I have been pondering the question from Americablog that Matt posted yesterday: should we stop criticizing Democrats until after the 2006 elections? Here is my response:

• For starters, whatever criticism we make of Democrats, whether before or after any election, it should never replicate Republican criticism of Democrats. That closes Peter's Triangle, and is an obvious no-no.
  
  
• When it comes to criticizing voting habits, we were never criticizing all Democrats, or even most Democrats. As I have noted in the past, the vast majority of Democratic votes complicit with bad Republicans legislation come form a small segment of Democrats in Congress. In terms of voting, nearly all of the time we are criticizing that small segment, not the party as a whole. When possible, we run primaries against that small segment. The vast majority of Democrats in Congress are loyal progressives who vote quite well. Our ire is typically directed at a select few.
  
  
• When it comes to criticizing the leadership, maybe we should restrain ourselves for a while. Certainly, as Howard Park said in the comments, we should definitely retrain ourselves form Labor Day until Election Day, since that is when the public will really be paying attention. Part of appearing as a credible alternative to Republicans is having credible alternative leadership. If Harry Reid, Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi look very weak in the eyes of the public, our chances of taking back congress and the states will be greatly diminished.
  
  
• When it comes to criticizing electoral strategy, I fail to see why we should ever pull back. What would be the point of restricting our criticism of Democratic electoral strategy until after the 2006 elections? One of the major goals of the netroots is to try alter the course of the Democratic Party and progressive movement in terms of electoral strategy. We have already had some success on that front with the fifty-state strategy. I believe we can have even more success, but not if we stay quiet about strategic matters during the election season itself.

Over at Political Wire, I saw a poll today that crystallizes many of my thoughts on this matter, and points to a segment of the Democratic Party that I cannot imagine I will ever stop criticizing: The poll is of political insiders, both Democratic and Republican, and the second question in the poll really caught my eye:Would congressional Democrats be helped or hurt politically by compromising with Republicans on major legislation this year?

Democrats (67 votes)
Helped: 27%
Hurt 63%
Depends: 10% Most Democratic insiders take the viewpoint that is in obvious agreement with the consensus netroots opposition and electoral strategy. As one insider said in the poll: "Major compromises in the '02 midterms--read Iraq--cost us our credibility in '04. Our Democratic base is tired of compromise in D.C., and in state politics. The Republicans hold the power; let's hold them accountable for their bad policy." That passage could have been taken directly from any number of progressive blogs. Being complicit with Republicans on major pieces of legislation makes it extremely difficult for the country to take you seriously as an alternative when those pieces of legislation lead to their inevitably disastrous results. See the difficulties we had on Iraq in 2004, after we tried to Take it off the table" in 2002. If the netroots are childish, then so is the Democratic insider who gave this quote.

I am glad that this is the majority strategy within the party, and I take that as an encouraging sign that we are moving in the right direction. However, I will not hold my fire against Democrats who hold the opposite view. Take the view of this insider: "The only message the GOP has this year is that the Democrats have nothing to say or are standing in the way of results. If we take that away from them, they are naked. And a few successes in passing legislation in Congress ain't gonna change the overall sour public mood." This is an insider who has clearly learned nothing form our past failures. This is someone who suggests that we tailor our electoral strategy to be primarily reactive against Republican attacks. What else should we do because Republicans will accuse us of not doing it? The Democratic leadership knew in 2002 that Republicans would try to make the election about national security, so they decided to react by taking "national security off the table," and agree to whatever Bush wanted. That worked well. Even beyond that example, the notion that we should base our strategy around Republican attacks accepts the premise of those attacks to begin with, demonstrates that we have no strategy of our own, and suggests that we don't, in fact, actually stand for anything.

This is a minority position in the party, but there is no way I can ever hold my fire against such a position. I will always temper and tailor my criticisms of Democrats in the manners I stated at the start of this post, but the notion that Democrats need to vote with Republicans in Congress in order to win seats form Republicans on Election Day deserves to be harshly criticized year-round. As long as any Democrat in the party leadership, or any elected Democrat in a blue district argues that compromising with Republicans on major pieces of legislation will somehow help our electoral fortunes, they should not expect any love from the netroots.

