I had a conversation with a reader a few weeks ago who lives in NY-24 about whether or not he should vote for Michael Arcuri, the Democratic incumbent, who lost last night. Arcuri voted against the Health Care Bill, making him one of a tiny number Democrats in New York State who did. The reader’s feeling — which I seconded — was that he should hold his nose and vote for Arcuri because that’s one more Democrat in the House. That said, I’m glad Arcuri lost. Whatever one thinks of the bill, the unions who fought like hell to get him elected really wanted the bill passed. In a 94% white district in the northeast with a lowish media income, when a Democrat wins a race, support from organized labor is a key.
I don’t get into the whole “slap in the face” stuff but Arcuri’s vote against health care was about as bad a slap in the face to his supporters as you’ll ever see. He deserved to lose because of it, though I don’t know if it hurt him or helped him.
Of the 39 Democrats who voted against health care reform, only 12 are left. Of course, it was only endangered Democrats who voted against it, in general. But the “no” vote doesn’t seem to have helped much.
geg6
Again (I’ve said this in a few other threads today), my Blue Dog won in a cakewalk. He may as well change parties for what he stands for and for how he treats the party which got him there in the first place. My county is prime Teabagging country, as is one of the other two counties he represents. He beat the candidate that was hand-picked by the Club for Growth and Pat Toomey.
I don’t understand the people around here any more. I’ve lived here my whole life and I feel like a stranger in a strange land.
B-town
It’ll be interesting to see what lobbying outfits/ industry groups these bluedog jackasses end up in.
beltane
The people who voted Republican were going to vote Republican no matter what. Voting against HCR just to appease them was a strategy doomed to failure. Why this wasn’t obvious to them I’ll never know.
gizmo
What disappoints me is the extent to which people like Arcuri failed to recognize that the election of Obama and a Democratic Congress was a rare and precious opportunity to step on the gas and get some shit done, and bury the GOP for a good long while in the process. It was obvious that we would lose seats in the mid-terms, because that always happens to the party in power. Thus, it was critical to go full speed ahead and ram a progressive agenda through in the early going. Now we’re screwed, and likely facing a dysfunctional government for a good long time.
ChrisS
Arcuri was a tool.
I voted straight Democrat in Syracuse, except for Governor, the green party got my vote. I was a little disappointed to see that there were only republican candidates for county judge though. WTF?
The polling place seemed quite busy last night.
I was born, raised, and live in Upstate NY. I’ve got nothing for the Democrats to convince a lot of folk up here that the left is better for them. They are convinced that they get taxed heavily to support lazy brown people in NYC. They’re convinced that they’d still have good-paying jobs if only the labor unions didn’t force other companies to have to pay too much for employees (not the companies that used to employee them, mind you, other companies). Teachers and state workers make too much money and work too little. And every two bit nitwit thinks that the reason all the manufacturing up and moved to Chiner is because their property taxes are too high and not that the chinamen will work for pennies.
Oscar Leroy
“support from organized labor is a key”
You know it, and I know it. Now if only those dimbulbs in D.C. knew it.
Kal
Arcuri took over in 2006 when long-time liberal Republican Sherwood Boehlert retired after 20 years in office. In Arcuri’s mind, replacing a liberal Republican with a Blue Dog Dem was a trade that every person in the district could accept.
Arcuri was trying to hold on until 2012, when the NYS legislature would give him a better district (probably one including bits of Ithaca). His votes were pretty random, as he voted for the stronger House Health Care Reform bill before voting against the weaker Senate bill. His thought process was probably that he could throw away a few votes to seem “moderate” enough to win in the district.
He wasn’t interested in passing progressive agenda items. He just wanted to keep his job until 2012, when he could settle into a nice district and be the next Sherry Boehlert. Unfortunately for him, his strategy failed.
rob!
My congressman, John Adler, was one of that group of 39. And while I did indeed hold my nose and vote for him last night, I can’t shed any tears he lost.
Oscar Leroy
Amen to that. How long did health care reform take, for just one example? “Let’s let Max Baucus run things for a month. Nothing good from that? Okay, let’s spend a month trying to sweet talk Susan Collins to get on board. No? Okay, let’s spend a month figuring out what Joe Lieberman will accept. . . ”
But hey, if you want a bill that 45% of the country approves of, it takes time I s’pose.
Ash Can
@ChrisS: I saw the famous “Chinese professor” commercial last night, when the husband and I were watching election returns. After it ended, I turned to the husband and said, “Yeah. A guy in China warning people about too much government interference in the economy. Uh-huh.”
Marc
It may be useful to recognize that there are some districts where a liberal Democrat isn’t going to be able to win. I mind a Lieberman from Connecticut a whole lot more than I mind a Nelson from Nebraska.
