Why does Gerald Seib sound surprised?
The upshot is one of the great political ironies of the year: A national conservative wave will hit hardest not at the most liberal Democrats, but at the most conservative Democrats. The Democratic caucus left behind will be, on balance, more liberal than it was before the election.
Meantime, a similar dynamic, only in the opposite direction, will be unfolding within the Republican House caucus. The election figures to bring to Washington some 50 newcomers on the Republican side—some of whom will replace retiring Republicans, others who will take over Democratic seats—and few of them are from the political center.
Instead, the tea-party movement has helped produce a crop of Republican newcomers who are ideologically to the right, and often quite intense about their views. “These people aren’t interested in coming here to compromise,” said one senior GOP House aide.
This is what progressives have been telling the Blue Dogs for two years. We’re not going to lose, you are. If you want to win elections in conservative areas of the country, you have to stand up for what you believe in. You have to sell your ideas to your constituents. You can’t just stick up for the pharmaceutical, insurance, and financial services industries. Their money is helpful, but people have Republicans to vote for if they want to serve corporate America. Watering down progressive population made it unpopular even on the left, and now voters don’t even care if the candidates voted for it, so long as their party did.
Nothing the Blue Dogs did over the last two years made any sense from a political point of view. They either should have killed the president’s agenda or they should have made it as popular as possible. They did neither, and now they’ll join the ranks of the unemployed (at least, until corporate America starts hiring again).
