Joseph Marshall of A Straight Shot of Politics points to a very interesting series of posts from Chris Bowers of MyDD in which Chris analyzes the constitution and voting patterns of various sub-groups among House Democrats in an attempt to determine a measure of party loyalty for the various sub-groups. Here are Chris’s posts to date:
Chris has identified ten bright light pieces of legislation and analyzed the voting patterns for those bills. A vastly over-simplified version of his conclusions are that Republicans dominate the House because of greater party discipline, the DLC while disorganized show reasonable party loyalty, and the Blue Dog Democrats don’t.
Chris’s posts are clever and interesting and it’s going to take me some time to digest them fully. But here’s a set of numbers I don’t recall seeing in Chris’s posts:
Number DLC 39 Blue Dog Democrats 35 House Progressive Caucus 51 Other Democrats 77 Total Democrats 202 Total Republicans 232
Obviously, Republicans dominate in the House because they have a clear majority there and that’s the way the U. S. Constitution and the House rules are written. They prevail in the House for that reason, because they have strong party discipline, and because the Democrats don’t.
Poor party discipline is not a new phenomenon for Democrats: Will Rogers said almost seventy years ago (when asked if he were a member of an organized political party) “No sir, I’m a Democrat”.
Frankly, Chris’s conclusions concern me. I recognize that part of Chris’s intent is to re-direct the ire of Deaniacs i.e. progressives away from the DLC and towards the Blue Dog Democrats. He may be successful at the latter while failing at the former. Progressives appear to be pretty dissatisfied with the DLC—just search for “Joe Lieberman” on Eschaton or Daily Kos. Will they be dissuaded just because the facts don’t support their feelings in the matter?
Further, I think the real question is whether the DLC and Blue Dog Democrats more commonly support each other’s positions rather than those of the Progressive Caucus and not how frequently each group votes with the majority Republicans and those numbers don’t leap out at me from Chris’s analysis. I’ll have to probe deeper.
I would very much like to see a strong and re-vitalized Democratic Party. Are the 51 members of the House Progressive Caucus a strong and broad enough base to accomplish that? Or will purging the Blue Dog Democrats (and possibly the DLC as well) add further to the Republican majority?
