That should be the title of this piece, which is actually titled “Centrist Dems ready strike against Warren wing”:
Centrist Democrats are gathering their forces to fight back against the “Elizabeth Warren wing” of their party, fearing a sharp turn to the left could prove disastrous in the 2016 elections.
For months, moderate Democrats have kept silent, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) barbed attacks against Wall Street, income inequality and the “rigged economy” thrilled the base and stirred desire for a more populist approach.
But with the race for the White House set to begin, centrists are moving to seize back the agenda.
The New Democrat Coalition (NDC), a caucus of moderate Democrats in the House, plans to unveil an economic policy platform as soon as this week in an attempt to chart a different course.
“I have great respect for Sen. Warren — she’s a tremendous leader,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), one of the members working on the policy proposal. “My own preference is to create a message without bashing businesses or workers, [the latter of which] happens on the other side.”
Peters said that, if Democrats are going to win back the House and Senate, “it’s going to be through the work of the New Democrat Coalition.”
Mind you, the is the same breed of clown that we once referred to as blue dogs. I say once referred to, because since they stood for nothing and when they did it was to fight against popular Democratic proposals, they were wiped out in the last few elections.
Privately, moderate Democrats in the Clinton tradition say they have been working behind the scenes to change the party’s message.
Leaders at three centrist groups — the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the New Democrat Network (NDN) and Third Way — arranged a series of meetings with moderates after the disastrous midterm elections to “discuss the future of the party,” according to a source close to the NDC.
“Democrats ought to avoid the danger of talking about only redistribution and not enough about economic growth,” said PPI President and founder Will Marshall, who addressed House Democrats during their Philadelphia retreat in January. “Economic growth is a precondition to reducing inequality. You can’t redistribute wealth that you’re not generating.
“There’s a lot of sympathy for that view in the pragmatic-wing of the party,” he added.
Privately, because they know that their exposure to corporate cash will be discussed once they are exposed as shills. And in case you couldn’t figure it out, “pragmatic” means “maintaining the status quo.”
Basically, these guys have not learned anything. One of the reason poor whites have flocked to the right wing is because at least they promise to do something for them (while instead screwing them). Our corporate whores can’t even figure out how to lie, and once again, will fail to learn the lesson that when voters are given a choice between a fake Republican and a real Republican, they choose the real one every time.
I eagerly await Joe Manchin weighing in on this in the Senate.
Frankensteinbeck
Democrats in Dissaray, Part CCXIII.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Will Marshall, from Wiki
Didn’t he have a liberal war hawk blog under the name of “Bull Moose Liberal”, or something like that? All about swinging his big stick and preciously referring to himself as “the Moose”? the Moose thinks… the Moose believes
Liberty60
“Reducing inequality is a precondition to economic growth”
Fixt.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was wrong: Marshall Whitman was the Bull Moose, he shut it down to become Lieberman’s press spokesman, and is now communications director for AIPAC. He has a similar bio to W. Marshall, PPI and DLC
boatboy_srq
Third Way is involved. That should be poison pill enough.
This? During the second recovery where only Wall Street has “recovered”? When wages for the 90% have been flat? Really? Were there some actual overall economic growth then there might be a reason to think Dems might want to talk about it; as it is, there’s plenty of reason to denounce the gains of the top 1% while the rest of the US treads water. Not learned anything, h3ll: they’ve forgotten things they used to know.
Hunter Gathers
The White vote no longer matters. Flavor of the moment Scott Walker could match Bush’s share of the minority vote that he got in 2004 and still loose.
But it won’t stop anyone from continuing to fuck that chicken.
Archon
I won’t speak to promises Republicans at the state and local level make to struggling white folks but at the federal level Republicans aren’t promising poor whites a damn thing that could help them economically.
In fact the only implicit economic promise they give poor whites is that they will turn the screws on blacks through cutting or eliminating any program that might help “those people”.
So while I’m not a fan of centrist Democrats agenda I don’t buy for a second this belief from some progressives that if Dems go hard left on economics they would be able to build some lasting racial coalition with whites that are currently voting GOP.
Mudge
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Marshall Wittman
Chris
Centrist Democrats have the same problem as Rockefeller Republicans did a generation ago – they don’t have nearly enough of a popular base. Most of their party doesn’t agree with their ideology. And most of the people who do agree with their ideology will vote for real Republicans, not wannabes. Third Way/DLCism, like Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicanism, served a purpose when the other party’s ideology was so broadly accepted that embracing a lite version of it was the only way to win. That’s no longer the case.
askew
I realize that I am the only one listening to what O’Malley says. But, he came out hard against this nonsense last weekend at a SC Dem event and got a standing ovation.
So, there are alternatives to Hillary running for president who offer more than GOP-lite policies and talking points.
gratuitous
Gotta have the growth first? Is that Will Marshall’s position? Well, let’s take a look at that, using one of the most popular measures of economic growth and health, our old friend, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I’ll use some random dates, chosen at random to see how we might be doing right about now:
1/22/01 10,578.24
3/2/07 12,114.10
1/20/09 7,949.09 (whoa, what happened during those 22 months since 3/07???)
