Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds managed to make my point for me. He failed to run as a progressive, and he failed to win Virginia. By the end of his campaign, Deeds was running ads attacking Obama’s clean energy agenda. Instead of defending his past record on the environment and fighting back against his opponent’s lies and misrepresentation of climate legislation, Deeds joined him. Instead of campaigning on a pro-labor platform, Deeds took support from the Service Employees International Union for granted and opposed the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of calling out his opponent on health care reform, he argued against the public option and voiced a preference for “opting out” were he to become governor of Virginia.
And what happened? Obama voters stayed home. Faced with the prospect of having a Republican who would do his best to fight change or a Democrat who would do almost as good a job fighting change, I am tempted to say that they actually made the right choice. If you are going to elect an obstructionist who is not on board with a progressive platform, it’s better to just let him be associated with the opposition party, rather than have him be a Blue Dog causing problems from within.
The Democrats don’t even seem to realize that prominent Republicans want them to do exactly what they are now attempting to do — move to the right and abandon the progressive agenda that America gave them, the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate to enact. Hours after their victory in Virginia, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) immediately stated that the election results were a warning shot fired across the bow of the Democratic Party. Republican Rep. Eric Cantor publicly concurred, commenting that moderate Democrats and Blue Dogs should consider this when deciding what to do about health care reform.
Well obviously we should listen to the NRCC and Eric Cantor — they only have Democrats’ best interests at heart … duh.
But that’s exactly what Blue Dogs like Sen. Blanche Lincoln are doing — urging the party’s leaders to delay legislation on health care reform and climate change until after the 2010 midterm elections. The Democrats have always been their own worst enemy. They did not have the backbone to stand up to the Bush administration when they were in the minority. Now that they are in the majority, however, it appears they are still suffering from their spineless-syndrome.
Let’s look at another election, one that hasn’t happened yet: Harry Reid’s reelection in Nevada. Polling done by Research 2000/DailyKos shows Senate majority leader Reid trailing to two no-name candidates: Danny Tarkanian, a former college basketball player and real estate agent, leads him 45-40, and Sue Lowden, head of the state GOP, leads him 44-41. Surely this is a sign that health care reform is hurting Democrats’ chances on the ballot, right? Wrong. In Nevada, the creation of a “government administered health insurance option” (as it was polled) enjoys a 12-point margin of support, including 80 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Independents. Reid’s seemingly utter ineffectiveness as a Senate Majority leader is why no-name candidates are beating him in the polls — and that stems from his unwillingness to commit to strong legislation and to stop bending over backwards in the hopes of a completely meaningless vote from Olympia Snowe.
Some will fault me for advocating that the Democratic Party play to its base by citing the demise of the Republican Party after doing just that. In the last year, we have seen the Republican Party increasingly marginalized into mere regional relevancy. Polling from Research 2000/DailyKos, the only polls to break data down geographically, show this. Not only is there no Republican representative from all of New England, but also the party’s favorabilty ratings from the Northeast, South, Midwest and West are as follows: in the Northeast, six percent favorable; in the Midwest, 10 percent; in the West 12 percent; and not surprisingly, in the South, 48 percent.
The Republican Party has become the party of conservatives in the Southern United States. End of story. So why, why are the Democrats refusing to see this reality?
To the Democratic Party, if any of you are listening: voters elected you because you ran on a progressive platform. Obama ran much farther to the left than the conservative elements of the party would have cautioned, and he won because he did. If you want to lose the 2010 elections, then go ahead and don’t do anything meaningful with your control of government. Unexcited Obama voters and progressives will stay home on election night just like they did in Virginia and change will finally come to Washington — you will be out of power and the Republicans will be back in power.
The Republican Party has become the party of ” no.” Don’t let yourselves become the party of “not yet.”