2010: Even more on suicidal Democrats

posted at 12:04 am on December 2, 2009 by Karl

The nails for the coffins just keep coming. First, there is fresh data from Public Policy Polling (a Democratic firm):

It’s the voters in the middle of their parties who are more likely to cross over next fall. Only 74% of Republicans who think the GOP is too conservative are still committed to voting for it in 2010. That’s not all that meaningful though, since it’s such a small voter bloc in the context of the broader electorate. The most significant ideological dissatisfaction, at least when it comes to the ballot box next year, is with Democrats who think the party’s too liberal. Only 61% of them say they’re planning to vote Democratic next year and at 8% of the overall electorate they’re a relatively sizable group.

In fact, it is larger than the bloc of Democrats who think their party’s too conservative. Yet there remains a body of opinion on the Left that thinks going Left is somehow going to help the party in the 2010 midterms. It turns out that it may not help them with Democrats, let alone Independents.

However, people who actually do politics for a living are noticing the Democratic slide. Three Democratic candidates touted by national strategists have withdrawn from races in California, Ohio and Tennessee. And that’s not the only bad news for Dems in Tennessee, as Rep. John Tanner — a leading Blue Dog — announced his retirement. Tanner was no doubt spooked by Stephen Fincher, a farmer and gospel singer who raised over $300,000 in his first several weeks campaigning (though he has never lived outside of Frog Jump, TN). As The Hotline notes:

Dems waved off [Rep. Dennis] Moore’s retirement as an outlier, and one that was in the works long before the environment turned ugly for their party. They argued that it in no way was a sign of an upcoming deluge of open seats. But a Tanner retirement won’t be so easy to dismiss.

Indeed, Hotline’s Amy Walter wrote last week that, of all potential Dem retirements, a Tanner announcement would send the biggest shockwave through the party. After all, the thinking goes, if a longtime leader of the Blue Dogs decides now is the time to hang it up, what does that say for others in his position (like MO’s Ike Skelton, AR’s Marion Berry or WV’s Alan Mollohan)? They’ve all skated to re-election in recent cycles, yet all saw their CDs go quite strongly to McCain.

The realities are becoming sufficiently hard to ignore, causing some, like OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers, to openly declare that they do not care if moderates or Blue Dogs lose in 2010. Endangered Dems take note: you are expendable. Moreover, I think Bowers still believes that ObamaCare is going to pass, yet he is displaying the very Lefty apathy it is supposed to cure. Furthermore, as Nate Silver notes, a large majority of the most vulnerable House Dems voted for PelosiCare, the stimulus and cap-and-tax (albeit in various combinations). Silver & Co. have yet to internalize that this is precisely why those Dems are so vulnerable, but I suspect the pols themselves are starting to figure it out.

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