Blue Dogs-- Dixiecrats Really-- Determined To Continue Wrecking The Democratic Party Brand

Yesterday, in a random tweet, Aaron Blake reminded his readers that "Georgia had only Democratic governors between 1872 and 2003. Was longest streak in the South." Sonny Perdue was the next Republican after Benjamin Conley, who, as state Senate President, served for the 2 months remaining in the term of his GOP predecessor, Rufus Bullock, who was forced out of office by the Ku Klux Klan. (Bullock had won election over the Democrat, Confederate General John Gordon, who was head of the KKK and was eventually elected Governor in 1886). Bullock and Conley, the first and second Republicans to serve as governor of Georgia, were both transported Northerners. In Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell smeared Bullock as a carpetbagger and scalawag who looted the state. Actually Bullock brought a ton of investment into the state (from the hated North) and-- worse-- his support for African American equality was unwavering. That was too much for most Georgian white supremacists, who still completely dominated the ruling elite. The first Democrat after Bullock to be elected was James Smith, whose inauguration symbolized the end of Reconstruction. Sonny Perdue was hardly the governor who should be pointed out as the follow-up to the progressive Bullock. Clearly, Jimmy Carter was. Perdue was just another in a long line of racist reactionaries who ran the show in the Peach State.

The Democrats, Dixiecrats really, before Carter were a mostly a motley gaggle of conservatives and racists. Just before Carter, for example, was Lester Maddox, a segregationist restaurateur most famous for saying he would rather close his restaurant than serve Black people and later brandished a handgun to chase potential Black customers away. He also ran for president on the neo-Nazi American Independent Party, a forerunner of today's Tea Party.

Today the traditions and agendas of these conservatives in Georgia and other former Confederate states is largely served by the Republican Party. However, the Dixiecrats who have remained behind in the Democratic Party-- at least the ones in the House-- and known as Blue Dogs. The photo above is of 4 arch-reactionaries-- Heath Shuler (NC), John Barrow (GA), Mike Ross (AR) and Dan Boren (OK)-- all Blue Dogs fighting for a conservative agenda and threatening again this week to work with Boehner to achieve it. Although more than half the Blue Dogs in Congress were defeated at the polls in November, Democratic voters seeing no reason to bother even showing up to support reactionaries like Bobby Bright (AL), Travis Childers (MS), Gene Taylor (MS), Glenn Nye (VA), Lincoln Davis (TN), Allen Boyd (FL), Jim Marshall (GA), Charlie Melancon (LA), etc, the rump caucus is still determined to continue tugging the Democratic Party ever rightward. Sore losers unable to look at their own shortcomings and the untenable place they reside politically-- the GOP already being a home for reactionary politics-- they blame Nancy Pelosi for the decimation. They're running to the media whining that she hasn't reached out to them or "admitted" that Democrats lost because they didn't follow the Blue Dog line.

Blue Dogs have already started having informal discussions with Rep-ublicans in the hope that they can help forge bipartisan deals like they did between President Bill Clinton and the GOP after the 1994 Republican takeover.

“We have an opportunity that’s the same opportunity the Blue Dogs did with welfare reform,” said Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah), who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition’s political action committee and replaced retired Rep. John Tanner (Tenn.) as one of the Democratic Caucus’ chief deputy whips. “They were the bridge and they were the group that held that together in a bipartisan way to make it happen.”

...Blue Dog Co-Chairman Mike Ross said the group can be the bridge between the parties in a grand deficit-cutting compromise.

“We would welcome an opportunity to work with this new majority and the White House on developing a responsible plan to put us on a path toward restoring fiscal discipline and accountability to our government,” the Arkansas Democrat said. “We think we’re the perfect group to do that.”

Pelosi’s continued leadership, meanwhile, has the Blue Dogs looking to go their own way more than ever.

Pelosi’s aides point out that she has tapped Blue Dogs-- including Matheson  and Blue Dog Co-Chairmen Heath Shuler (N.C.) and John Barrow (Ga.)-- to sit on the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and that she regularly talks with members of the group on an individual basis.