3/2/15 18,288.63
How much more growth does Marshall think we need before we can set about reducing inequality? It appears that there has been a hell of a lot of wealth generated in the last 73 months, but virtually none of it has made its way into the pockets of the workers who created it.
Napoleon
Will Marshall is toxic. Anyone willing to even talk to that guy should draw an automatic primary.
Napoleon
never mind!
MattF
I’d be wary about the ‘centrist’ economic policies, particularly with respect to the safety net. For example, do they think Social Security, Medicaid, etc. has to be ‘reformed’ or else they will go bankrupt in… um… 20 or 30 years? Dog whistling that we have to make a choice between economic growth and inequality is code for ‘screw the poors’.
EconWatcher
If you seriously think we’d be winning more seats in red and purple districts if only we’d run real liberals, I’ve got some dandy Florida bottom land I’d like to sell you. This is just our side’s version of Tea Partiers’ belief that W failed because he was too liberal.
Yes, Mary Landrieu was much, much, much better than her replacement. And no, we would not have kept that seat for as long as she did by running a true blue liberal. Same with Manchin.
Them’s the facts, whether you like it or not.
Tommy
I live in a Blue Dog district. We’d held my House seat for 70 years. We put up a middle of the road, Blue Dog against a far right Republican. The Republican beat him by 7 points. I can’t predicate what would have happened if we ran a real liberal, but I really think the results would have been different. Or at least we could have tried.
ThresherK
@boatboy_srq: the danger of talking about only redistribution
Yeah, Marshall, at this point a real Democrat will just point to the chart of jobs created and growth. Serious disconnect while I look for the SomeSayDemocrat who is talking only about redistribution.
Marshall seems to have displayed a gift, which any fake moderate would be proud to claim, for ignoring what PBO has done on the economy in the most Brooksian manner possible.
(ETA: Thanks @gratuitous: for providing just a couple bullet points I was referring to.)
max
And in case you couldn’t figure it out, “pragmatic” means “maintaining the status quo.”
No, pragmatic means MORE MONEY FOR RICH PEOPLE. (Peterson Institute, Third Way, Will Marshall? They like deficit reduction, corporate tax reduction, and cutting Social Security and Medicare.)
Basically, these guys have not learned anything.
I’m certain they’ll be in favor of invading Iran (or Syria or both) just like they were in favor of invading Iraq.
max
[‘This is just some preprimary elbow throwing.’]
Sherparick
1. This is a slightly different group then the Blue Dogs. In many ways these are the old “Liberal Republicans” and their children, pro-business and skeptical of taxes, but “pro-Civil Rights” and particularly “pro-Reproductive Rights,” where Blue Dogs were often on the other side of those issues. Having been run out of the Republican Party, they still love listening to corporate lobbyists, taking money from corporate lobbyists, and believing that being “pro-business” is the same as being “pro-growth.” Which of course it is not.
2. The banalities on this subject, uttered by toads like Marshall and Carper, and accepted by the media as evidence of “pro-growth” are of course unsupported and unsupportable. The New Deal and policies spun out of the New Deal into the 1970s created the best period of economic growth and common prosperity in American History. So in a sense they have invented a straw man in Warren. Basically, these folks big economic issues are “balance the budget” and cut “social security,” and neither are pro-growth and while one is popular but meaningless, the other is famously unpopular.
3. As Dean Baker points out, no policy can generate more growth, more jobs, and more wage growth in those jobs then an easy money policy from the Fed. With inflation near 1% and probably sinking, it is insane that the Fed is contemplating an interest rate increase now, but that is what the Fed is doing. So if they want to attack some woman talking about “inequality,” they should be yelling at Janet Yellen to keep interest rates at zero until there is some actual inflation and other countries like Germany and China generate their own economic growth instead of trying to steal ours through currency devaluations.
4. If all those Centrist Senators in those Red States had run stating that five years of Obama has led to steady economic and job growth from the depths of the Bush-Republican Recession despite Republican sabotage, perhaps they would have gotten their base motivated to vote while taking some wind out the Tea Party sails and had gotten themselves reelected.
geg6
@askew:
You are not the only one listening to O’Malley. I’ve been listening to him for the last several years after a friend who worked for him turned me on to him. If he runs, I’m voting for him in the primary.
Patricia Kayden
@Hunter Gathers: Romney got the maximum White vote and still lost, so you’re correct. Not sure if Democrats should waste a lot of energy/resources trying to woo a group which has decided since Saint Ronny that the Republicans should be running things.
pseudonymous in nc
Really? Tell that to the corporate profit-hoarders who’ve taken 99% of the recovery, you fucking stooge. The question is “when will there be sufficient economic growth to grant the peasants more than scraps?” and the answer we already know is “never, unless they’re compelled to.”
