Moving the Agenda Leftward

The new NY Times interview with Alan Grayson is great reading, but it also is important in reminding what is at stake in the next two years politically for House Democrats. I want to take issue with a certain tone of the story that suggests Grayson's thinking is not shared through the beltway, but I fear it may be true.

Let me point at a statement by writer Michael Barbaro instead of a line from Grayson to make my point.

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"While surveying the wreckage of the November elections that cost him his seat and looking to the Congressional term ahead, Mr. Grayson posits that many Democrats have not been acting Democratic enough.

Judging by the results of the midterm elections, it does not exactly seem to be a widespread sentiment.

But at a moment when centrism seems to be the party’s antidote to a redrawn political landscape, Mr. Grayson is setting forth a radically different playbook of sharp elbows and unapologetic liberalism.
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If the lesson that Beltway Democrats take away from the November elections is that they should be more meek, give greater latitude to the right and demonstrate a greater level of spinelessness, then they will be part of an ineffective minority forever. I am afraid many of those left standing in Washington will ignore both the frustration among its base for failing to deliver results and the effectiveness of the GOP minority in becoming more strident in opposition.

Now, I am the first to acknowledge Grayson did not run a very good campaign this year. I noted in September that his Taliban Dan ads did far more to make Dan Webster look like a sympathetic figure and himself appear a raving lunatic. After a couple runs as the insurgent challenger trying to tear down an incumbent, I am afraid Grayson never learned how to run as the incumbent himself.

But his actions in Congress turned him into a national hero among the left, and helped generate financial support from across the country. That should mean something to Democrats looking at their own re-election campaigns in two years.

More importantly, though, is that voters will have zero incentive in two years to return the Democrats to power if the party is spending its days in Washington watering down its own agenda to satisfy a party in the majority. More than ever, Democrats in the House must be acting as the loyal opposition. They shouldn't join in with John Boehner's army. They should expose the overreaches by a tea-party driven GOP at every possible step.

It always strikes me that the GOP is better at being in the minority. They use procedure to stop actions they find heinous. They demand a place in the national debate even if they are losing legislative battles. They compromise little, and refuse to let their brand get tarnished with legislation they don't believe in.

Now, the Democrats are entering a session in which they are the minority. They ought to learn more from the GOP which just took over, and they ought to appreciate the fact placating, compromising Blue Dogs took the greatest hit of any Democratic group this fall. As Daily Kos noted immediately after the election, more than half of the Blue Dog caucus was fed their dogfood on Election Day and sent home with nothing but a congeniality award for their work across their aisle.

Alan Grayson lost, but so did Allen Boyd. And while Boyd was quick to blame the liberals, playing to the center earned him no points with conservative Panhandle voters interested in having a predictable Republican representing them. Even as it became clear Boyd would lose, the press was wringing its hands over how a conservative Democrat could be in trouble. In truth, it's obvious. Conservative voters didn't care how often Boyd sided with them on issues as long as he continued to go on the field in a blue jersey, vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker and stand with President Obama during the president's expected visits here two years from now.

Now, no one is talking about Boyd running again, but many are urging Grayson to make a fresh run at the seat. I suspect redistricting will make that a hard go, and would rather Grayson find a career in punditry, but it says something that enthusiasm still exists for a candidate supposedly ousted because he was too liberal, but none exists for a seven-term incumbent who promised to be just conservative enough.