Archive for the ‘Blue Dog Democrats’ Category
One thing that shines through in this article is there’s really 2 Democratic Parties. There’s the bi-coastal Democratic party that’s filled with elitists and the Rust Belt/Great Lakes Democratic Party that actually knows how to talk to blue collar workers and people of faith. What they have in common is anyone’s guess. (I suspect very little.)
The first paragraph of the article says “Steering his white Dodge Ram while wearing a tan knit cap, a drab green Carhartt coat and a smear of brown livestock feed on his cheek, Terry Goodin jounced over frozen-hard mud toward his 100 head of beef cattle. ‘Make sure they’re all four legs down and not four legs up, in this kind of weather,’ he told me in his southern Indiana drawl. The temperature overnight had dipped toward zero. Now, midmorning, it stood at 16 degrees. On the rear of his old pickup truck was a ‘Farmers For Goodin’ bumper sticker, and rattling around his head were thoughts of what he was going to say the following week in a starkly different setting—up in Indianapolis, at the regal limestone capitol building, in his introductory speech as the leader of his caucus in the state legislature.”
It continues, saying “I am a Democrat. I am a Democrat from rural Indiana.”
That Goodin, 51, who has held political office for more than 17 years, felt the need to say this out loud speaks to the divisions bedeviling the Democratic Party. A father of three and the superintendent of a 500-student school district, Goodin is the last Democrat in Indiana who represents an entirely rural area. A member of the Indiana Farm Bureau, the National Rifle Association and the Austin Church of God, he’s an anti-abortion, pro-gun, self-described “Bible-poundin’, aisle-runnin'” Pentecostal. This unusual profile for a Democrat makes him a species nearing extinction within the national party, but it’s also the very reason he keeps getting reelected here. This paradox is why he is prominently featured in a report set to be made public Thursday by the leadership PAC of third-term congresswoman Cheri Bustos.
In the old days before I could vote, Goodin would’ve been considered a conservative Democrat. These days, conservative Democrats are almost extinct. Most of them migrated during the 1980s to the Republican Party.
There’s little question that Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t welcome heartland Democrats to DC. She’d definitely welcome them. Likewise, there’s no doubt that she’d ignore them once they got there. Ms. Pelosi wants Democrats of all stripes in DC because that’d increase the odds of her becoming Speaker again. There’s little question, though, whether their agenda items would see the light of day. I’m betting they wouldn’t.
This is harsh reality:
The facts are harsh. “The number of Democrats holding office across the nation is at its lowest point since the 1920s and the decline has been especially severe in rural America,” Bustos writes in the report. In 2009, the report notes, Democrats held 57 percent of the heartland’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now: 39 percent. In 2008, Barack Obama won seven of the eight heartland states. In 2012, he won six. In 2016? Trump won six. There are 737 counties in the Midwest—Trump won all but 63 of them.
What’s needed for the Democratic Party is for them to dump the elitists/socialists/environmentalists in their party. The elitists are hated because they’re snobby. The socialists aren’t trusted on the economy. Environmentalists are viewed as hating blue collar workers.
A political party that’s populated with snobbish people, that isn’t trusted on the economy and that hates blue collar workers has limited appeal. That’s where the Democratic Party is at in 2018.
The notion of moderation and reasonableness within the Democratic Party died this afternoon when 48 Democrats and independents voted against cloture to proceed to a final vote on Judge Don Willett. Less than a week ago, the American Bar Association, aka the ABA, gave Judge Willett a “Fully Qualified” rating, their highest rating.
That means so-called Democrat moderates Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, Jon Tester, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bill Nelson and Bob Casey voted to prevent a fully qualified judge from getting a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite these Democrats’ immoderation, Willett will be confirmed. When he is, he will be part of a record class of judicial confirmations in a president’s first year. As good as that is, what’s most impressive is the quality of these judges.
If ‘moderate’ Democrats vote the same way on every Trump-appointed judge as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, where’s proof that the term moderate is anything more than an election ploy? It’s like the term Blue Dog Democrat. It sounds nice but they’re only Blue Dogs until Nancy Pelosi needs them to vote like Keith Ellison.
Republicans should hammer these Democrats for voting against this fully qualified judge:
They voted in lockstep against this highly qualified justice, too:
