Lazy Quote Diary, from DownWithTyranny
Key quote:
Friday, The Hill reported that the conservative, corporate-oriented New Dems are planning "to fill the power vacuum created by the recent and rapid decline of the Blue Dog Coalition," without even mentioning that half the Blue Dogs who managed to survive are new Dems.
The New Dems Caucus numbers 50, so anytime you see a D/R breakdown of the House of Representatives, remember to shift 50 from D to R on any corporatist / populist issue where the Republican caucus can keep its members together behind the Tory wing of the Corporate party.
Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are "former" New Dems, which I presume is due to their leadership positions which would purportedly be in service of the whole caucus, but as the article documents, when it comes to distributing campaign resources, far more money in 2012 went from the House committee to elect Democratic members to corporatists than went to members of the progressive caucus.
New Dems:
AL: Terri Sewell
AZ: Ron Barber
CA: Karen Bass, Lois Capps, Adam Schiff (Blue Dog), Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog), Susan Davis, Ami Bera, Scott Peters, Juan Vargas
CO: Jared Polis, Ed Perlmutter
CT: Joe Courtney, Jim Himes, Elizabeth Esty
DE: John Carney
FL: Joe Garcia, Patrick Murphy (R masquerading as conservative D)
GA: John Barrow (Blue Dog), David Scott (Blue Dog)
HI: Colleen Hanabusa
IL: Mike Quigley, Bill Foster, Brad Schneider
IN: Andre Carson
LA: Cedric Richmind
MD: John Delaney
MI: Gary Peters
NJ: Rush Holt
NY: Carolyn McCarthy, Joe Crowley, Eliot Engel, Bill Owens, Brian Higgins, Dan Maffei, Sean Patrick Maloney
NC: Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog)
OR: Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog)
PA: Allyson Schwartz
TN: Jim Cooper (Blue Dog)
TX: Joaquin Castro
VA: Jim Moran, Gerry Connolly
WA: Rick Larsen, Adam Smith, Suzan DelBene, Denny Heck, Derek Kilmer
WI: Ron Kind
Comments
One opening in California is the chance to publicize their ...
... corporate ties and do a squeeze play in the California open primaries, getting a progressive ahead and then either a progressive / corporatist Dem match up or a progressive / Republican match up.
No surprise they have so many of their number from California and NY, given the size of the California and NY democratic delegations
LED bulbs
Prices are coming down for regular LED lightbulbs. Bought a new floor lamp and popped those bad boys in there. Cost is now competitive with CFLs and cost to run is something like 12 cents each per year, and bulb life is 22 years? Oh, and the color spectrum is close to incandescent.
In home depot a gooper and his son were next to me and the kid told his dad to get LEDs, and the dad said he'd be damned if he'd let Obama tell him what to do. Heh. Go ahead, sez I, pay more in electric bills. The Koch brothers thank you I'm sure.
2009!
It was 2009 that Obama promised a painful dystopia called a grand mal, er, bargain and anointed himself a New Democrat.
Remember this? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_hasbeen/2009/03/yes_...
Yes, of course ...
... there were those of us who said he was a Hedge Fund Democrat back in 2007, given that his policies in his Audacity of Hope book were all the kind of timid half measures in response to deep problems that the Clinton wing have always pushed. Indeed, his voting record in the Senate was lockstep with Senator Clinton.
The fact that he pushed New Dem Debbie Wasserman Schultz to be chair of the Democratic party was just keeping on going as he had been going before.
My focus in this diary was not, however, yet one more diary about Obama, but rather on the balance of power corporatist majority facing up against the much smaller progressive and populist minority in the House of Representatives.