Do Blue Dogs Do More Harm Or More Good To The Democratic Party? Meet Abigail Spanberger

Spanberger won her seat without Republican votes but now she caters almost exclusively to GOP voters

Virginia elected two freshmen from red districts, Elaine Luria, who replaced Scott Taylor in VA-02 (primarily Virginia Beach, York County and part of Norfolk plus Hampton) and Abigail Spanberger, who replaced Dave Brat in VA-07, a much redder district that includes 10 counties, the largest of them being Chesterfield, Henrico, Spotsylvania and Culpepper. Luria's district has a PVI of R+3 and Spanberger's is a much more challenging R+6. Obama lost both districts both times he ran. Trump won VA-02 48.8% to 45.4% and VA-07 50.5% to 44.0%. These were the congressional results:

In both cases, the Democrats outspent their GOP rivals-- in Spanberger's case by about double-- and both were tough, hard-fought races. Today, both districts are being heavily targeted by the NRCC for blue to red flips. They are trying to get Taylor to challenge Luria to a rematch and there are half a dozen Republican candidates lining up to challenge Spanberger, three of whom are very credible, a state senator and two state delegates, all military vets like Spanberger.

Although both freshmen have earned "F" ratings from ProgressivePunch, neither has a Democratic primary opponent, at least not so far. There are 5 very conservative Democrats tied for the 193rd among 235 Dems in the House. Each has a rotten score of 64.29%-- besides Luria and Spanberger, Angie Craig (New Dem-MN), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY) and Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ). Despite Cheri Bustos' bullshit about "protecting freshmen" with her ugly anti-primary rule, none of these particularly bad freshmen has a primary opponent.

Back to Luria and Spanberger, both seem to have made the decision that it's more important to protect their careers than to embrace Democratic values and ideals. Aside from their crappy voting records, neither has co-sponsored Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-For-All Act, AOC's Green New Deal Resolution, nor John Larson's Social Security 2100 Act (which is sponsored by 206 Democrats so far). Do Luria and Spanberger think their constituents don't want to see Social Security protected? Republicans aren't going to vote for either of them in 2020. Their paths to reelection are all about encouraging a big Democratic turnout and appealing to independent voters (not Republican voters). Their time in Congress so far will deflate Democratic base turnout, not inflate it.

Not everyone agrees. In a p.r.-agency-generated paean to Spanberger, Her Party Is Liberal. Her District Is Conservative. Moderate Democrat Fights To Survive In The Middle, the Washington Post's Jenna Portnoy, came up with every excuse in the book for protecting a faux-Democrat from the Republican-wing of the party, despite her atrocious record. Within her first week in Congress, Spanberger has already "informed the leadership that demonizing the border wall was not the way to keep control of the House. 'Listen, in my district I am hearing, Build a wall! In my district we are losing the messaging that Democrats can be strong on borders,' said the 39-year-old from the Richmond, Va. suburbs, according to the congresswoman and others who were there. It was a critical moment for Spanberger, one of dozens of new Democratic lawmakers from red districts who helped their party seize control of the House last year. These members will have to win reelection if the party is to hold the chamber in 2020."

"These members will have to win reelection if the party is to hold the chamber in 2020." Never These members will have to persuade voters in their districts that building a wall is bad policy and there's a better way to achieve what they want. That's always too difficult for the Democratic Party to articulate these days. Instead we get this canned, subversive drivel:

They face a double challenge: Not only do they have to strike a balance between loyalty to the Democratic Party and fidelity to their more conservative districts, but they also have to fight the leftward tug of progressives who want universal health care, impeachment of President Trump and a Green New Deal.

Spanberger and the other moderates must find ways to separate themselves from a freshman class defined by lawmakers such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Rashida Tlaib (MI), proud members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“It’s a tough tightrope act [Spanberger] has to perform,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Public Policy and Government at George Mason University. “She has to stay politically centered as much as possible, given the nature of her district, while at the same time work effectively with her party leadership who are pushing a more progressive agenda.”

Yes, "politically centered." Who defines that? Who determines which policy prescriptions are part of the "center?" Trump and McTurtle? The financiers who own and operate the GOP, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and No Labels/Problem Solvers? Certainly, never the timid, self-loathing, geriatric Democratic Party leaders. Count on that. "As she fights the pull of the progressives," continued Portoy, "and learns her way around Congress, Spanberger already faces a Republican opponent -- Tina Ramirez, a Hispanic single mother and activist in the cause of religious freedom." There's another term a hack journalist is happy to throw around without thought in the world about what it means-- "religious freedom?" Freedom to what? Discriminate against gays? Is that what it comes down to today?

That puts Spanberger on an immediate campaign footing, just six months after she beat Rep. Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District by emphasizing her national security background, independence and civility.

In her first weeks in office, she visited the White House with Democratic and Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus to discuss ending the government shutdown that had begun in December. She signed on to letters and legislation spearheaded by Republicans. She voted against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA), whom Brat and other Republicans frequently invoked during the 2018 campaign as embodying a liberal elite.

Still, some Republican voters remain wary.