The congressional loyalty scorecards are an enormous and laborious project that I would like to complete, but for which I simply do not have the time. If anyone has a little time on their hands and would like to make a few hundred bucks, send me an email at chris@mydd.com and we will talk. I would like to complete the all-time trends for all members back to 1989--Chris

In 2005, according to my congressional loyalty scorecards, on the twenty-eight key votes I listed yesterday, average Democratic loyalty was 84.6%. This is an improvement on 2003, the only other year I have completely examined so far. In that session of congress, Democratic loyalty in the House was 82.3%. An improvement is always good, but since I still do not know what the long-term trends are in this area, I actually do not know how good this is.

I do know, however, that Republican loyalty in 2005 on the twenty-eight votes I listed averaged 94.8%. Improvement or no improvement, we still face an even greater voting deficit in the House than the 232-203 (I count Sanders as a Dem for the purposes of this exercise) partisan deficit would suggest. Now, I know that in a Democratic congress the types of legislation that would be voted on would be different than the ones we currently face, but even with that in mind there can simply be no denying that, on average, Democratic members of congress defect to the majority Republican position more often than Republican members of congress defect to the majority Democratic position.

A 10.2% loyalty gap is pretty striking, and cannot simply be chalked up to who controls the House, or Democrats from conservative districts. The latter is most obviously false, since so-called "moderate Republicans" defect from their party at far lower rates than "conservative Democrats." For example, in 2005 there were six Republicans with disloyalty rates exceeding 40%: Boehlert, Castle, Leach, Paul, Shays and Simmons. There were no Republicans with disyalty rates reaching or exceeding 50%. By contrast, there were thirty-two Democrats with disloyalty rates exceeding 40%, and seventeen with disloyalty rates exceeding 50% (when someone passes 50%, I wonder what the point of even being a Democrat is, because at that point they are voting more often with Republicans than Democrats). There is a vast disparity in the margins, and this is where our greater disloyalty arises.

A small number of Democrats account for a wildly disproportionate amount of Democratic defection and disloyalty on key votes. In fact, the twenty-two least loyal Democrats accounted for 36% of all Democratic disloyalty in the House in 2005. Those same twenty-two Democrats were more disloyal than the 160 most loyal Democrats combined. Reducing the extremes of Democratic disloyalty thus becomes one of the keys in building a democratic voting majority in congress. Now, many people will be quick to point out that the least loyal Democrats tend to come from the most conservative districts held by Democrats. While that is generally true, it is not always true. A few live in marginal districts. A few even live in blue districts. Here is the list of the twenty-two least loyal Democrats (marginal districts are in italics, blue districts are in bold): John Barrow, GA-12; Melissa Bean, IL-08; Merrion Berry, AR-01; Sanford Bishop, GA-02; Dan Boren, OK-02; Ben Chandler, KY-06; Jim Costa, CA-20; Jerry Costello, IL-12; Bud Cramer, AL-05; Henry Cuellar, TX-28; Lincoln Davis, TN-04; Chet Edwards, TX-17; Harold Ford, TN-09; Bart Gordon, TN-06; Tim Holden, PA-17; Jim Marshall, GA-05; Jim Matheson, UT-02; Mike McIntyre, NC-07; Charlie Melancon, LA-03; Collin Peterson, MN-07; Ike Skelton, MO-04; Gene Taylor, MS-04 Looking at this list, the strategy I see here to reduce Democratic disloyalty is simple. First, consistently run strong primary challenges against disloyal Democrats, either until the Democrat in question is defeated, or until the Democrat in question starts voting a lot better. If that works, move on to hyper-disloyal Democrats in marginal districts, and somewhat less disloyal Democrats in blue districts. I would also like it if hyper-disloyal Democrats in blue districts were penalized in terms of committee assignments and funding from campaign committees. Not all of the pressure can come from the grassroots if Demcoratic disloyalty is to be reduced.

This list immediately produces four targets for step one:

• Henry Cuellar, TX-28. Duh.
  
  
• Harold Ford is vacating his 70%+ Democratic seat, so we will have to wait and see what his replacement is like. I certainly hope there is a progressive option in the Democratic primary--that is a 100% safe Democratic seat, and the primary winner will become the Representative every time.
  
  
• Jim Costa, CA-20, and Jerry Costello, IL-12. I noticed that, like Cuellar, Republicans are not running a challenger against these conservative Dems who inhabit lean-blue districts. The reason why should be fairly obvious now. For Republicans, there is no need to spend money in a long-shot campaign to try and win a decently Democratic district when the Democrat in the district already votes with you half of the time. The opportunity cost deems it is far more efficient to simply endorse the conservative Democrat in the primary, ala the Club for Growth funding Henry Cuellar in TX-28.

