From Roll Call: Minnesota Blue Dog Isn't Ready to Give Up His District - Collin Peterson’s seat will almost certainly flip when he retires

Not that many Blue Dog Democrats can be found anymore - these were brought in one of my classes recently. This is one of the last of a dying breed of conservative Democrats.

- Click here for the article.

Collin C. Peterson is the last thing keeping Minnesota’s 7th District blue.

Democrats are always worried that the 13-term congressman is going to retire. Because if he does, his heavily agricultural district will almost certainly send a Republican to Congress.

But Peterson, one of the original and last surviving Blue Dog Democrats in the House, is giving no hints of slowing down. In fact, the 72-year-old says he’s enjoying Congress more these days, which likely comes as good news to Democrats already looking to minimize House losses in the 2018 midterms.

“As long as I think I’m making a difference, I’ll probably keep going,” Peterson said in an interview last week at a fish fry for his Democratic-Farmer-Labor colleague, 8th District Rep. Rick Nolan.

Peterson said he’s had a better time in Congress the last couple of years because his attitude has changed slightly.

“I lightened up a little bit,” Peterson said. “I just figured there’s so much stuff I can’t do anything about anyway, so I just pay attention to what I can do something about and don’t worry about the rest of it.”

For more on Blue Dogs:

- A BRIEF HISTORY OF: Blue Dog Democrats.
- What is a Blue Dog Democrat?
- Yellow Dog and Blue Dog Democrats.
- Bye-bye, blue dog “Democrats”: What the end of conservative Dems means for America.

The House Democratic Caucus to lose powerful voices

A number of members of the House Democratic Caucus have announced that they will not run for re-election this year. Some of these members have served for some time, leading other members to wonder whether the caucus will suffer from a loss of "institutional memory."

If you read through the story you'll note that apart from Barney Frank - who is one of the more liberal members of the House - most of the retirees are members of the Blue Dog Coalition, self described conservative Democrats who have found themselves increasingly marginalized form the party. This is the same thing swe have noted in class that happens among Republicans where liberal members of their party have become practically extinct.

How Cohesive are Republicans in the U.S. House?

Thsi adds to 2301s discussion of parties in the government. From Wonkbook:

The math of a possible budget deal isn’t particularly hard. If John Boehner can’t get enough Republicans, he can always move to the left and get some Democrats. As my colleague Paul Kane reports, there’ve been some preliminary feelers from GOP leadership looking into doing just that. Plenty of Blue Dogs would be happy to help out, and the Republican leadership could get a spending bill with cuts equal to their initial $30 billion proposal. By any normal accounting, that’d be a win. It’d be as if House Democrats had managed to send their first health-care bill, complete with public option, sailing through the Senate in order to head off a singe-payer proposal favored by the party’s liberal wing. What the arithmetic leaves out, however, is Eric Cantor.

Whether you call it the Tea Party or not, the hardline of the modern Republican Party has demonstrated its willingness and skill at deposing incumbent Republicans who are too willing to compromise with the other side. Deposing the Speaker of the House, however, is hard. But it’s a bit less hard if you have another option waiting in the wings. An option like Eric Cantor. As David Rogers and Jake Sherman note, Cantor has been separating himself from Boehner’s “I’m not going to put any options on the table or take any options off the table” and making it clear that he both opposes a short-term CR and hasn’t been informed about a range of compromise discussions. It’s an odd public stance for the Majority Leader to take. But it’s right in line with a Republican Party where the conservative caucus has promised to counter Paul Ryan’s budget with an even-more conservative document -- even though no one has yet seen Ryan’s budget!

To a degree that freshman Republicans may not realize, however, Boehner’s allergy to a shutdown is in their best interests. If you buy the Mitch McConnell line that the GOP’s top priority should be denying President Obama reelection, then you want the government to stay open. Evidence that political scientists collected from almost 170 instances of late budgets or shutdowns on the state level showed that fiscal chaos hurts incumbent legislators from both parties win reelection but helps the executive when he runs. They theorized that this is because it makes Congress look small and the executive big. And sure enough, Obama has stayed out of the fray, and is set to announce a major new initiative on green energy today -- the exact sort of forward-looking, let’s-get-on-with-the-people’s-problems initiative that will contrast badly with a Congress unable to come to a reasonable compromise on 2011 funding.

Its Good to be a Blue Dog

From USA Today:

The conservative House Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition have seen their political clout grow dramatically as they work to shape the health care debate.

- Wikipedia: Blue Dog Coalition.
- Official Website.
- Open Secrets: Long Term trends in Contributions from Health Care Professionals.

Health Care and the Blue Dog Coalition

One of the factors which makes the Democratic Party in Congress less cohesive than the Republican Party is a strong division between the liberal wing and the Blue Dog Coalition.

According to this CQ story, the Blue Dogs seems to be in a position to determine the direction that any health plan will go. They lie somewhere between the liberal Democrats who prefer a "public plan" and conservative Republicans who do not.

Democratic Party leaders must make the Blue Dogs happy if they are to pass anything:

It is not clear whether Republicans would support a public plan even with a host of restrictions — or if liberals would support a bill with the kind of restrictions demanded by the Blue Dogs.

Among their requirements: The public plan must negotiate payment rates with providers; participation in the plan must be voluntary for both providers and patients; premiums and copayments under the plan must pay for its operations; and the plan must follow the same actuarial standards and regulations required of private insurers.

The Blue Dogs claim to have 51 members, as opposed to 78 liberals.

- The official web site of the Blue Dog Coalition.
- Wikipedia: Blue Dog Coalition.
- Bluedogdems.com.