In 2006, there was a push for Democrats to gain the majority in the House and Senate of the US Congress. At the time, I wondered exactly what those majorities would bring us. After all, it wasn’t as if we were electing left-wing idealogues. Since that time, we’ve added to the majority in the House, the most recent addition being Travis Childress from Mississippi, who is described in this article as a “pro-gun, pro-life, anti-tax Democrat.”
But have we really added to the majority? Sure, we have the committee chairmanships but legislatively, do we have an agenda consistent with the party’s platform (pdf)? More importantly, are we making strides towards making the platform a reality, as opposed to a wish list? From the same article referenced above:
But the strain of balancing the political imperatives of a right-of-center to pretty far left-of-center caucus has already strained the Democratic majority in the House. In the most recent example, the party’s intricate scheme for passing a war spending bill collapsed Thursday when most Republicans sat out the war money vote and most Democrats, who oppose spending any more money on combat in Iraq, voted against it.
That left the Democratic majority without the votes to pass a spending bill that, in the leadership’s calculation, is essential to protecting the party’s image on national security as well as members from conservative districts who cannot afford to be seen as failing to support troops in the field. Most of those lawmakers, including many freshmen, backed the war funds.
That the Democrats with the majority can’t get stuff done is a problem. I understand that universal health care has been in the party platform for decades but does anyone think that such legislation could pass our current Congress?
So my question is this: can the tent be too big?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
“Well, they don’t really have to, though. Certainly the we’ve seen the Republicans achieve great (electoral) success substantively representing a rather small minority, and paying superficial attention to a bare majority (if that).”*
I hate saying this, but they won more than 50% in 2004 because swing voters picked Bush in enough states to win. From that point onwards they had a series of catastrophies because they adopted Dick Cheney’s approach to American public opinion (“so?”), and things slid downhill from there for the GOP. I know the folks over at Raising Kaine and the Daily Kos want Democrats to turn the Bush-Cheney-Rove approach to government against the administration and ride roughshod over them with a bunch of bills that get ramrodded through Congress, but for my part, I don’t care to live under that sort of government anymore, regardless of who is holding the reigns. Tried it. No thanks. I’m happy if Congress wants to try and build a 55% concensus on pretty much everything from now on, even if it means some things take a little longer.
As for our current legilsative environment, there’s no rule that says that Nancy Pelosi has to get every single Democrat on the same page to before she can bring a bill to the floor. It’s not written anywhere in parliamentary proceedure that Democrats can’t pass a bill unless a conservative Freshman democrat with sixteen minutes of Congressional experience like Childress won’t vote for it. If he thinks voting no on something is going to represent his district the way his constituents want ,then let him. The Republican candidate would have voted no on anything Childress might vote no on (and indeed, on a few things he might still say yes on). We don’t lose anything by having one more right-of-center member in Congress from that particular district. But having him in the caucus means there’s one less seat the NRCC can count on when they try to win back their majority, which means we have at least one more election cycle to try and get more liberal and moderate Dems into the House so we can build concensus on things like healthcare and a timeline for withdrawl in Iraq.
*I wish I knew how to do the neat quote thingy.
You mean this? 😉 Actually, it’s very easy – put [blockquote] (replace the left and right brackets with the less than and greater than symbols) before the text that you want and [/blockquote] (replace the left and right brackets with the less than and greater than symbols) at the end of it.
Since Childress’ victory Andrea Miller and other second tier races have been getting a second look. It has created an environment where any thing is possible. So I am glad about this.
Yeah, the tent can get so big that it collapses on itself, and our party does need to stand for something bigger than who can win an election, but I have to say, I am very glad about this one.
Also, we have some very liberal committee chairs in the house, with a big majority and a Dem president, we could make some real progress.
I think we really are in the midst of a political realignment and that the old labels will no longer apply, as Jim Webb said. People are finally realizing that the standard hot-button issues have little relevance to their day-to-day lives, and are reassessing what they expect from their leaders. If the increase in voter registration and turnout continues through the next election, we will a generational shift, and hopefully more representative political parties and government.
This is the advantage that parliamentary systems have over ours. Our winner-take-all elections force a two-party system. If we went to at-large house elections, in which we could have as many votes as House members, and cat them any way we wanted, THEN we would get away from the two-party domination.
And don’t blame the Republicans for filibustering. The Dems did it when they were the minority. The real problem is that the majority party (either one) has not had the balls to actually make the minority filibuster.
There are so many things I’ve left unaddressed in this thread, but the one I’d like to cross off that list is the conflation of Raising Kaine and Daily Kos. I think both sides (to some extent) illustrate some of the intra-party challenges Democrats face. Daily Kos is a place where it’s ideology that can run roughshod over practicality. That is, (some of) the folks there can get hooked to an idea, and push for adherence to it, consequences to any particular election or person be damned. Raising Kaine has something of an inverse problem – that’s a place where personality/party seems to be paramount, and once a personality is picked, it can do no wrong, and all arguments flow from that premise. (This is what prompted this post – the rumor that Kaine (RK Approved) may endorse Gerry Connolly (over RK Approved Leslie Byrne) – is in the process of making heads pop over there. And that amuses me greatly.)
Oh, and fwiw, I’m a long time dKos member, and as much as they make my head hurt these days, I’m quite unwilling to write off the community as a whole. There’s some really smart and impressive folk, there.
The average Southern Republican(Jesse Helms, Bill Frist, etc) is horrible. It´s impossible not to feel sympathy even for the most conservative Democrat when you get this guys.
MB — since I’m the one who brought up the Daily Kos and Raising Kaine folks I’m taking your last two posts as being addressed to me (at least in part), so my response is this: I am *not* a longtime member of dKos, and I am *still* quite unwilling to write off the community as a whole. Like I’ve been arguing, there is a lot of room under this tent, even for people who occassionally let “ideology…run roughshod over practicality,” as you eloquently put it. I’m more of a Mark Warner Democrat in that I believe that we’re only going to making lasting progress on the challenges we face as a nation by building a moderate concensus around pragmatic solutions, but even if I don’t agree with some of the vocal idealogues in the party on some issues, I certainly respect and understand the sense of frustration many of the bloggers at dKos feel. And I still want them to stick with the party because I think when we’ve finally built that moderate concensus and get pragamatic solutions in place, they’re going to like what we’ve come up with and be proud to be Democrats. It happened here in Virginia during Mark Warner’s administration, and I believe it can happen on the American stage, too.
On the topic of the folks at RK — right now I’m mainly glad they’re part of the party because that thread about Kaine maybe endorsing whatshisface is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long, long time. Thanks for pointing that out.
Yes, but only after there is no Republican party anymore. Then the Democratic tent can fracture into a half-dozen parties and we can go to coalition governments. We are all, each of is individually, already far too big for any one party’s tent.
I myself am socially liberal, sometimes socialist, sometimes frugally fiscally conservative, libertine, libertarian, most definitely green, and all about social justice and diplomacy though with a strong military. How does that fit into any party in our country today? Any party affiliation is a compromise, just as the collection of party ideals is a compromise a well.
The Democratic party includes more and more pro-gun and pro-life candidates, I see no problem with this as being a Republican has become more and more an endorsement of the failed Bush, Incorporated policies. I think we are calling for more than two parties; except that a 3rd party cannot catch on with winner takes all politics and simple one-vote elections. I’d like to see party affiliation removed from the ballots, and for us to rank order our choices, and for more than one candidate from each party be allowed in the general election. That might be fun, and would more honestly reflect the will of the people collectively.