MS-01 Again
Stuart Rothenberg re-examines some assumptions and looks at MS-01 again:
Most of the state legislators in the district outside the Memphis suburbs are Democrats, and statewide Democratic candidates, including Attorney General Jim Hood (D) in 2007 and Secretary of State Eric Clark (D) in 2003, have carried the district.
The Republican Congressional nominee should have an edge in this district not because it is such a red district but because Republican candidates normally draw at least a quarter of the white Democratic vote — conservative Democrats who have become accustomed to voting for Republican candidates in federal races.
Hold on, you may be thinking. Isn’t Davis’ inability to hold conservative Democrats a strong indication that President Bush and the damage to the Republican brand are responsible for Childers’ win? Maybe, but that’s far from certain.
Polling in the district showed Bush’s “favorables” well above 50 percent, and Democratic pollster Anzalone minced no words when he told me, Louisiana’s 6th and Mississippi’s 1st “are not referenda on Bush and Republicans in Congress.”
So what we really have in MS-01 is a case of a conservative Democrat winning the votes of conservative Democrats who often vote Republican at the federal level. Commentary on the Mississippi special election has tended to treat this district as if it were deepest Provo, which has led most observers to exaggerate the national significance of the result because the competitiveness of the Democratic Party at the state and local level was neglected. Of course, Childers comes out of county government, and perhaps was able to translate the local Democratic appeal into a pick-up in the House. What Childers and Cazayoux seem to represent is the success of the new Democratic flexibility in recruiting more conservative Democratic candidates who are well-suited to their districts, and the electoral strength of a combined socially conservative, economically populist, antiwar message. We could call it the gradual ”Shulerisation” of the Congressional Democrats. Observers are so quick to look for signs of Republican collapse that I think we overlook evidence that shows the Democrats simply beating the Republicans at their own game.
This is not to let Greg Davis,, the NRCC and the national party off the hook for the dreadful, unimaginative campaign they ran, or to suggest that the Republicans are not going to be badly bloodied in House and Senate races this year. They are. But this does put things in some perspective, and it confirms my earlier skepticism that the MS-01 outcome was not as nationally meaningful as many seem to think it is. However, the media will run with the story and this story will contribute to the narrative of Republican collapse. The overall narrative has more of a basis than the story about MS-01 we have been hearing, but anything that can be made to fit that narrative does have an ultimayely negative impact on the fundraising and morale of the national party.
Filed under: politics
A game which will, of course, continue to involve paying only lip service to social conservatism, economic populism, and opposition to war. (It’s only a “message”, after all.) God bless America!
If they took it seriously, it wouldn’t be a game, but would be representative government, and we couldn’t have that.
Well, no John, look at the trouble the Dem leadership has had keeping the conservative Dems in line… That’s only going to get worse as their numbers grow…
What this race really points out is the extent to which the Right has won the policy debate in the US and the extent to which the Dems have been moved to the Right…
Compare the typical Democrat candidate of 2008 to one of 1980 or 84 or 90 or 94 even…
Good heavens, no! We have to protect the Economy, secure the Homeland, and uphold American Values. Such weighty matters cannot be left to the hoi poloi.
I agree this is evidence that the Dems have been moved, or rather dragged, to the right, and you may be right that the new blue dogs, or whatever we’re going to call them, are going to operate as a semi-independent force in the Congress as they build up their own caucus. The Blue Dog Coalition currently has almost 50 members, if I counted correctly, and stands to have more come January. That will begin to make them a formidable bloc and also a useful wedge for the ever-shrinking minority to work with.
Help, I can’t see for all the false consciousness in teh room!!! Cough Cough Cough
How so? I’ll admit that I don’t follow these things nearly as closely as some people, so it may be that you can correct me, but the one case of a prominent conservative Democrat that I’ve kept some track of doesn’t seem to have turned out that way. Call me a Larisonian pessimist, but my gut tells me that the vast majority of these new Democrats will fall in line, just like the “principled” Republicans.
” my gut tells me that the vast majority of these new Democrats will fall in line, just like the “principled” Republicans.”
Indeed they will have a great deal of leeway as members of a healthy majority, until it comes to an issue that is politically salient in their home districts.
Conservatives have always run as Democrats in Mississippi, except for the gerrymandered district in the Delta. It’s nothing new. Anyone competent enough to attract donors to a campaign for federal office knows they won’t get 40% of the vote if they don’t mention that they are pro-life and pro-gun in every commercial.
Davis lost because people viewed him as a city slicker and most of the voters are rural.
“Davis lost because people viewed him as a city slicker and most of the voters are rural.”
I agree entirely, and that was part of my initial reaction to the first round of the special election.
“So what we really have in MS-01 is a case of a conservative Democrat winning the votes of conservative Democrats who often vote Republican at the federal level…. it confirms my earlier skepticism that the MS-01 outcome was not as nationally meaningful as many seem to thing it is.”
True so far as it goes, Dan, but let’s be careful not to set fire to any strawmen. No one in their right mind is suggesting that Childers is a Ted Kennedy clone.
If you want to be a majority party, you must pursue a 50-state strategy. This applies with equal force to both parties.
The tactics being pursued by Democrats in the South today are kind of analogous to what Republican candidates in the Northeast were doing in 1993-94. Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey and George Pataki in New York bent over backwards to present themselves as pro-abortion and/or pro-gay “social moderates.” People may have forgotten this, but Rudy “Benito” Giuliani was elected mayor of NYC in 1993 after practically campaigning as a Bill Clinton Democrat. (He didn’t kiss Pat Robertson’s backside until after he caught the presidential bug.)
A lot of this discussion hinges on what the proper definition of a conservative Democrat really is. One reason I loathe the Democratic Leadership Council is their idea of a “conservative Democrat” is one who embraces the most unpopular and corporate-friendly aspects of the Bush agenda: free trade and immigration shamnesty. An enlarged delegation of “blue dog” Dems will be fine by me so long as they are economic populists. In other words, they had better resemble Heath Shuler more than they resemble Harold Ford.