Blue dogs and Democrats

Democrats are engaged in a debate over whether to blame the Blue Dog caucus for the loss they suffered last week. One argument is that the Democrats lost because they pursued an overly ambitious liberal agenda which the Blue Dog members were right to oppose. On the other side are those who argue that the Blue Dogs sabotaged what was in fact a winning agenda, weakening fiscal stimulus and health care legislation both in substance and politically. Matt Bai sides with the absolve-the-blue-dogs crowd, noting that in a country where 41 percent of voters described themselves as conservative it's hard to argue that the Democrats were right to push for liberal legislation.

I look at this in a slightly different way. I think that voters punished Democrats for results and appearances, not for the content or ideological tilt of specific pieces of legislation. Had the economic recovery that looked so promising in March and April continued through the summer there would have been very little criticism of ARRA from moderates and independents (of course the Tea Partiers will be with us always). But the recovery faltered, so it was easy to label ARRA as a failed and wasteful program. I believe that health reform became unpopular not because people don't like the substance of the law - as is often noted, individual components of the law poll very well - but because the process of enacting it became such a circus and people were turned off by the horsetrading.

So what does this say about the Blue Dogs? In retrospect, I think the liberal leadership in the House and Senate should have struck a different sort of deal with the Blue Dogs. Rather than bargain with the Blue Dogs, publicly and at length, in order get a weaker version of health reform and ARRA through Congress, wouldn't it have been nice if the two groups had engaged in some straightforward logrolling? What would Blue Dogs have been able to bring home to their constituencies that would have strengthened their prospects for reelection? Meaningful long-term deficit reduction? Entitlement reform? Tax reform? Ok, in exchange for Blue Dog support for a clean health reform law (including a public option, with a faster timeline to implementation) and a strong ARRA ($1 trillion plus rather than $800 billion), the liberals promise to immediately pivot to a more Blue Dog friendly agenda. The economy would be better off with a stronger ARRA, helping everyone's re-election prospects; the stink would be off health reform; and the Blue Dogs would have real moderate-to-conservative accomplishments that they could have run on in 2010.