36.36
Holden: 35.80
Altmire: 22.10 (meaning he votes with the GOP over three quarters of the time, worse than only 3 "Democrats," fellow Blue Dogs Jim Matheson of Utah, Mike Ross of Arkansas and Dan Boren of Oklahoma, the second two of whom are retiring).

Have no doubt... these are three of the worst Democrats in Congress and all three have been counted on by John Boehner and Eric Cantor to provide the votes on key legislation that allows them to go crying to the press that the Senate won't pass their wonderful "bipartisan" bills. Blue America would have been happy to join a battle to unseat Altmire or Critz-- just as we did to unseat Holden-- but not to replace one with the other. Neither has any saving grace... at least not for me.

But I talked with a friend of mine who serves with them in Congress. He had a different perspective. He was rooting for Altmire-- who has a lower score and is a member of the Blue Dog caucus. I was surprised, since my friend is one of the most progressive Members of Congress... in history. This is how he saw it:

"There is a temperamental difference. Altmire, like for instance Walt Minnick, felt that he was constrained to vote the way that he did because of his perception of the district. On any particular vote, though, you could have a meaningful conversation with Altmire. Critz, on the other hand, really is conservative."

That's how Holden excused his horrific voting record; he blamed it on the voters in the southern part of the state who are far more conservative than the Democrats up north, the new heart of the district-- and the area that sent Holden packing. He took over 80% of the vote in conservative Schuylkill County-- where he lives and was once sheriff-- but lost by nearly as big a margin in Lackawanna County... which has a lot more people. If you look at the dozen worst voting Democrats.

Let's look at the dozen worst Democrats in Congress, according to their propensity for voting with the Republicans and compare it to how Obama did in their districts in 2008. We'll go from bad to worse:

Bill Owens (NY)- 36.03... Obama: 52%
Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)- 35.80... Obama: 48%
Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)- 31.87... Obama: 43%
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 28.47... Obama: 56%
Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)- 26.45... Obama: 54%
John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)- 24.36... Obama: 54%
Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 23.88... Obama: 60%
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 22.63... Obama: 47%
Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)- 22.10... Obama: 44%
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- 18.25... Obama: 39%
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)- 16.36... Obama: 39%
Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)- 14.02... Obama: 34%

And in Critz's old district, Obama and McCain essentially tied with McCain ahead by a nose. But I guess that comparing these numbers one could say that Owens, Cuellar, Donnelly (who the Democratic establishment picked to run for U.S. Senator this year), Barrow, and certainly Costa are not voting with the Republicans so consistently because they're forced to but despite the voters they represent being more progressive than they are.

You can also use this type of analysis to figure out which Republicans are voting to the right of their constituents. Let's take Wisconsin's 5 Republican-held districts for example.

WI-1- Paul Ryan ... Obama: 51%
WI-5- James Sensenbrenner (11.23)... Obama: 41%
WI-6- Tom Petri (13.41)... Obama: 50%
WI-7- Sean Duffy (4.36)... Obama: 56%
WI-8- Reid Ribble (4.44)... Obama: 54%

It certainly appears that Duffy and Ribble are challenging their constituents to do something about it. And Paul Ryan, at least by the numbers, is also skating on thin ice. Meanwhile, let me get back to the Inside the Beltway spin, always ideologically-phobic. Their interpretation of what happened last night-- he lesson learned: the Democrats need more Blue Dogs, more Democrats to vote like Republicans. The serious Paul Kane, hoping as always to be the next David Broder, has so many glaring errors that I was thinking of doing a contest to see who could find the most. In the first two paragraphs he makes the preposterous claim that the Blue Dogs were once "the most powerful voting bloc on Capitol Hill" and that Critz was "more liberal" than Altmire, both of which should have been caught by a fact checker... if the Post employs those any longer. And only a Broderite would call Altmire's and Holden's GOP-lite voting records "centrist" instead of extreme right wing. But instead of noting how far to the right the GOP has marched, he blunders into the kind of error not even rookies would make: the Democrats, basically a status quo, conservative party are now, "father to the left than any time in the last decade." I wonder if he wrote this while he was on drugs.

Just two years removed from being the most powerful voting bloc on Capitol Hill, Blue Dog Democrats are now trying to stave off political extinction.

On Tuesday Reps. Jason Altmire and Tim Holden, members of the moderate-to-conservative caucus of Democrats known as the Blue Dog

Coalition, lost their primary battles to more liberal opponents who painted their centrism as apostasies that could no longer be tolerated.

These were the latest blows delivered to the Blue Dogs, whose membership ranks have been decimated the last two years by a perfect political storm that has driven the House Democratic caucus farther to the left than at any time in the last decade.

It’s increasingly unclear whether Democrats can ever reclaim the House majority unless they pick up ground in the conservative-leaning terrain that the Blue Dogs once represented. In addition, with so few moderates left, there are fewer House members in the political center to
create the sort of bipartisan coalition that in the past has provided the bulwark of support for budget compromises.

...The group's long-term prospects are endangered on a few other political and demographic fronts. This moderate group has lost almost all of its female members, down to just Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), whose Orange County district often makes her more in line with the suburban New Democrat Coalition than the rural-tilting Blue Dogs.

[I hate to interrupt but Kane should lose his newspaper writer's license for peddling this completely made up nonsense, at best stuff he remembers when he was a child. Loretta Sanchez's district is in Orange County-- he did get that right-- but a completely Democratic part of the county. McCain only managed to get 38% of the vote there. And sooner or later the Democratic voters in the district will throw Sanchez out for being too conservative.]

...Interviews with a handful of current and former senior aides to Blue Dogs all focused on recruiting, with each strategist suggesting that finding the right candidates in these regions can be very painstaking but also very rewarding. When he served as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman in 2006, then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) found non-politicians such as Shuler-- a college football legend in the South who played a few years in the NFL-- and telegenic sheriff Brad Ellsworth in Evansville, Ind., to run in very conservative districts.

They both won and helped propel the Democrats into the majority for the first time in 12 years, giving Pelosi her historic speakership.

Privately, many Blue Dogs and their staff blame Pelosi’s liberal leadership. Her image was run countless times in 2010 against Shuler and Altmire, both of whom were rare survivors. Despite a coordinated recruiting effort by the DCCC this time around, few Blue Dogs who lost in 2010 have opted to run for their old seat. Shuler and Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), both co-chairmen of the coalition, decided to retire at the end of this year rather than run for re-election in new districts that tilted toward Republicans. Ellsworth lost a Senate race in 2010 by 15 percentage points, leaving behind a House seat that flipped to Republicans.

Shuler, who spent time Wednesday on a conference call trying to recruit Blue Dog candidates, said his coalition resonates with most voters in terms of its anti-deficit message but is struggling with translating that into seats in Congress. “The Blue Dogs represent 80 percent of America, but there are just 25 of us in the House,” he said.