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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

No, Boyd is the Face of Boyd's Defeat

Update: Pelosi prevailed and will be minority leader. Tough year, Allen.

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I was never someone who said we should toss out the Blue Dogs when a fragile minority was at stake in the House this year, but right now, I am regretting everything good I said about Allen Boyd this year.

Politico is reporting that the ousted Panhandle Democrat went after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, calling her "the face of our defeat" in a closed-door caucus meeting. But what he fails to recognize is that Democrats who stuck to their guns on principles nationwide fared better than the Blue Dogs across the country.

Were their ads targeting Pelosi in Florida's 2nd this year? Of course. I presume there will be ads targeting John Boehner there in 2012, unless the party just writes off the seat as a permanent loss. That is what happens when the minority party senses the voters want to punish the party in power. It works because, like it or not, Nancy Pelosi is probably a better recognized figure than Allen Boyd is even in his home district. I'm not so sure the same can be said of an Alan Grayson, not that that helped this year.

But that gets to a bigger point. Florida was in a mood to toss Dems this year. It wasn't just in Congress but in the Cabinet and state Legislature as well. Alex Sink wants to blame Obama. Boyd wants to blame Pelosi. Both are wrong.

They lost because the right was energized, and the rest of America was depressed. The same was true in reverse in 2006 when Pelosi came to power.

Since getting the gavel, Pelosi has been the most effective House Speaker in well over a decade. She has whipped like Gingrich and made the House the source of policy instead of the deliberating Senate. Now, members of her own caucus are attacking her for exactly that reason.

I am reminded that Boyd ran an aggressive campaign against Al Lawson in the primary this year, and almost lost. I said then that we should stick with Boyd, but now I regret that stance. Boyd attacked the progressive Lawson with far less remorse than he wielded against Steve Southerland, who proved to be the death of him.

The other thing that may have happened, assuming Boyd is right about the party shifting too far to the left, is that this may have simply been a corrective election. Southern Democrats like Boyd are a dying breed, and with good reason. If the voters in the Panhandle really want a conservative, now they have one. I think progressives in the Panhandle deserve better than Boyd. And in two years, I hope we get just that.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with most of this, except for the idea that Al Lawson is any kind of progressive. He wouldn't have been a Blue Dog, but he would've only been a few percentage points better.

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  2. Well, everything is a matter of degree. I was reluctant to back Lawson in the primary because he is only slightly better than Boyd on many issues. The only extended conversation I have ever had with him involved his rather strident support of the drug war, for example.

    But what I realized only on Primary day, and was hesitant to acknowledge until after the General, was that the old conservative Democrat model is not going to work anymore. Congressmen who act like Boyd will be scorned by the left, and will still be targeted by the right.

    It's worth noting that most of the Florida Democrats who survived November are ultra-liberal. That may have more to do with redistricting than anything else, but I think the age of the Boyd Democrat is over, but the Boyds of the world still want to blame liberals.

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