As I said in italics above, the congressional loyalty scorecard project is enormous and unfinished. While my work thus far has only produced four clear primary targets, a more extensive search might turn up more. I have no doubt that continuing to run strong primary challenges against conservative Democrats in blue districts will go a long way toward strengthening Democratic loyalty across the board. One of the reasons Republicans are so loyal is because they know that if they are not, they will get "primaried." This is something that all conservative Democrats in blue districts need to have in the back of their minds as well.

As a former union organizer, I have something to say about the previous post and many of the comments in the discussion of the post. It is a line I have seen in many places, and when it comes to unions in this situation, I have a real problem with it:At the end of the day, unions have to look out for their members. I saw a similar line in the original Working Life post on the subject:If Bean and another CAFTA 15 member, New York's Ed Towns, go down (Towns is facing at least one, and perhaps two, primary opponents), it will be because a few unions are finally drawing the line, and are willing to oppose Democrats who vote against the interests of working men and women I have a serious problem with this attitude whether it comes from people within the labor movement or form without. Both quotes seem to postulate that unions are purely advocacy organizations that work on the perceived best interests of their plebian members. The reality sis that unions are more than just advocacy organizations, they are supposed to be democracies. Unions do not exist simply so that the wide fathers running the union can simply tell their membership what is best for them, without listening to the membership itself. Unions are not Labor Corps.

Because unions are democracies and are supposed to be carrying out actions their membership approves of, no union of any size should ever be backing a candidate in the single digits in the polls. There is simply no way that the membership of any union of any size would itself be in support of any candidate. Before I am told by anyone that a few unions are "drawing the line," I want to see the membership vote that told them to draw the line by supporting a candidate few people had even heard of. Before I am told by anyone that unions are acting on behalf of the interests of their members by helping a candidate who has no chance of winning, I want to see the membership vote that indicated the members had a desire to have their interests looked out for in that manner.

Melissa Bean has not been good for the working families of IL-08, or for the working families who are members of unions who supported her in 2004. In fact, one could call it betrayal. However, before anyone tells me that whatever candidate the unions are now working for has a better platform for the working families in the district, I want to see some evidence that the working families in the district, or the unions in question, actually support Bill Scheurer. If they don't, I fail to see how this action on behalf of the unions involved is in any way different from the leadership of the Democratic Party endorsing candidates in Democratic primaries without actually polling their own membership.

I would have been perfectly fine if the unions in the area had simply decided not to endorse in this election. I would have been more than happy to help work with a challenger to Bean in the primary (but quite frankly I would much rather have seen a challenge to Costello in the IL-12 instead, since he is just as conservative even though his district leans Dem, while Bean's is solid red. Both Costello and Costa in California needed a Democratic challenger yesterday.). This, however, is unacceptable. I want to work to help reduce the influence conservative Democrats have on the Democratic Party, but I can't see any justification for this action. Bean is one of the least loyal Democrats in the House, and her party loyalty hovers just above 50%. Even according to the post I wrote earlier today, we are not gaining very many votes with her. I also don't think the DCCC should spend that much money defending her, especially not in a year when we have Republicans on the defensive across the nation. That money should go to offense, not defense.

But even with all that together, this move goes against the principles of unions, and I have a hard time seeing it generate any positive political outcomes (although I know there are arguments to be made on that front). The union leadership involved with this activity--and it is union leadership, not union membership--should be publicly called out on this. Unions should not be endorsing candidates that few people in their membership would support.

By the most often used measure of control, Democrats currently need to take fifteen seats in the House of Representative in order to gain a majority. Fifteen more seats would give Democrats control over House leadership positions, House committees and subcommittee chairs, and also subpoena power. However, as Democrats like Joe Lieberman and Bruce Reed are able to consistently remind us, that is not the only type of control over the House of Representatives. Not only would Bush remaining President make it difficult, if not impossible, for a Democratic House to pass any meaningful, progressive legislation into law, there are many Democrats who would make that task quite difficult.

There is another type of control Democrats should be shooting for in November and beyond: a voting majority for the majority Democratic position on important pieces of legislation. After all, our long term goal is not only for the Democratic Party to be in control, but for the ideas and issues for which the majority of the Democratic Party stands to be in control. Before we figure out how to make that happen, we first need to figure out what than would even mean. If I may be so bold, I have the answer in the extended entry.

There's more...