In the minority Pelosi has “clear goals” that she will “work through all the Members of our Caucus to achieve,” spokesman Nadeam Elshami said.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, who represents the Blue Dogs in leadership meetings and also co-chairs the PAC, voted against Pelosi in last week’s Speaker tally on the House floor. He said his vote against his fellow Californian was for the “60 ghosts that are no longer here.”
Democrats lost the majority Nov. 2, and many of the losses came from the moderate ranks.

“I sat for three and a half years in the Democratic leadership advocating for positions that were more moderate and didn’t get listened to, and then saw this happen to our party,” Cardoza said. “Frankly, I was depressed about losing those guys. And the fact that our party doesn’t get that that’s profoundly a problem indicated to me that I had to send a very strong message yesterday when I got on the floor.”

...Ross said: “If our leadership had listened to us a little bit more, perhaps we’d be in the majority today. I hope our leadership understands more clearly now that the pathway to a Democratic majority is by electing conservative, moderate Democrats.”

He also criticized Pelosi for failing to name a Blue Dog to the White House’s fiscal commission last year, even though they had long promoted the idea.

Blue Dogs aren’t going to leave recruiting and fundraising for 2012 up to the Minority Leader.

“We’re the ones who are going to have to go and recruit,” said Shuler, who unsuccessfully challenged Pelosi for Minority Leader last year and secured 11 votes against her on the floor during last week’s Speaker vote. “A big part of what we do is to help build our coalition.”

Matheson said the Blue Dog PAC will be more robust in the 2012 cycle, focusing more heavily than before on recruitment and support of Blue Dog candidates across the country.

A day has passed since Aaron Blake's original tweet on the history of Georgia governors that got me going on this topic. In his Washington Post column today Blake postulates that the Southern Democrat is hurting politically, and it's only likely to get worse.The old Confederacy was a political graveyard for Democratic-- overwhelmingly Blue Dogs-- in November, setting off a fresh round of state legislators in that region switching parties and joining the GOP.

[J]ust how bad a state are Southern Democrats really in right now? And can they make a comeback? The elections of 2011 will have a lot to say about that.

First, though, a look at the numbers:

* In 11 southern states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, Democrats controlled 45 of 106 congressional seats before the election. They now control just 31 seats.

* Democrats also lost Senate and governor's seats. They control three of 22 Senate seats and three of 11 governorships.

* Before the 2010 election, Democrats controlled 10 of 22 state legislative chambers and still held a majority of both state House and state Senate seats in those 11 states. They now hold five chambers and just more than 40 percent of the overall seats.

* Alabama Democrats lost majorities in both chambers for the first time in 136 years, dropping from 60 seats to 39 seats in the state House and 20 seats to 12 seats in the state Senate.

* North Carolina Democrats also lost both chambers, dropping from 68 House seats to 52 and 30 Senate seats to 19.

* Mississippi didn't even have state legislative election this year, but state Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's defection from Democrat to Republican means the chamber could be tied if Republicans can win a special election today.

Looking at those numbers, it's pretty clear that the Southern Democrat has reached a new political low. But even these numbers don't totally explain how far the party has fallen off in the South because many of the seats still held by Southern Democrats are heavily weighted toward minorities.

In fact, of the 31 remaining Southern Democrats in the U.S. House, most are minority members from districts where the population is mostly black and/or Hispanic.

Democrats hold just 14 of 85 Southern seats where a majority of voters are white, and only one in the Deep South, where Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) is the last man standing.

And Barrow votes with the Republicans more frequently than with the Democrats, represents a district with more African-America Democrats than white Democrats and was decisively beaten in Savannah, the biggest part of his district, by a progressive challenger in the 2010 primary. Shuler, most famous before joining the Blue Dogs for a breathtaking 5 interception football game, has also announced he'll be packing heat when back in North Carolina so if anyone is in the audience when someone shoots at him-- hit the deck immediately. Meanwhile, Blue America will be watching the Blue Dogs closely and evaluating if any are as fanatically right-wing in the 112th Congress as Bobby Bright was in the 111th. We'll also be watching DCCC recruiting to see if they plan to stock up with losers again, the way Rahm did so catastrophically, both politically and, more important, in terms of public policy.