Ranting On...Democrats and the Speaker Election

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hands the Speaker's gavel to John
Boehner

This past week, Washington has been abuzz with a number of different topics.  The president's upcoming veto of the Keystone Pipeline, Mitch McConnell's new order of business in the Senate, the fact that Politico seems intent on putting a photo of Joni Ernst on every single article about the new Senate (you have to feel for someone like Ben Sasse or Shelley Moore Capito who can't get mentioned in an article to save their lives), but the topic I want to discuss today is none of these (though let's put a pin in that Keystone Pipeline article, as we will be coming back to it).

No, what I want to discuss is a side aspect of the new Speaker vote in the U.S. House.  The big news coming out of this was John Boehner's successful vote count, though it's worth noting that the newly-elected Speaker may have been in trouble had the full House been there, as the bar was significantly lowered by so many members of the New York congressional delegation being at Mario Cuomo's funeral.  Boehner actually came up two votes shy of the 218-vote majority of the House, but since 25 members of the House weren't there, he didn't need a full majority.  A smaller aspect of the news, however, was that Nancy Pelosi also had several House members skip out on voting for her; four, in fact.  These members of Congress were Reps. Krysten Sinema (AZ), Gwen Graham (FL), Jim Cooper (TN), and Dan Lipinski (FL).

Whenever I see these sorts of bucks in the party's leadership, I must admit to becoming uncomfortable.  The reality is that with the geographically diverse nature of the U.S. House, the Democrats and Republicans will inevitably have a politically diverse caucus, particularly if they're in the majority.  Still, if you can't suck it up and vote for the leader of your party, you better have a damn good excuse.  The Republicans voting against Speaker Boehner, I will admit, seem to do so.  All 25 hail from districts where John Boehner's governing, for better or worse, is considered too middle-of-the-road for their tastes and they want to change that.  This clearly could pose problems for some of these members (Dan Webster and Richard Nugent already lost their seats on the Rules committee for bucking Boehner), but they can likely sustain the primary battle that could happen for taking down the establishment party, or at least they know the risks (no Republican goes into a controversial vote these days and doesn't think of Eric Cantor).

I'm not so sure about the Democrats.  For starters, it's been years since Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, and more to the point, she's not as toxic as John Boehner.  It's hard to believe for those of us who lived through the 2010 Midterms, but Nancy Pelosi is nationally the most popular leader in Congress.  Therefore, the stigma of voting for her is certainly not as great, and there's no one really chomping at the bit to run to her left (there aren't a series of votes for Elizabeth Warren, for example), and none of the four candidates that received votes from Democratic House members are politically to the left of the Minority Leader (with the Speaker vote, you don't vote yes or no, just for a specific person).

So the question comes for these four House members-should the Democrats pull a play from the Tea Party's playbook?  The Tea Party, for all of the vitriol that has been spewed at it, learned a lot from the lessons of 2010 and 2012.  They shifted their focuses from blue states like Delaware where they were costing the Republicans seats in the general and shifted that focus to conservative states like Nebraska and conservative districts in places like Virginia.  They no longer really run to the right of senators and congressmen where a more conservative candidate would lose the general election...at least they don't do so successfully.  Someone like Susan Collins last cycle got through the primary without so much as a scratch on her, when in 2010 she would have been deeply vulnerable to such an attack.  This is important for the Democrats to consider when approaching a primary challenge-considering the historic deficit the Democratic caucus has in trying to retake the majority, it makes absolutely no sense for the Democrats to go around discarding red-district Democrats who have proven they can actually win.

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN)

This is why, while I'll grumble about Collin Peterson and Brad Ashford sucking it up and voting for Nancy Pelosi, I'm not going to lambast Gwen Graham and Krysten Sinema for voting against Nancy Pelosi.  Graham in particular has a very tenuous hold on her district (the most conservative in the country held by a Democrat), and hers could get worse depending on what happens with that Florida redistricting case.  Sinema is also in a district that has a conservative PVI, and both women have to be considered the future of their state in terms of Democrats-if an open Senate seat were to happen in 2016 for either of them, it's likely the DSCC would have them at the top of their recruiting lists.

Jim Cooper and Dan Lipinski, on the other hand, have no excuses.  Both of them hail from districts with a PVI of D+5, meaning President Obama definitely won there in 2008 and 2012.  They don't have the excuse that they are potentially going to lose just because they supported Nancy Pelosi.  Pelosi isn't a pariah here.  They aren't voting on a specific issue (particularly a social issue, where both their districts are politically more conservative) where you could use the "it's toxic in my home district" line. And as a result, I think that it's time for us to start trotting out the primary challengers.

Lipinski and Cooper are, in fact, the only two Democrats in the House I'd say something like this for (the Senate I'm a little wearier on, though I think on occasion we could do better than someone like Dianne Feinstein or Angus King).  Both men have long been a thorn in the side of leadership on a number of issues that a more progressive Democrat could get away with.  The trends nationwide have been for more straight-ticket balloting, and yet neither of these districts have seen the mass exodus across the board of Democrats that the Deep South has seen.  Clearly these seats appear safe for the foreseeable future for the Democrats, so why not get Democrats who will actually support the party's agenda into the districts?  The big tent is, let's admit it, more a pragmatic reality rather than one that the party wants to practice.  In order to win the House and the Senate, we have to find a way to make people like Gwen Graham or Krysten Sinema happy, moderates that represent districts that are necessary to hit 218 votes but whose beliefs don't necessarily marry up with the party's national platform and goals.  Jim Cooper and Dan Lipinski don't represent these styles of districts however-they represent districts we need, but they aren't the only people who can easily hold them.  It's time, therefore, for the Democrats to take a play from the Tea Party playbook and trot out strong challengers to both men.  Like I said above-if you can't support the party leadership, you better need a damn good reason, and neither of these men appear to have one that doesn't warrant an ouster.