Matt Yglesias, explaining the tactical thinking of liberals who want to draw a line in the sand over the public option, writes, "If you become known as the guys who are always willing to be reasonable and fold while the Blue Dogs are the guys who are happy to let the world burn unless someone kisses your ring, then in the short-term your reasonableness will let some things get done but over the long-term you’ll get squeezed out."
This seems a bit like a firefighter attempting to out-arson an arsonist. The reason the Blue Dogs have a reputation for being happy to let the world burn is that they really, really, really are willing to let the world burn, let health care fail, let cap-and-trade die, let Iraq grind on. The reason liberals have a reputation for not wanting to let the world burn is that all the anti-burn initiatives under discussion are, in fact, items from their agenda. They really, really, really don't want the world to burn. It's possible they'll be able to do it once. But what happens then? The Blue Dogs, now distancing themselves from a party that seems to be plummeting in the polls, will happily abandon cap-and-trade, because that's their preferred position anyway. Will the liberals? What if we need another stimulus? The Blue Dogs don't want to support that bill. Attracting them will require all manner of concessions, if it's possible at all. Will the liberals kill that, too?
What, in other words, is the endgame of this strategy? The hope seems to be that Rahm Emanuel turns his attention to beating Blue Dogs, rather than liberals, into line. Maybe. But what makes people think that's possible? What's his actual leverage against vulnerable Democrats voting for initiatives their voters don't obviously support in districts Barack Obama didn't win at a time when the president is no longer popular?
There's no successful model for blunting the power of centrists to write -- or kill -- the final compromise. President after president has found himself foiled by congressional centrists. George W. Bush never truly managed to bring Susan Collins, George Voinovich, or Olympia Snowe to heel. His tax cuts were smaller than he wanted, his Medicare expansion was pricier than conservatives liked, and his attempt to privatize Social Security was batted back. Bill Clinton fared little better. The hardest votes are the people who don't fundamentally want to vote for your agenda, not the people who do. And those are always the votes you get last.
The outcome of this strategy, then, seems to be that the Democratic Party pretty much collapses into infighting and fails to pass its top priorities and loses a bunch of seats in the next election. The media explains that the liberal Nancy Pelosi and her liberal House Democrats caused the electoral disaster, or that Democrats couldn't agree on an agenda. Long term, I'm not sure who that helps.
Which gets back to the original question: Can you beat the Blue Dogs at their own game of final-stage obstruction? The reason they've chosen that game, after all, is because their incentives are well aligned to win it. Liberals need another game. Maybe it's primary challenges. That strategy has certainly worked against Arlen Specter, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Grassley. Liberal groups certainly have the money to mount five or six high-profile challenges a season. Maybe it's procedural changes meant to weaken the power of centrists. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's all of these things. But it's hard to imagine that liberals will ever beat the Blue Dogs at their own game. The likelier outcome is that everybody loses.
The reason Erza's article was because I was checking out Nate Silver:
Ezra Klein is right about this: it's a legitimately tough decision for a Blue Dog as to whether to support health care or not. About two-thirds of Blue Dog Democrats voted against the health care packages as they were making their way out of the House tri-committee. They are not bluffing. Blue Dogs are not going to be persuaded by threats which imply that progressives would be willing to cause health care reform to fail -- that might have worked two months ago, when the health care bill had better numbers, but it has now become unpopular enough that they are probably largely indifferent to this possibility. Instead, they're going to be persuaded by evidence that the public option will make health care reform more popular in their districts: either directly (as with these polls showing that the public option itself is popular) or indirectly (by promoting cost-control). But to take an issue where public opinion is in your favor and to turn it into an ideological litmus test when you're facing an increasingly stiff headwind is almost certainly a mistake.
Problem is, no one on the Progressive side seems to be listening.
