Hot new lefty op-ed: Fellow Democrats, it’s time to purge the Blue Dogs
posted at 7:22 pm on October 25, 2010 by Allahpundit
An entertaining adjunct to Benjamin Sarlin’s Daily Beast post today listing five excuses parties start making when they know they’re headed for destruction at the polls. Number five on Sarlin’s list: “We Totally Wanted to Lose Anyway.”
Take it away, Ari Berman.
Margaret Johnson, a former party chairwoman in Polk County, N.C., helped elect Representative [Heath] Shuler but now believes the party would be better off without him. “I’d rather have a real Republican than a fake Democrat,” she said. “A real Republican motivates us to work. A fake Democrat de-motivates us.”…
A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)
Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.
Republicans have become obsessed with ideological purity, and as a consequence they will likely squander a few winnable races in places like Delaware. But Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way.
This sounds suspiciously like DeMint’s famous formulation that he’d rather have a GOP caucus comprised of 30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters. Berman’s not going quite that far — he wants a smaller majority, not an immaculately pure minority — but I’m still not sure how this would work in practice. For one thing, there’s nothing stopping them now from passing cleaner bills on major agenda items. If, as Berman seems to believe, there are 218 votes available on the Democratic side for pork-free progressive legislation, then the Blue Dogs can be safely ignored. Let ‘em vote no on things like ObamaCare; it won’t stop the bill and it’ll help them get reelected. If there aren’t 218 votes available for liberal bills — and bear in mind that the Congressional Progressive Caucus has only a bit more than 80 members — then obviously the numbers required for a smaller yet more effective majority are, er, problematic. Beyond all that, I’m at a loss as to how having fewer Senate seats will increase pressure on Democrats to “confront” the Republicans on the filibuster. I would think it’s just the opposite: The closer Democrats are to 60, as they are now, the more vehemently opposed to filibusters they should be. As their majority shrinks and they get closer to minority status, the more self-interest should soften their antipathy to the procedure, especially when they have many more Senate seats in play in the 2012 cycle than Republicans do.
No need to overthink this, though. This sort of proposal isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It’s meant to do things: (a) designate an easy scapegoat for the election beating, even though no one to the right of, say, Keith Olbermann seriously believes the Dems are going down because their caucus was too centrist, and (b) provide a little balm for the impending wound as described by Sarlin in this piece. In fact, the truly hot meme among lefties right now is that losing the House will actually help Obama in 2012, whether by giving him someone to blame, forcing the GOP to take some responsibility for the economy, or providing cover for him to tack towards the center. That variation on “we totally wanted to lose anyway” at least has some sense to it. Read the rest of Sarlin’s excuses list so that you’re well prepared for the rest of the week.
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Sweet. How sweet it is.
Finally, Obama’s chikkinzzz are coming home to roost.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:22 PM
This.
When you have to plead incompetence to defend against charges of malfeasance, you know you might be in trouble.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:36 PM
ear relevant…
driguana on May 19, 2013 at 8:59 PM
Flush this lying tudd down the drain with the rest of the Obamacrap.
kemojr on May 19, 2013 at 9:34 PM
This was Dan Pfeiffer’s week in the barrel, like Susan Rice he was given the White House talking points and sent on a mission. He really needs to get copies of these tapes and watch them and see how foolish and unbelievable he looked and sounded. The White House is losing the little credibility it still had by sending these shills out every week trying to do damage control. Community organizers make poor leaders.
savage24 on May 19, 2013 at 9:42 PM
Pfeiffer’s statement that the law is irrelevant because the IRS conduct was “outrageous” and “inexcusable”, tells us all we need to know about this administration.
However, the follow-up should have been, “On what standard do you judge their conduct to be outrageous and inexcusable since the law is apparently not an appropriate standard?” (At least in Pfeiffer’s mind.)
What this comes down to is this: “if the Administrative deems something “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such. As we have seen in so many other areas, if the Administrative deems something to not be “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such.
In their mind, the law is – in fact – irrelevant. That’s what makes this situation so dangerous.
It’s not socialism. It’s worse.
EdmundBurke247 on May 19, 2013 at 10:36 PM
Irrelevant = “What Difference Does It Make?”
jaydee_007 on May 19, 2013 at 10:41 PM
A fitting capstone to Ed’s story about loss-prevention (aka employee theft) and management’s “permission structure” in this post.
(Not to mention the jaw-dropping statements of Eleanor Clift in this one.)
AesopFan on May 19, 2013 at 11:40 PM
I enjoy popcorn and hope it is a long week.
Drill and Fill on May 20, 2013 at 12:41 AM
Hey give Barky a break. He had to get his sorry ass out to Vegas.
tbear44 on May 20, 2013 at 4:49 AM
Of course they sent Pfeiffer out to do the Sunday shows. He was the most senior expendable staff member they had . . .
BigAlSouth on May 20, 2013 at 5:39 AM
Pfeiffer… The guy with the red shirt in the landing party…
Boudica on May 20, 2013 at 5:53 AM
Perfect!
lea on May 20, 2013 at 7:11 AM
Does anybody else remember the campaign in 2008 when Obama defended his lack of administrative experience by saying he was just so smart and tuned in that his instincts were better than experience. Someone needs to dredge up these sound bites and play then with the current line about the government being too large to control and that the White House only knows what it reads in the newspaper.
bartbeast on May 20, 2013 at 8:43 AM
If where the president was during the Benghazi crisis is “irrelevant”, then he wasn’t where one would expect the Commander-in-Chief to be. So, where was he? Was he watching a movie in the residence? Was he bowling? Or was he having a bi-curious outing with his good buddy Reggie Love? If Obama was AWOL, as I suspect he was, it is he who is irrelevant. This entire stinkin’ criminal Obama Regime must go and now!
SpiderMike on May 20, 2013 at 9:31 AM
If this continues all week, it will be ‘O’ himself doing the rounds on the Sunday talk shows – except for Fox, of course. (‘O’ can do everything better than everyone else as he has been known to say.)
He then gets the extra benefit that no one will challenge him like they have begun to do with his minions.
Carnac on May 20, 2013 at 11:00 AM
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