In these post-mortems I’m getting pretty annoyed at the good riddance to Blue Dogs theme. Explain to me how we get progressives elected in rural Ohio, for example. If you can’t – and, by the way, you can’t, because those areas are filled with majorities of conservatives – then explain why having someone who supports you some of the time is worse than having someone who never supports you.
MattR
@geg6:
Not sure if it qualifies as needing a tin hoil hat and I have zero knowledge of his history, but I kinda wonder if there is some kind of agreement that the Republicans won’t seriously challenge him as long as he stays a Democrat. (I would argue that a Tea Party challenge does not count since it is out of the Republican party’s control)
FlipYrWhig
@beltane:
I think it’s quite likely that many Congresspeople who voted against HCR did so because they genuinely thought it was bad policy, not to appease Republican voters. They’re conservative Democrats. If FDL is to be believed, you could be a _liberal_ Democrat and still vote against HCR. I’m not sure the “appeasement” notion is primary in all these cases.
FlipYrWhig
@gizmo:
Why do you think Michael Arcuri has an interest in implementing a progressive agenda? Why do you think he wanted an opportunity to get some shit done, or to bury the GOP? Maybe he’s just really truly a non-progressive Democrat who sees the GOP as potential allies. They exist. I don’t like them much, mind you. But, the thing is, _not all Democrats want your agenda_, not even a little. And they like it that way. And some of them get elected.
ChrisS
Explain to me how we get progressives elected in rural Ohio
By giving them a true alternative, not a GOP-lite candidate that doesn’t do anything. People are going to go for the real deal every time. “Vote for me, I hate government just as much as you do, and I’m the true reformer!”
True left progressives used to dominate some rural areas. Rural people need someone to blame, the blue dogs blamed other democrats and GOP boogeymen. The GOP preached hard that it was the elites in washington that were fucking them. Trust me, I got plenty of the campaign literature.
BenA
@ChrisS:
You just hit north eastern PA on the head too… although we do have a decent section of smug white collar types who think they’re rich and that the Republicans lowered there taxes even when all the GOP did was basically increased the percentage of the tax burden they pay.
FreeAtLast
@ChrisS:
The way rural NY is losing population and the state congressional seats, we may soon be able to fit rural upstate into a couple of districts and let them vote as they will. Better than losing 5 Dem seats, and it would’ve been 6 if not for the Tea Partier in NY-23 who withdrew from the race but drew 9500 votes because it was too late to get his name off the ballots.
Walker
I held my nose and voted for Arcuri.
I thought it was going to be closer than it was. We are pretty liberal down here in the Finger Lakes. However, the Arcuri signs were hot and heavy even in Utica.
Thankfully this means I won’t see anymore Hanna online ads. He was all over BJ and Washington Monthly this past month.
Roger the Cabin Boy
Dunno why any Democrat would want to run as republican-lite, it hardly ever works. If the voters want a republican, they’ll vote for a real one.
Michael
@ChrisS:
Top-down progressivism has been proven to be sooooo effective.
SectarianSofa
Most people in those districts would’ve voted for a burlap monkey over *any* Democrat this time around. Still, serves then right.
Walker
@Kal:
There is no way anyone is going to redistrict the rural Finger Lakes region to include Ithaca. Hinchey’s district has that upwards fist for a reason. They need to combine Ithaca with another metropolitan area to dillute its liberal vote.
Roivas
@Michael
I guess the key is electing people who are with us at least some of the time. If not on Gay rights, then on climate change, if not on that, then on finance, etc.
There seem to be far to many Blue Dogs who don’t really seem to have a single issue that they would actually vote the dem way. Which brings up the question as to why they bother registering D in the first place.
El Cid
I don’t think it will matter that much whether Republicans are entirely to blame for the economy or not; it will probably be pretty easy for them to blame it on Obama and I don’t see a lot of media dissent from that.
FlipYrWhig
@ChrisS:
You can get populism… but you’re not necessarily going to get progressivism. Think of, in the Senate, Jim Webb. Not a liberal. Pretty good on _class_ issues but complained about HCR, drags his feet on gender and sexuality, not outstanding on the environment, etc. John would know better than I do, but I think Joe Manchin is similar.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger the Cabin Boy:
If the preponderance of voters in that district run the gamut from batshit insane Republican to mildly racist money-grubbing Republican, you’d better run some kind of Republican. That Blue Dog caucus was pretty big before yesterday, which shows that Democrats who are basically Republican-lite can and often do win. I don’t know why people deny this. They cause all kinds of trouble for progressives and liberals once they get elected. To them, and to a lot of their voters, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Roivas
Jim Webb is problematic, but a genuine character, which counts for something. He’s for prison and sentencing reform. Name me one other national level politician who’s publicly admitted to that.
geg6
@MattR:
I like your theory in a tin foil hat kinda way, but no. He’s a true Blue Dog who, in his previous life, was a lobbyist for the American Federation of Hospitals and then a VP for UPMC. During his time at UPMC, he was in charge of community relations and charitable giving which is what made people like me think he might be a bit more center-left than he is. What always made me leery of him is his Catholicism, but that was more of an abortion/gays leeriness than anything else.