C.V. Danes
Yes, because your brand of neo-liberal, Republican-lite clap-trap is ohhh so tasty to the serfs, who just need to learn to STFU and heel to their masters. Yes, quite the winning strategy you have there–if you’re a Republican.
gian
Framing the issue as redistribution?
Really? Stealing Koch funded focus group phrasing isn’t going to beat Koch funded politicians
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And pretty much in reverse order. Your mention of the Peterson Institute reminds me of Ed Rendell, who may still be an MSNBC regular, I watch a lot less lately– he said his work with the PI, where he’s gotten the chance to consult with some really smart CEO’s, has really influenced his thinking. I’m glad his regular work as a fracking lobbyist leaves him enough time to broaden his horizons that way. Rendell is a dyed-in-the-wool Clintonista, I think from the camp that thinks we need to elect Hillary to get Bill back in the White House, because Bill Clinton is Magic!
Hawes
The problem is, you can’t get to a House majority without Blue Dogs. Not for another 15 years. By that time, demographics should allow us to overcome gerrymandering, but you can’t win the House without having moderate Democrats.
What they are wrong about is the political appeal of economic populism. But having Democrats like Mary Landrieu or Mark Pryor still beats the shit out of a GOP controlled Congress.
Chris
@C.V. Danes:
The simple notion that we’re “bashing businessmen” by reminding them of their obligations is enough to mark the whole thing as a concern trolling farce.
MattF
Boehner has caved on DHS funding:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/house-homeland-security.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
EconWatcher
@Hawes:
Yes.
And without Blue Dogs, you would not have the ACA. When push came to shove, they got on board for it, but not even the most RINO of the Republicans (Snowe, Collins) would.
So don’t tell me a Blue Dog is not worth having around. If you care about incremental progress rather than ponies and unicorns, they are certainly worth having aournd.
askew
@geg6:
Excellent news. That makes two of us.
Kay
They’re going to sound like they’re blaming the middle class for stagnant growth. That’s what the whole idiotic “skills gap” campaign did last cycle.
Nothing working people like better that a stern lecture from a CEO, banker or politician on how they’re stupid and lazy!
Do they know their “opportunity!” approach is identical to that of Jeb Bush and Scott Walker? It is, except it sounds more patronizing and clueless coming from Democrats.
They should run on economic security. People who are economically insecure are not interested in “opportunity”. They can’t take the risk. The argument itself is an indication that they are out of touch. No one who was economically insecure would make this argument.
Chris
@Kay:
This.
MattF
@Kay: Krugman on the ‘skills gap’:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/opinion/krugman-jobs-and-skills-and-zombies.html
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Amen and amen.
Bobby B.
There is no “center”, only ZUEL.
The Moar You Know
Hillary’s their last shot. I am tempted to not give them one, save that the alternative is so much worse.
EconWatcher
It is very, very interesting that O’Malley announced he won’t run for Milkulki’s seat. It would presumably be his for the taking. I can think of only one reason why he’d let that go.
Who out there is really excited about Hillary?
Belafon
@Hunter Gathers:
Only if it keeps dividing itself the way it does right now between the parties. But there are a number of older Democrats that won’t vote for Republicans because they got screwed over in the past that might change their minds (my parents come to mind). We still have a party who, because they have power, keeps working at making sure more and more whites resent minorities. In part they do this by reducing services and help to the middle class and poor and then saying “Look, Jose Bordercrosser and Trevon Saggypants are taking your money.” And a lot of whites fall for it because they stopped wanting to add 2 and 2 a long time ago.
catclub
@Sherparick:
I doubt it. Inflation (of 2+%, barely) is coming with the tepid wage gains (e.g Walmart, state minimum wage laws).
Linnaeus
@Kay:
I’ve thought for some time that economic security is generally a winning message for Democratic candidates. But that will necessarily include support for so-called “entitlements”, the kind of programs that conservative Democrats tend to be most critical of.
Belafon
@The Moar You Know: I will vote for whichever Democrat has the best chance of winning, because, as we’ve said, the SCOTUS is the highest priority right now. I do think that any Democrat that will seriously challenge Clinton in the primaries – like Obama did – will win the presidency. I’m just waiting for that candidate. The candidate just can’t be “I’m not Hillary” because that works about as well as “I’m not a Republican.”
askew
@EconWatcher:
I was surprised to see O’Malley pass as well. He’s been getting great responses in early states but he is getting zero media play. I have a hard time seeing how he gets any traction or money raised if no one knows he is running.
I hope I am wrong and he can make a serious run for the nomination because he is saying the right things and his record of progressive accomplishments is impressive.
catclub
@Belafon: If true,(i.e. that one party can get 80% or more of the white vote) we are on our way to Rwanda. I hope we are not.
sharl
I gotta root for the likely
consultants/griftersparasites to take this crowd down from the inside, much like I’d root for a parasitic wasp to take out a tomato horn worm.{Lights up their position with an airborne flare}
Hey! Mark Penn! Lanny Davis! Lookie there, Democratic centrists – y’know, the good kind of Dems – and they have money! Go get em!
retiredeng
They’re terrified of Warren.
