Will The New Dems Get As Decimated Next Year As Their Ideological Brethren The Blue Dogs Were in 2010 And 2012?

Steve Israel has ZERO interest in races like these that pit progressives against powerful senior Republicans

With the political demise of the Blue Dogs after the 2010 midterms, DCCC Chair-- and "ex"-Blue Dog-- Steve Israel made his top priority not winning back the House in 2012 but restocking the Republican wing of the Democratic Party with corrupt conservatives. His vehicle, the resuscitated New Dems, corporate Democrats without the KKK sheets, homophobia and misogyny of the Blue Dogs. But every bit as eager to blow Wall Street and punish working families. Israel didn't come close to winning back the House, of course, but he did manage to get a shitload of horribly conservative New Dems elected.

The worst of the lot are Patrick Murphy (FL), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Pete Gallego (TX), Scott Peters (CA), John Delaney (MD), Suzan DelBene (WA), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Joe Garcia (FL), Dan Maffei (NY), Bill Foster (IL), Brad Schneider (IL) and Ron Barber (AZ), although a couple of non-New Dems-- Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Cheri Bustos (IL), Raul Ruiz (CA) and Ami Bera (CA)-- belong on that list of conservatives Israel got into Congress. This week, a poorly researched and very unauthoritative article in The Hill asserts that most of them are extremely vulnerable to Republican challengers. Although it may be too abstract for a Hill analyst, one of the reasons these ConservaDems are so vulnerable is because they've turne doff their electoral base, exactly the way the Blue Dogs did in 2010. Many progressives would rather just not vote than vote for a Democrat who sides with Boehner, Cantor and Wall Street as frequently as this New Dem crew does.

Israel said the New Democrats “can count on the full support” of his committee in 2014, something you would never say about the Progressive Caucus, of course. Most of the Members on the DCCC's Frontline list of Democrats in trouble are New Dems. But what will his full support mean, aside from wasting millions and millions of donor dollars on races that can't be won for incumbents who don't deserve another term? He is responsible in great part for telling them to protect their right flank by voting with the Republicans. That dumb strategy doesn't won over any Republicans and, though it may persuade a few really dumb independents, it loses lots of Democratic votes, the way it did in 2010 and the way it will do again in 2014.

“There’s going to be a priority on the current members-- to do everything we can to help them position on their reelections,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), who took over as chairman of the New Democratic Coalition after the 2012 election.

“We need the New Dems to be successful for the party to be successful. Our districts are the battlegrounds, and if there’s a path forward to the majority for us, [it’s] in those competitive districts.”

The coalition, which draws its inspiration from President Clinton’s political style, spans the Democratic ideological spectrum. But the group puts an emphasis on business-friendly and free trade policies

. It is rife with freshmen after the 2012 cycle. The coalition’s ranks grew by a dozen members, success that came by emphasizing problem solving and bipartisanship.

More than two thirds of the coalition’s endorsed candidates-- 18 of 28-- won their races in 2012.

The group now includes 53 members, down from the 68 at their peak but an improvement over their low of 41 after 2010.

“We’ve always fashioned ourselves as the faction of new ideas and innovation,” Kind said. “These new members are impressive. They are more pragmatic; they are more reasonable; they’re trying to break through this hyper-partisanship and get things done.”

The 2012 turnaround came after a disappointing 2010 cycle, when several New Democrats were swamped by the GOP wave.

Now, they’re playing defense again.

...Many of the freshman New Democrats are protecting their right flanks by splitting with their own party on a number of issues.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) supports repealing the medical device tax that is part of the Affordable Care Act, and recently bucked his party on a higher-profile healthcare vote.

He was one of 22 House Democrats-- 13 of them New Democrats-- who voted to delay the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act.

“I know I’m going to be judged by what I do, the votes I take,” he told The Hill on Tuesday.

Schneider won an upscale suburban Chicago district that leans Democratic at the federal level but had continuously elected centrist Republicans to the House for more than three decades before he defeated Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) in 2012.

Dold is gearing up for a rematch next year.

  The most corrupt Democrat in Congress, Joe Crowley, has been introducing Nw Dems to the Wall Street lobbyists and executives who like buying votes from confused Democrats. Another Wall Street shill, Jim Himes, is also helping New Dems raise immense sums of cash for their campaigns. In the end, it's not likely to matter for most of them. They'll fight using a losing strategy (taking progressives for granted while pointlessly chasing conservative voters). We'll be as glad to see them go as we were to see the Blue Dogs decimated. And this time, we're sure Israel will be flushed down the toilet with them.