It’s looking like moderate is the new progressive, and the Left is having their biggest existential crisis since Sarah Palin.
We can criticize Blue Dog behavior all we want, but as long as we keep funneling their members millions of dollars every two years in small, online donations, then we will actually be ratifying, not criticizing their behavior. We will be supporting their efforts to push the party to the right, not working to push the party to the left.
If they are coasting that they can block or clear whatever legislation they want, the Blue Dogs consider themselves to be in charge of D.C., not Speaker Pelosi or President Obama. (…) The Blue Dogs are an overt obstacle to progressive governance. (…) They are overtly anti-progressive and anti-left wing.
Of course, if you run the tape in reverse, this is the same kind discord we saw in the Republican party over the last fourteen years. The difference is in the timing. The Republican party is showing some unity of purpose following the defeats of 2006 and 2008, while the Democrats are becoming more factionalized.
The Republicans are being forced to rediscover some of their conservative principles, while the Democrats are having to learn to govern to the middle. Somewhere in that purplish mix of light blue and dark red lies the character of our government for the next few years.
And that’s not what the Left expected at all.