Paul in KY
@askew: I really like Gov. O’Malley. Hope he runs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think they’re there, old Clintonistas and flat-out PUMAs, and more excitement will come as the equal and opposite reaction to whatever version of Golden Girls jokes and “iron my shirt” comes up, and they can’t help themselves. It will come.
and I’m not a Clintonista. DOn’t like him, and while I like her well enough I have my doubts about her in terms of policy and politics. That said, if Martin O’Malley can’t build a following, even among activists and political junkies, that’s not entirely the fault of the media, and not at all the fault of the Balloon Juice Commentariat. Somebody last night made me laugh by calling for Corey Booker to save us from the Hildebeast! I actually think Booker would be, if anything, more Wall St friendly than Hillary, and he co-sponsored nutty neo-con Bob Menendez’s Likud-ish bill a few months ago (Rachel Maddow somehow left his name out of her evisceration of Menendez and his D co-sponsors… imagine that!).
Kay
@Linnaeus:
There’s a part of me that says if you are a US politician and you don’t know that people are economically insecure then you really are out of touch and you should lose.
How could they not know?
Belafon
@retiredeng: They are, and I think there are a number of reasons, most of which are related to where they get their money from. I think a lot of them are hoping to build a Corporate wing of the Democratic party the same way the Republicans have one. If I were one of them, I would actually try to point out to the CEOs that their model is not sustainable, and they will make more money if they make sure people have money to spend.
EconWatcher
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I really don’t want Hillary, but even if it could happen, I gotta say that the optics of another younger man beating her out for the nomination would not be so great. But the viable women candidates in the party will not run against her.
jayboat
… a thought about the email account…
perhaps she was well aware of all the nefariousness happening over there at NSA?
(see; Snowden, Edward)
A quandary, wrapped in…
WaterGirl
@askew: @geg6: I am voting for O’Malley in the primary, too.
Unless a miracle occurs and Sherrod Brown runs for president, in which case I will crawl over broken glass to vote for him.
Edit: and geg6, if you take both pups, I think you should get to vote 3 times. But then, I’m originally from Chicago.
MattF
@retiredeng: I can see why. Look what happened to Scott Brown.
WaterGirl
@EconWatcher: He would have been a fool to take the senate seat, though it definitely would have been a safer move.
But any thinking person can see that you always need other candidates in the race, even if for no other reasons than planes can crash and people can get sick or the expected winner can crash and burn in a much less literal fashion.
How many senate seats did we pick up because something unexpected happened?
edited for clarity
shortstop
@Tommy: The district went for a hard-right Republican so you conclude that what it really wanted was a true progressive? Could you spin out that line of reasoning for me?
Belafon
@jayboat: BTW, Wonkette makes an interesting point: The requirement that government officials use a government email account didn’t become law until November 2014.
WaterGirl
@EconWatcher: I think other female candidates SHOULD run against clinton. Multiple women up on that stage at the debates can only be a good thing.
And I have absolutely no problem with a younger better candidate beating out clinton, just like happened last time.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I will comment on this strategy as soon as I’m done banging my head on my desk in frustration.
I may be a while.
Culture of Truth
Manchin is caught between loony Republicans and Warren. He’s taking his ball and going home to run for Governor.
Belafon
@Tommy: I live in Ralph Halls district. He was a Blue Dog until 94, when the Republican wave hit, and he became Republican. In 2014, he got beat by a further right Republican. That might have been possibly because he announced it was going to be his last term, but 2014 was the “why isn’t that black man gone?” year. So, no, I don’t think a progressive would have won at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: putting on my amateur politico’s hat, and I have a solid record of being wrong, this would be a good time for Kristin Gillibrand to make a practice run and build her profile and mailing list, assuming that like every other Senator she thinks she’d be a great president. And if Claire McCaskill ran, she’d make Hillary look like Elizabernie Sandren. I think CMcC’s too canny and has her eyes on the MO gov-ship.
askew
@WaterGirl:
But it won’t happen. Women’s groups are going to give all their money to Hillary and won’t be happy that there is more than woman running. It just isn’t feasible for another woman to run.
O’Malley is an interesting option. I do worry he is going to have problems raising money and getting media attention. The right does a much better job pushing their candidates into the spotlight. The left is too busy worshipping someone who will never run for president. One of the many reasons the right is more successful politically than the left.
As for Hillary’s email mess, there were regulations in place prior to the 2014 law and Hillary still should have known better.
Seanly
I will take any Democratic Party candidate over any Republican Party candidate. That said, Democratic centrists are horrible, horrible candidates. The “Warren Wing” is popular because the great majority of people in the country are bound by Charles Pierce’s first rule of economics — Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.
