Has Cheri Bustos Earned Reelection?

Who's worse to be hanging with, Pete Peterson or Rahm?

In 2010, the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature gerrymandered the state-- in the same anti-democratic way that Republican-controlled legislatures did in states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan-- to create more congressional seats for its own party. One of those seats, IL-17, was expressly designed to defeat freshman Republican Bobby Schilling. The awkwardly-drawn district starts up in Rockford and the suburbs of Dubuque and Davenport and works its way down and across into the Democratic parts of Peoria. The PVI is D+7 and Obama beat Romney last year 168,796 (57%) to 119,789 (41%). Bustos, an ex p.r. agent who was serving on the East Moline City Council, had the support of the state party establishment and won the primary for a seat that everyone knew was going Democratic. She beat Schilling, a Tea Party-backed extremist, 153,519 (53%) to 134,623 (47%). She did considerably worse than Obama and he did a LOT better than Romney. He's challenging her to a rematch next year.

Embracing the losing DCCC strategy of taking on the persona of a conservative, Bustos has the 6th worst voting record of any Democratic freshman. Here are the half dozen Democrats who vote most frequently against against progressive positions with the ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores-- from bad to worse:

• Cheri Bustos- 44.62
• Joe Garcia- 42.52
• Raul Ruiz- 40.60
• Kyrsten Sinema- 33.33
• Sean Patrick Maloney- 31.34
• Pete Gallego- 31.30

Bustos also has the most conservative voting record of any Illinois congressmember and is the only member of the delegation with a score under 50%, meaning she votes badly more than she votes well. The other 5 worst freshmen are all New Dems. She behaves like one but never joined that caucus or the Blue Dogs; she just votes in lockstep with them.

The other day, one of her constituents, who voted for her in 2012, but who won't vote for her again, alerted us to some budget workshops she'd doing for voters in the district. The idea is that small groups of citizens will act as legislators attempting to solve the country's budgetary problems.  They will be using materials provided by the virulently anti-family/pro-corporate Concord Coalition founded by Pete Peterson. The Quad City Times, for which Bustos used to work as a reporter, blew the whistle on her connivance with the anti-Social Security group.

Bustos' office said the workshop, which is being conducted with the Concord Coalition, is aimed at getting feedback from people in her district about their federal budget priorities.

During the exercise, people will break into small groups to talk about how to best balance the budget, reduce the deficit and prioritize programs.

In the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010, conservative Democrats with the DCCC strategy were slaughtered at the polls when disappointed base voters stayed home. This could well happen again next year, particularly to freshmen like Bustos who isn't going to get conservative voters-- who will vote for Schilling-- and will find it heard to make a case for herself to actual grassroots Democrats who expect their representatives in Washington at least a minimum of fealty to core Democratic values, a minimum Bustos has failed to achieve.