Who the fuck cares about Republicans being wary? Her path to reelection is through independents not Republicans. Is that too hard a concept to grasp? No Democrat, no matter how far to the right ever satisfies Republicans. They will label her Spanberger a socialist no matter what she does. Needless to say, the idiot reporter interviewed hard core Republicans. Paul Johnson voted for Brat. Does someone expect him to switch to Spanberger now? He told Portnoy that Spanberger "portrayed herself as somewhat independent-- I don’t have the impression she is exactly what she has sold herself as. He was pissed off that she voted for H.R. 1, "legislation containing measures including restricting partisan gerrymandering, creating automatic voter registration, making Election Day a federal holiday and requiring super PACs to disclose donors." Johnson asserts that that means she was "siding with Nancy Pelosi, taking some of these extreme positions, taking rights away from the states." If Spanberger wants his votes, there's exactly one way to get it-- jump the fence like so many Blue Dogs have done in the past, and join the GOP. Another superfluous Brat supporter Portnoy dug up said "he would consider voting for Spanberger if she upheld 'Virginia conservative values.'" She has done exactly that, but Republicans will still spend immense amounts of money telling Republican voters that she's a socialist and in a lesbian/Muslim relationship with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

At times, she has supported Republican-led amendments, to the chagrin of Democrats, as when she and 26 other moderate [ah... that word hack DC journos love to use to describe the far right of the Democratic Party] Democrats helped Republicans amend a bill to expand federal background checks for gun purchases. They added a provision that says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must be notified when an undocumented immigrant seeks to purchase a firearm.

“It’s incumbent on all of us to give her the room she needs to do the art of the possible for her district,” Rep. Don Beyer (New Dem-VA) said.

Loosely quoting Pelosi, he said, “We didn’t take back the House winning blue seats.”

Spanberger wants to position herself as a pragmatist, compromising to effect change gradually.

“If we are just driven by ideology, we will achieve nothing for the people who actually need it,” she said during an interview interrupted by well-wishers at a coffee shop in her district.

She pointed to Brat, the Republican she defeated, noting his membership in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which she said repeatedly sabotaged efforts at compromise when Republicans controlled the House.

Brat’s hard-line approach, combined with his cool relations with supporters of former House majority leader Eric Cantor, whom he defeated in a nasty 2014 GOP primary, made his last term rocky. His relationships with Democrats were toxic, especially after he complained that “the women are in my grill no matter where I go” in part because he refused to hold town halls after Trump’s election. When he finally relented, he faced angry crowds.

Spanberger, on the other hand, has held five subdued town halls in her first four months.

During the campaign, she bonded with other first-time candidates with similar national security backgrounds. The nine new lawmakers with security backgrounds coordinated their choices in the office lottery so that they work near one another.

The women in the group are particularly close and text one another often. They are Democratic Reps. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), who worked at the CIA; Chrissy Houlahan (PA), an Air Force veteran; Elaine Luria (Va.), a retired Navy commander; and Mikie Sherrill (NJ), a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor. They all flipped red seats to blue and understand the delicate politics of swing districts.

Call them what you like, they may have been war heroes (or not), to me they are political cowards unwilling to stand up for the progressive values that differentiate the Democratic Party from the Republican Party. "We come from places where different ideologies live side by side," Houlahan said, "and we have a real responsibility to legislate that way. I feel like the narrative is that the Democratic Party has been hijacked by the left." And, yes, yes, of course Houlahan has also earned an "F" from ProgressivePunch for her putrid voting record. The House Democratic Party leadership wanted exactly this when they went out and recruited women who were conservative-leaning military vets.

To Spanberger, the liberal goal of transforming the complicated health-care system into a single government-financed program simply is not realistic. She cited the Affordable Care Act, still the subject of GOP ire a decade after it became law, as evidence that muscling legislation through can backfire.

Instead, she thinks small steps can make health care more affordable: Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, insist on transparency from pharmacy benefit managers, and ease the passage of generic drugs into the market. She is one of nine co-sponsors of the House version of Medicare-X, a plan from Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine (VA) and Michael F. Bennet (CO) that would allow all Americans to buy into public health insurance.

Spanberger also opposes the Green New Deal, a broad set of goals to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. “What’s really challenging is it’s been presented to the American people as if it’s policy,” she said. “There are literally people who think if we were to vote on this tomorrow, we could save our planet.”

Spanberger, who leads the House agriculture subcommittee on conservation and forestry-- a rare honor for a freshman and in a field she said remains a mystery to her-- is studying how climate change affects farmers.

Environmental activists in her district seem unfazed by her opposition to the Green New Deal.

Lee Francis, deputy director at the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, said he appreciates her opposition to offshore drilling and her desire that the United States rejoin the Paris climate agreement. (Spanberger also announced that she recently had solar panels installed on her home.)

“Democracy is slow,” Francis said. “That’s just the nature of the beast.”

Spanberger had not seriously considered running for public office until a friend and former CIA colleague, Charlotte McWilliams, sent her a link to Emerge America, a program that trains female candidates.

The experts encouraged her to run for school board, but Spanberger followed her instinct to aim higher.

In a recommendation letter that McWilliams wrote to Emerge about Spanberger, she said their CIA training was “designed to be a pressure cooker” and that “Abby never lost her cool.”

Spanberger served undercover for her entire career in the CIA, where she worked on counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation. She and McWilliams each had three children in their CIA years.

...She said she’s also working to gain the trust of Republicans in Congress, using some of the skills that she honed at the CIA.

First, she looks for a connection. She’ll sometimes enter the House floor through the GOP section, which allows her to stop and chat with members of the other party. If they’re from rural communities, she tries to connect over common issues, such as the scarcity of broadband Internet service.

But for every Republican she wins over, more hope to unseat her.

In addition to Ramirez, GOP observers name state lawmakers Nicholas J. Freitas (Culpeper), John McGuire (Henrico) and Bryce E. Reeves (Spotsylvania) as potential challengers.

National Republican groups are painting Spanberger as no different from Ocasio-Cortez.

“She’ll find out the hard way that there are two teams,” Corry Bliss, a Republican strategist and former executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, said of Spanberger. “There aren’t three teams. Even voting with her team 90 percent of the time may not be good enough to get reelected.”