It’s tough to be a Blue Dog, what with the congressional leadership (allegedly) showing them the cold shoulder, the Democratic Leadership Council shuttering its office, and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) retiring. But the truth is that the DLC has done its work. It has finally ruined the Democratic Party in the South, and its moved the rest of the party to the center.
If not for some hanging chads in Florida, the conservadem movement might have had a longer run. But then came Bush, Cheney, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Zell Millerification of the DLC and the Blue Dogs. The Democratic base expelled the pathogen, but it lives on in other forms. The biggest problem is that the DLC succeeded in moving the political conversation so far to the right that they no longer had anything to advocate except not being a liberal like Nancy Pelosi. With rulings like Citizens United and the growing media infrastructure of the right, the Dems are stuck in the corporate middle for good, but the party’s base hates it. Our only saving grace is that in most of the country, people hate the Republicans much more.