Mike J
You want economic growth? Protests forced Walmart to give a raise to their employees. 1.4 million consumers will have an extra 30 or 40 bucks a week to spend. And they will spend every cent of it, because they still don’t make enough.
Now other chains have followed suit. Another million or two consumers with more money to spend. That’s good news for every retailer in the country, and it’s good news for workers. Raising wages is the best way to make things better for workers and for employers.
The second best way is to get pitchforks and torches and march on the homes of everybody who ever got a bonus over $1 million.
Holden Pattern
Lather, rinse, repeat:
1) True enemies are to the left, frenemies to the right.
2) The only winning strategy for the Dems is to say they’re not as far to the right as wherever the Republicans are this week. Standing for something meaningful is a mistake.
3) When you lose an election, blame the naivepuristleft and move right. The naivepuristleft depressed turnout, the naivepuristleft weakened the corporatist, er, moderate candidate by running a primary, the naivepuristleft doesn’t understand politics, the naivepuristleft owes the Dems their vote no matter how vile the Dem candidate, the naivepuristleft is just big enough to blame, but not big enough to have a legitimate voice.
NobodySpecial
Dunno why you’re bitching, Cole….that definition describes more than half of your commentariat, who are just itching continuously to punch a hippie.
Tommy
@shortstop: Sure. Super low voter turnout. I voted, but many people I know, liberals, didn’t vote. The guy we put up was sad. Nobody wanted to vote for him. The far right loon, well it got the vote out. I should also note the polling was way off. They had the Dem up the entire election, including on the eve of the election. Often 4-7 points. Well that wasn’t how things turned out and I bet most people felt there was NO way we’d elect a Republican so they stayed home. Clearly they were wrong.
You also glossed over something else I noted. Democrats have held this House seat for 70 years. Let me say that again, 70 years. This isn’t a somewhat right-leaning District. Folks might not be as a raging liberal as I am, but this is a Dem district.
How we lost this seat is beyond me.
BTW: The far right loon in the IL House now is voting in a manner the “tea party” is going to hate. He has made a few “sane” votes.
boatboy_srq
@shortstop: Dems campaigning as GOP-lite have a horrendous record (Alex Sink, Charlie Crist, Blanche Lincoln, and more have all failed trying to run just to the left of the Teahad). Moderate GOP pols are usually shredded in the primaries when facing Teahadists. Putting yet another Blue Dog through this wringer won’t either win over the “undecided” protoTeahadists or excite anyone left of Mark Kirk enough to get to the polls. I don’t know whether pushing progressives is the answer – but we’ve seen that preferring Blue Dogs because they’re presumably more palatable to some fictional not-quite-rabid undecided voter is certainly not a formula for success. And we’ve seen precious little in the way of truly progressive pols of late, especially in places where the Dems have let the GOTea write the narrative: that HAS to stop.
C.V. Danes
@askew:
Regulations or no, who uses a personal email address to conduct professional work, especially professional work that is government related? How hard it is to give the SECRETARY OF STATE a government email address?
Chris T.
@Linnaeus:
While Luntz himself is odious, this particular word needs a good dose of his methods applied. Instead of “entitlements”, Democrats should use the phrase “earned benefits”:
“Republicans want to reduce government spending, yes, but on earned benefits. In other words, they want to stop giving you the money you earned.”
WaterGirl
@Tommy:
I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to be more specific.
Tree With Water
“Democrats ought to avoid the danger of talking about only redistribution and not enough about economic growth..”.
Agreed. That will entail attacks upon republican party orthodoxy, to better explain the correlation between today’s robber barons and voters wallets. Gratuitous shot: I don’t believe Hillary has it in her to attack in such fashion, and her public record bears that out.
The reference to ‘public record’ and Hillary may also be considered a gratuitous shot, although it was in fact an afterthought.
lamh36
FlipYrWhig
YouGov via No More Mister Nice Blog.
askew
@C.V. Danes:
I am sure she had a government email address or could have gotten one but didn’t want to use it. Powell used both government and personal. Kerry uses government exclusively.
Regardless it is just dumb politics and another sign that Hillary is going to have the same problems she had in 2008. We can and should do better.
boatboy_srq
@Mike J: This is something neither the Teahad nor the VSPs seem capable of understanding: paying labor better yields better results overall: improved profits, improved productivity and improved QoL for the employees, and far less absolute cost than revolution.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sweet dancing Moses. No matter how cynical I get about the American voter, I can’t keep up.
Tommy
@WaterGirl: This is my rep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhbRcDZiJJc
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@C.V. Danes: That quote really bugged me. It’s enough that republicans set up those straw man accusations but to have Democrats lobbing them at their own is just pointless. Whatever you think of Elizabeth Warren’s path forward for Democrats, I can guarantee she’s never bashed workers, except maybe workers on Wall Street.
HinTN
@boatboy_srq: They’re afraid of being called a liberal because they’re not.
