It used to be an ironclad rule of politics that parties have to stick together to get things accomplished. In the old days of the Republic - say, 100 years ago - there were severe punishments for wandering off the reservation and trying to strike deals outside the party structure. You basically could forget about any funding from the party for reelection: a death sentence for legislators.
These days, things are more free-wheeling. There is a lot more money, which takes the edge off the pain, and makes death sentences obsolete. Still, the Republican Party makes sure that real pain awaits those who make deals with Democrats. There is much less pain for heretics on the Democratic side, and more hand-holding, but ostracism eventually awaits (just ask that miserable old man, Joe Lieberman).
Nevertheless, the ironclad rule is still true, no matter how many times people (like the Blue Dogs) try to evade it: parties have to stick together to get things accomplished. There is nothing - absolutely nothing - in the modern era that outlaws the political equivalent of gravity. What was true 100 years ago is just as true today.
If a party fails at the polls, the blame is shared by all. The leader is only one of many who shares in the blame. The converse is true too: success is shared by all.
In this election, I don't think it would have mattered who the President was: whether a flaming liberal, a god-fearing conservative, a cautious moderate like Barack Obama, or a lightning rod like Hillary Clinton. The policies wouldn't have mattered either. The Republicans absolutely refused to cooperate with the Democrats in any way, and signalled that any break in party discipline would be severely punished. The only effective reply was to respond in kind. By trying to find cracks in the wall, Obama, among others, help introduce disorder into Democratic ranks, and that disunity eventually resulted in electoral failure. Obama wasn't alone in these decisions. Everyone shares the blame, and everyone shares the defeat.
A Democratic party with fewer Blue Dogs will be a more coherent party. That will help.
Here's a story from Politico about pinning the blame. I particularly agree with Ilyse Hogue's comments.
It all reminds me of a slogan I have on one of my T-Shirts: "I didn't say it was your fault; I said I was going to blame you.":
The bodies aren’t even cold yet in the House, but the Democratic Party has already opened up a bitter debate over who’s to blame.
The party’s bloodied moderates Wednesday released two years of pent-up anger at a party leadership they viewed as blind to their needs and deaf to the messages of voters who never asked for President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-term agenda.
Liberals pushed back hard: The problem, they say, was those undisciplined moderates, who won delays, unsightly compromises and a muddled message from a too-accommodating administration.
Yet a third group of Democratic politicians and operatives blamed not policy but a failed sales job for the party’s woes.
One thing all sides agree on: The White House blew it.
“It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a ‘political realignment’ and a ‘new progressive era’ proved wishful thinking,” the retiring Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh wrote in a New York Times op-ed posted online as the scope of last night’s losses became clear.
Bayh called the decision to focus on health care in a bad economy “overreach."
“We were too deferential to our most zealous supporters,” he wrote.
...But if the center is speaking loudly, it speaks from a narrower platform. The nature of a wave is to shear off moderate members in swing districts, and the House lost half of its Blue Dog Caucus. And liberals were quick to note that Bayh could have chosen to stay in the Senate, rather than offering advice from the sidelines.
...McEntee said he blamed both the White House and congressional Republicans for failing to act more aggressively to create jobs.
“I don’t think that there was enough effort – and may be there just wasn’t enough knowledge, or maybe there wasn’t enough support in the Congress to really truly attack this problem of jobs,” he said. “You can talk about the tea party, you can talk about the coffee party, you can talk about all kinds of things, but you’ve got to talk about jobs.”
Others said Obama had allowed moderates to distract and muddle his message.
“What killed us was the conservative [Democrats] dragging health care out too long,” said another labor leader Wednesday.
“Democrats who decided to play ball with corporate interests found themselves friendless,” said a spokeswoman for MoveOn.org, Ilyse Hogue, citing Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and other defeated moderates while making the case for a purer, more confrontational party. “Claiming to support Democratic principles while quietly pandering to corporate interests is no longer a winning political strategy,” she said.
...Some internal critics are calling on Obama to reach out to Republicans, but any threat of factionalism inside his own party will likely push the president in the opposite direction. Democrats' best home, many believe, is uniting around a common enemy in congressional Republicans, and Obama's best bet for rallying both a restive base and skeptical moderates is pointing to a common enemy.
...“If you look at the stuff that we did, it was on an issue-by-issue level popular – but we have to do something different in the way we talk about the challenges we face and the way we deal with them,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.
“We clearly need much better air cover from the president,” he said, expressing skepticism of “this accepted wisdom that if you get things accomplished and explain them, you’ll win people over.”
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