I knew of him for years before he won his seat back in ’07. I don’t believe he made any deals with the GOPers. He’s an asshat, but he’s not that much of an asshat. And believe me, they’d love to win that seat back. He beat Melissa Hart (the same year her dark lord, Santorum, lost) and that one really, really hurt the PA GOPers. No way they’d make any deals with him.
New Yorker
Hey DougJ, as a western NYer, I’m wondering if you can explain why the NY Governor’s race map looks like this:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/new-york
Why was Paladino so popular in Buffalo, and yet so radioactive in Rochester? Is it demographic differences between the two regions? Buffalo considering him the hometown hero but Rochester not? I’m not sure why so much of western NY went for Paladino, but metro Rochester most certainly did not…
geg6
@MattR:
And since Word Press won’t let me edit my previous comment (FYWP), I’ll give Altmire one area in which he’s a strong Dem voice and that’s on outsourcing jobs. He’s very strongly against outsourcing or tax breaks for companies that do it.
Ron
I don’t remember if I was the reader or not, but I certainly felt at one point like I couldn’t vote for Arcuri after his bizarre flip flop on HCR. His letter explaining why he flipped was even weirder to me. I sucked it up yesterday and voted for him, but like you, I’m not exactly sorry to see him gone. I don’t know much about Hanna, but Arcuri was never a particularly strong guy. The only part that seems bizarre to me about the election was that there were a few polls before the election and they all had Arcuri up 5-10 points. Ah well, at least we kept Gillibrand in and Paladino out.
FlipYrWhig
@geg6: Good example, then, of how a glimmer of populism can come through to make a Blue Dog definitively better than a full-Monty Republican.
Marc
I’m sorry – I’m not buying the fantasy that you can elect a progressive anywhere because they’re a “real alternative”. Grayson was a real alternative. Kilroy, in my district, was a real alternative.
They got creamed. They lost by a lot. And these weren’t even conservative districts.
Online progressives will never get anywhere until they get the concept of coalition politics.
Why the hell should conservative democrats support your candidates when they win primaries when you won’t support their candidates when they win?
How does this dynamic help?
I can understand there being some things that are outside of people’s willingness to compromise. But an awful lot of the time the online talk seems to treat *any* disagreement with a long list of items as treachery.
El Cid
@Marc: Conservative Democrats also got trounced in moderate conservative districts. Not saying that such a strategy may not work better, but this election may not be the best demonstration of such an argument.
FlipYrWhig
@El Cid: True, but basically they cancel each other out, no? If you can’t win as a Republican-lite Democrat in a Republican district, and you can’t win as a Bold Progressive Democrat in a Republican district, maybe you can’t win as any kind of Democrat in a Republican district except under fluky circumstances, or maybe you have to be a certain individual running a unique campaign rather than simply pushing buttons on the ideolog-o-matic.
DougJ
@New Yorker:
First off, they are different places: Rochester is a lot more white collar. Being an idiot does not seem to go over well here, politically. Some dude who messes around with lab technology all day is likely to be turned off by Paladino’s deliberate stupidity.
Second, Paladino is a hometown boy in Buffalo and not for Rochester.
New Yorker
@DougJ:
That’s kinda what I figured. I’ve never been in Buffalo, but I’m under the impression that it’s a down-and-out blue collar town, and down-and-out blue collar people are just the kind to lash out irrationally by supporting teabaggers.
I have been in Rochester, and it definitely has a much more educated, white-collar feel to it than the rest of upstate NY. The area around Monroe and East Avenues reminded me a bit of Park Slope in Brooklyn….
dms
@gizmo: And you’re stupid for thinking that was going to happen. Obama praised Reagan. He thought he could deal with Republicans. How dumb can anyone be. The Dems failed at their opportunity because, from top down, they chose to.
dms
“That said, I’m glad Arcuri lost. “
So you and your friend decided he should vote for Arcuri, but you’re glad he lost.
And this makes sense?
Also. Too.
Ron
@dms: I dunno about “glad” Arcuri lost, and I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but while I kinda held my nose a little and voted for him, he isn’t anyone I’ll terribly miss.
Nathanael
Arcuri was nice but really quite stupid. “Kind of random” is a good description of his votes, and he certainly never seemed to have paid attention to anything much (he supported the Military Commissions Act — in Ithaca! — and then said he hadn’t read it?!?).
If we’d been on the ball, we’d have challenged him already in the primary, but I think people were a bit worn out. Better candidate next time (redistricting first though….)