FlipYrWhig
@boatboy_srq:
Maybe “truly progressive pols” don’t run most places because they know they have no shot. Just because Blue Dogs lose doesn’t mean True Progressives wouldn’t lose worse. The whole vaunted “50 State Strategy” involved running a bunch of Blue Dogs. It’s a logical political strategy if the goal is winning. It’s not a great political strategy if the goal is true-blue progressive accomplishment, but I’m not counting on that happening any time soon either.
Luthe
@Chris T.: I think the Democrats as a whole need a good Luntz-ing. Reframing the debate worked for the other side, so why not us?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Martin O’Malley must be smart enough to read the last election results. The Democrats who did well (Warren, Frankin) ran on populist themes. Centrist Democrats did poorly because they don’t stand for much of anything other than moderating what Republicans want to do.
Belafon
@askew: Does anyone other than me remember that Obama was going to use his personal blackberry until the SS told him no?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is horrifying.
The Moar You Know
@C.V. Danes: You’d be stunned. A LOT. And most of them do so as to avoid subpoenas and discovery requests, often because they are planning to steal something valuable from their employer. Which happens far more often than you’d imagine.
I don’t think that applies in HRCs case, but the desire to avoid discovery certainly must have.
Two minutes, tops. She simply didn’t want one. And was not legally required to have one, bleating of the right wingers and bureaucrats to the contrary.
Tommy
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I think he can read other “tea leaves.” He can’t win. I don’t dislike Hillary but she is a train that I don’t think can be stopped. From the little I know reading about Martin O’Malley I like him a lot. But I don’t see how you stop Hillary if she wants to run. Some will say Obama did it. Well I think his campaign might have been once in a lifetime/generation. She is a juggernaut.
The Moar You Know
@boatboy_srq: A blue dog could possibly win my district. A full-throated progressive could pull single digits, at best.
There’s a place and a time for Blue Dogs. And that place and time is in districts that can’t be won by decent progressives. I don’t know about the rest of the country but there’s a lot of that sort of districts in California.
MomSense
@lamh36:
What a story.
catclub
@C.V. Danes:
Pretty hard if the SOS don’t want it. SATSQ
sharl
@lamh36: But Gen. Petraeus is an Officially Approved Leaker™, by virtue of having been on Our Team® and having been out front and visible, doing a lot of the dirty business that our Glorious Political Leadership™ demanded but didn’t want to be associated with.
We’ll slap him on the wrist – if we really, really gotta – but let’s keep our eyes on Snowden and Manning instead, mmmkay?
shortstop
@Tommy: I hear what you’re saying about voter turnout — it can have an outsized effect, especially during non-presidential years. But you originally called yours a “Blue Dog district,” and the 12th district’s PVI is dead even. If the incumbent Dem were truly a Blue Dog, he should not have succumbed to a far-right candidate by 10 points on policy stances alone. Is something else at play here? Shady history? Past fuckups? Poor articulation of positions? Creepy personal life? Simple lack of charisma?
Moderate Dems always lose to far-right Republicans…except when they don’t, which is a lot of the time in truly swing districts. I understand the frustration with regressive Democrats, despite being blessed with a good rep myself. But there is unfortunately no magic formula of progressivism that will win both my district, which is Dem +27, and yours. And “at least we’d have tried” to get a more progressive rep counts for nothing when what people end up with is a raging loon.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I try to keep my chin up. But stuff like this makes me want to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: And he still has top secret clearance!! People must be really afraid of him.
shortstop
@The Moar You Know: This. It’s not about “undecided voters.” It’s about the widely varying tenor of districts.
Linnaeus
@Kay:
They do know that people are economically insecure. All of them do. The difference between them is 1) what they believe the source of that insecurity to be and 2) what, if anything, to do about it.
Tommy
@MomSense: I don’t often throw this word out there. But that is treason. My father worked at high levels within the DoD. I have no clue what he did. Sure there was no pillow talk with my mother. There are few lines in this world you should not cross, and maybe this is my military family speaking, but you just can’t do this. I don’t care of Petraeus has four stars. He needs to be in jail.
Linnaeus
@Chris T.:
I think that using the phrasing you suggest would be worth trying. It would put GOP candidates in the position of having to explain what exactly they mean by entitlements.
Mike J
@sharl:
Can’t we lock them all up?
You’ve seen the barest minimum of what Snowden stole. The Chinese and Russians have it all.
askew
@Belafon:
I remember it and it makes perfect sense. It’s a security issue and a privacy issue. I don’t know why Hillary or any other public official would want to mix private emails with government ones.
Tommy
@shortstop:
None of that. I’d argue he was too nice of a guy. Boring even. His background is close to perfect. I mean it might in fact be perfect. I don’t think the guy has even a parking ticket.
