To Primary or Not to Primary, That is the Obsession

As I flip through the Texas progressivist blogs on a daily basis, I occasionally encounter one of my fellow progressive Democrats gnashing their teeth over the traitorous votes of Democrats who are “Too Close to Craddick”, or “Craddick D’s” or “The Iscariot Caucus”.

I think that I am detecting something akin to obsession. Obsession and forgetting about the fact that the Democratic Party is truly a big tent party. There is more racial and cultural diversity in this party than in the Republic Party. Surely there must be more diversity in ideologies as well.

Bill Clinton said it best: “Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.” Democrats want to embrace the totality of a state representative’s votes, and if those votes fall short of their expectations – which are somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% - they need to be “primaried”.

They need to be challenged in the 2008 Democratic primary, and challenged hard with PAC money to replace them on the ballot with a Democrat who is more of the stripe and carries the ideologies of the progressive wing.

I challenge this obsession on 2 fronts:

First, the obsession does not take into account the make-up of the district the representative comes from. Will replacing the candidate with a more liberal candidate result in alienation of the electorate who will vote for the Republican challenger? Will the campaign to replace the representative on the ballot be a hopelessly lost cause resulting in a waste of time, money and resources that could be better spent defeating Republicans?

Second, by not acknowledging that we, all of us Democrats, need to find a way to get along in this big tent of ours, we invite fractionation of the party with moderate elements, chased out by progressives, winding up in the warm embrace of the Republican Party. It has happened before. Progressives were so skilled at chasing out the moderate elements of the party during the 80’s and 90’s that Democrats eventually lost their majority (albeit helped along with DeLay’s PAC money – which served to tip a close balance to the other side).

I know, this isn’t the first time I have posted on this issue. I’ve posted on it here, here, here and here. This probably isn’t the last time I will bring this up either. I’m bringing it up now because of the BOR posting which I was not excited to see, and highly disagree with it. I am also bringing it up again because I want to send a high five to Vince at Capitol Annex who put up a simply marvelous discussion of this issue once more. He really nailed it this time. Especially that last bit about Villarreal. Bingo.

So is this idea of “primarying” a legislator because they strayed from the progressive fold a couple of times truly obsessive behavior? Do obsessives have difficulty seeing the other side of things? Yes. Can obsessives find compromise on issues? No. Do obsessives act from deeply held beliefs that they will never compromise? Obviously.

Do obsessives win elections?

Only when they have all the guns.

Caucus Vulnerabilities - Courage vs. Iscariot

I wanted to look at some aspects of the two caucuses that are being bandied about the Texas progressive blogs lately: the “Courage Caucus” and the “Iscariot Caucus”. I wanted to look at the two in terms of the vulnerabilities found in each in terms of a primary or general election challenge.

The 27 members of the Courage Caucus, named so because they had the courage to cast “No” votes in the single candidate race for House Speaker. Courage, because they had no hope of winning and had every reason to believe that they would be relegated to political Siberia in retribution committee assignments by the Speaker.

The 15 members of the Iscariot Caucus, elsewhere named “Craddick D’s”and “Democraddicks” voted with the Republicans to retain Craddick as speaker. Their reasons for doing this are as individual as their districts because the compilation I made in this short analysis and include below indicate that, with one exception, these Democrats are in fairly safe districts.

First let’s look at the Courage Caucus. Of the two it is the more interesting. Of the 27, 8 had Republican opponents in the 2006 General Election. Of those 8, 4 were in less than landslide win races. So of these 27, I’d say that a concerted effort to unseat these will be made by Republicans in 2008. These are races to watch, and for all Progressive Democrats to support with time and resources.

Two races concern me in particular, one is Joe Farias’. Farias, you are truly a wild man. The other is Juan Garcia’s. Particularly if they find an opponent who doesn’t look like death warmed over. Solomon Ortiz may also have problems.

As I pointed out above, and in another post, the only person in the Iscariot Caucus who is not from a safe district is Patrick Rose. He therefore probably had the greatest number of political reasons to vote for Craddick The term “Iscariot” probably doesn’t apply to him.

Of the rest, again, they all had individual reasons for their votes. Some have accused them of feathering their own nests at the expense of their constituents. If that is the case, then it will be a no-brainer that they will be replaced. However it’s a fine line to draw: if a temporary political alliance gets them, and consequently their districts, something extra, then I can’t fault them. What concerns me is how much of it was “fear factor” a vote for Craddick because of a reasonable suspicion that he would win anyway. Rumors persist of a small Pitts voting bloc that were going to vote for Pitts if every other member of the bloc did so, and that one of them bolted causing the others to also. I don’t even know if any in this bloc were among the Iscariots.

Anyway, as you can see from this table, the only Iscariot Caucus Member with a chance for a credible primary challenge is Eddie Lucio. With the others, I think it depends on how things go in the next 14 months. That is, 13 of these 15 have 14 months to make it up to their constituents or explain, and have good explanations for, why they voted for Craddick.