Michael Tomasky: Can Obama Rise Again? (or can there be a Green Dog Democrat?)

[BurtWorm]

Michael Tomasky's review of Ari Berman's Herding Donkeys in the New York Review of Books made me wonder if Democrats can find a kind of candidate on this side of the Blue Dogs who can appeal to the voters the Blue Dogs appealed to the one or two elections they appealed to them. I know it may sound crazy, but I can't believe Dems must settle for ultra-right--er, "moderate"--so-called Democrats who won't support unions, who have no compunction against putting the brakes on progressive legislation or appearing on Fox News or putting out quotes that the media love to use to portray the Dems as hopelessly disorganized and unorganizable. Surely there is a kind of Democrat who can sound "moderate" and act progressive? Call them Green Dogs, maybe?

It's a thought.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/dec/09/can-obama-rise-again/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nybooks+%28The+New+York+Review+of+Books%29


December 9, 2010
Michael Tomasky


Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics
by Ari Berman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 292 pp., $26.00

The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism
by Roger D. Hodge
Harper, 260 pp., $25.99



...

Emanuel and Dean represented different wings of the Democratic Party—Emanuel more a New Democratic centrist, Dean a more traditional liberal, at least on the national stage. They also held correspondingly conflicting philosophies, with Emanuel believing that the way to revivify the party during the Bush years was to attract more moderates, and Dean putting emphasis on energizing the liberal base. In addition, they were driven by different interests: Emanuel, as DCCC chairman with a constituency of cash-starved candidates, wanted to win elections now; Dean, the DNC chairman with a constituency of state and local operatives, wanted to do long-term party building.

...

As intensely as Dean and Emanuel disliked each other, their agendas meshed in spite of themselves. Emanuel was recruiting competitive candidates in places like western North Carolina, where the centrist former college quarterback star Heath Shuler ran and won. Meanwhile, Dean was funneling seed money to moribund state and local party affiliates in some of those same areas so that they could hire organizers. Berman spent time in western North Carolina’s Polk County, where the driver of a pick-up truck yelled to Margaret Johnson, a former Air Force nurse who took it upon herself to help reenergize the party: “Lady, don’t you know there ain’t no Democrats in Polk County?” To which Johnson replied, “Well, there are now.”

The result was a Democratic Party that, across the country, annoyed local political reporters who couldn’t get accustomed to the notion that they might actually have to cover the Democrat this time. The efforts of Dean and Emanuel culminated, in 2006, in a thirty-one-seat Democratic gain in the House. The little-known facts, which Berman relays, are that Emanuel’s preferred candidates actually won only about half their races, and the Democrats could have had more wins if Emanuel hadn’t deserted some candidates he saw as too liberal. In any case, the thirty-one seats gained that year gave Democrats control of the House for the first time in twelve years and made Nancy Pelosi the speaker. The twenty-one additional seats added in 2008 along similar strategic lines gave the party the gaudy majority of 255–178 that has just now crumbled.

Most of those seats were won by Blue Dogs, the centrists and conservatives who feared signing on to the Obama-Pelosi agenda. More than half of the Blue Dog coalition—twenty-eight members out of fifty-four—lost their seats on November 2. Many Democrats and liberals, including Berman, are now saying in essence: good riddance.2 Cathartic though that may be, the fact is that if Democrats tried to rely on liberals only, they couldn’t have more than 180 or 190 seats and would never win a majority. They need moderates to have a chance to govern. So the question that confronts congressional Democrats now is, how many of those lost sixty-five seats can they realistically expect to win back someday?

...

[Vincardog]

1. Why does the Democratic party have to bend to the will of so called 'Moderates" but the GOP gets to

KEEP moving to the right of Mussolini?
FUCK that.
WE need to STAND UP FOR LIBERAL positions and let the voters decide between voting for people who want to government to work for the people and ones that want the government to work for the RICH.

[BurtWorm]

2. For one reason: all those pre-Dean years when Dems had no presence in all those districts.

And please understand, I'm not advocating for more Blue Dogs. I'm advocating for Dems to aggressively move the party left in those districts.

[Vincardog]

3. We agree

[kctim]

4. Well, first off

Calling them "Green Dogs" would work about as well as trying to push anti 2nd Amendment legislation worked on us.
Then you have to work on you're false belief that YOU know what is best for us better than we do.
Wouldn't hurt for you to tackle the problem of not respecting the difference between urban and rural values and beliefs either.

I would be curious to know what liberals/progressives think they should do to appeal to our votes.

[BurtWorm]

5. I do know what's best for you.

That's what I'm all about. Shoving my superior opinions down the roobs' throats.

Isn't that what everybody's all about?

;-)

[kctim]

6. Well, that is what most

who vote moderate and would NEVER vote progressive think right now, but no biggie.
Thought you were serious about wanting you're "Green Dogs" to even have a chance.

[BurtWorm]

7. I had very high hopes for a dialogue with you based on the reasonable tone of your first post.

But I decided to take it in a different direction.