Poor articulation of positions yes, he was crushed there. I am a political nerd and honestly I don’t know what he thinks. Clearly that is a problem.
boatboy_srq
@ @FlipYrWhig: Grayson and Warren ran on platforms leftward of what the conventional wisdom held was good for their locales. McAuliffe just beat Cuccinelli (considered a shoo-in) for VA Gov. It’s hardly impossible. And saying “progressives can’t win in District X” isn’t far removed from “progressives can’t win”. If you don’t want to go there – to become part of the Party That Always Loses – then what do you suggest?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@FlipYrWhig:
I think Kay is (and has been) on the right track: the division we should be drawing is not progressives vs. Blue Dogs, but economic populists vs. economic conservatives (with a small “c”). A Blue Dog who’s a little more socially conservative than we’d prefer but an economic populist will probably do okay in a leans-R district.
The problem is that this current crop of Blue Dogs seems to be trying to drag us back to the (Bill) Clinton-era Republican-lite economic policies that helped create this mess in the first place. We need new ideas, not the same-old same-old.
Kay
@Chris T.:
It isn’t just about entitlements, though. They have to stop giving people advice and calling that “advocacy”
No one wants advice on “upskilling”. It isn’t 1992. This is a bigger problem than stupid lazy workers. People are doing everything they can and they are losing ground.
askew
@Kay:
Again, read what O’Malley is saying. He’s been talking about this stuff for years.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: Bingo. Capital mobility and the tax code. If those aren’t the first five words out of their mouths, I’m not listening.
Tree With Water
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rubbish. That conclusion is nothing more than grasshoppers in someone’s ear chirping up a storm.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Are there any, though? And if they exist, where’s my Governor Mike Michaud? (pro-life NRA member…)
Anonymous At Work
Is there still a formal “Blue Dog Caucus” in the House or Senate or both? Have they lost enough members to disband? Did they disband and reform under new names? Decent questions to ask on follow-up.
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: People believe what they’re told, over and over.
Davis X. Machina
@askew:
We might, but then we weren’t on the pointy end of an impeachment enquiry…
Kay
@Davis X. Machina:
I have a suggestion. Take Perez from the Dept of Labor and put him in charge of all statements made by Democrats on the economy.
He understands this and knows how to talk to people.
rikyrah
They ran away from the President, which is why they lost in 2014.
Roger Moore
I think this is exactly backward. Reducing inequality is a precondition to economic growth. The old story was that growth was a result of investment in productive assets, so the road to growth is to give more money to the 1% to invest. The problem is that the makes two assumptions that are not supported by the actual evidence:
1) The 1% are the only source of money for investments. This manifestly isn’t true. There are plenty of people in the 99% who want to invest for things like retirement. If we gave the 99% more money, even more of them would want to invest it.
2) The limit on our economic growth is investment. There may have been times in history when that was true, but we aren’t living in one. Right now, there’s so much money for investment that it just winds up inflating asset bubbles. If we want faster economic growth, we need to give more money to people who will spend it; only then will there be enough demand to justify investing some of the excess savings in productive assets.
rikyrah
@Kay:
tell the truth, Kay!
sharl
More on the Gen. Petraeus verdict, first noted here by lamh36 (#73).
From Ken White at Popehat (bolding is mine) (link in blockquote goes to an NYT article):
askew
Wow, WH press secretary Earnest is just chucking that ball back into Hillary’s court today. He is not providing any cover for Hillary using personal email address. He is saying that the WH has encouraged all staff to use government email addresses for government business. That it is the responsibility of cabinet heads to make sure they are in compliance with federal laws and regulations, etc.
This isn’t going to blow over quickly and Obama’s team sure seems like they don’t want to have to fix this for Hillary.
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know: Exactly right. Scott Peters’ district is just north of mine. He was challenged by the unhinged, spittle-spewing libertarian lunatic Carl de Maio — and barely squeaked by. A progressive would have been CRUSHED. We have to face the fact that for the foreseeable future any successful Democratic coalition must include some Blue Dogs. It seems like they’re slowing us down, but without them we’re going nowhere.
GOD, but my pragmatic side is annoying.
boatboy_srq
@WaterGirl: “Top Secret” is more like an intro level: it’s the stuff ABOVE that that’s really problematic. I’ll defer to Cole and the other veterans here on what the various classification levels are, but almost everything I see that’s classified work (either for CENTCOM when I was in FL, or generally in DC) requires “Top Secret or better” clearance. TS seems to required to be a janitor.
Betty Cracker
@Hungry Joe: Sad, but true. Anyone who peddles a single formula for winning a wildly diverse array of districts is babbling pure nonsense.
Mike E
@sharl: Hasn’t he suffered enuff?!
FlipYrWhig
@boatboy_srq:
I suggest that avowed progressives realize that avowed progressives are not even a majority of the vaguely left-of-center party at the national level, and to realize that the demographics are even _worse_ in most districts, and that that is a pretty solid answer to why avowed progressives neither win nor run in the first place. There are exceptions of course. But Democrats were running as moderates for years, and most of them still do rhetorically, because the Democrats they represent lean moderate too. It’s not because of skulduggery (although skulls do get, um, duggered?), it’s because it’s in line with what the locals–the local _Democrats_–say they want. The alternative isn’t “find a true progressive and run that way because the voters are frustrated due to lack of progressivism,” it’s “find someone credible and charismatic and push him as far left as his voters will stand.” Voters are skittish about liberalism. Look at the numbers I quoted above. Even the Democrats. That’s a hard thing to change. And if it’s not changing even after the events of the 21st century, oy.
shortstop
@Betty Cracker: If ONLY it were that simple, huh?
someofparts
Redistribution my ass. More like Returning the Pensions and Wages You Stole with Interest.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
No, that isn’t treason. It’s criminally stupid, but it isn’t treasonous. To count as treason, he would have to knowingly give information to an enemy of the US.
catclub
@sharl:
Isn’t that what put Martha Stewart in prison for 3 years? not insider trading but lying to investigators.
Doug r
@Frankensteinbeck: let the cat herding commence
Linnaeus
They’re not the pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party. They’re the conservative wing of the Democratic Party.
And yes, that’s the nature of a political coalition. But I think “pragmatic” is a bit of misnomer.
danielx
@sharl:
As noted by Driftglass on many occasions:
There is a club. You are not in it.
The Moar You Know
@Hungry Joe: Now, just hold on there, cowboy. DeMaio is a REPUBLICAN. Not a libertarian. Bought and paid for by his REPUBLICAN slave owner, Doug “Papa Doc” Manchester. I know he forgot to tell a lot of folks that during the election, so it’s an understandable mistake :)
I’m in the Car Thief’s district, two (I think) north of you. The area he picked up in redistricting won’t help him any, and I truly believe he is now beatable. But it’s gotta be by a guy not much less “conservative” than he is.
That vote ended up being won by about 200 votes or so, was it not? Goddamn, but we have to get Dems out in off-cycle elections.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
So, an interview with Fox news?
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know: You’re correct, of course. And speaking of Papa Doc … I mean, Papa Doug Manchester … his paper (where I was a reporter and columnist for 20 years) is on the block. Prime candidate is the Tribune Co., which now owns the L.A. Times. They’ll probably go after the Orange County Register, too, which would give them complete dominance in SoCal. The Tribune Co. is conservative and stodgy but at least they’re not borderline insane, which is more than I can say for Manchester.
The Moar You Know
@Hungry Joe: You and I know some folks in common, then. I know one UT reporter who got purged in the Giant Purge of a few years ago, and one who is working there now, writing lightweight fluff to keep his skills up, good thing he doesn’t need the money because so far as I know they ain’t paying him.
To purchase every paper, big or small, in an entire California county, is the act of a desperate madman with more money than God and an ego that must be smaller than that of your average snail. I want him to shut down his Potemkin papers – i.e. Encinitas Advocate, NC Times and others of that ilk – and would frankly be relieved if the Tribune bought them all because at least most of them would get shut down. I have people tell me all the time that this is some kind of golden age for journalism here as we have ten papers available. They can’t even process it when I tell them that every single one is owned by the same guy.
Nutella
@boatboy_srq:
Yes, there are levels above Top Secret but Petraeus, as a proven liar and perjurer who deliberately gave government secrets to his f*ckbuddy, is not qualified to be a janitor with any kind of clearance.
The minute he was shown to have held on to those secret documents (in his house!) his clearance should have been yanked.
But since clearances are now provided and investigated by the private sector I’d be surprised to hear anyone doing a thing about it.
boatboy_srq
@Hungry Joe: Include? Sure. RELY ON? No BLEEPing way.
@Davis X. Machina: This is the other half of my problem. Blue Dogs (in the 80s/90s sense) are dead as doornails. 2015 “Blue Dogs” fall under either insufficiently rabid to be GOTea or too business-friendly wimpy to impress anyone.
@FlipYrWhig: There’s a very fine line between “Blue Dog” and “boring”, which only compounds that problem. And there’s definitely a dearth of actually worthwhile candidates. Do we excoriate the local Dem caucuses for not putting up worthwhile candidates? Suggestions welcome.
boatboy_srq
@Nutella:
No kidding. So much gets lost in the Shrubbery, even after the Shrub is gone. One more reason JEB should never be allowed in the WH except as a visitor.
lol
@Tommy:
There have been a couple articles dismantling the “Well, everyone said Hillary was unstoppable in 2008 but look what Obama did” premise.
Basically, in 2008, she had commanding leads nationally but was stuck in the 40s, leaving lots of room for someone new to consolidate the not-her vote and eat into her soft support. Furthermore, the polling had her vulnerable in early primary states and already behind in Iowa.
This time around, she regularly polls in the 70s not just nationally but in every early primary state as well. Her closest “rival” is a supporter. Her party support is high in almost every subgroup – liberals, african-americans, young people, etc. There’s no room anywhere to beat her.