Politics is a constant Tug of War.
A lot has been written about whether or not the Democratic Party has shifted Left or Right and whether it has ever been as far left as it is now. I’m going to address the latter point in another diary, but I wanted to look at the former point first. I wanted to go back and look at the composition of the Democrats in Congress in 2006 and comparing it to the current 2016 composition. Here are the Democratic Senators and/or Senators who caucused with Democrats in 2006 (From Wikipedia):
Blanche Lincoln (D)
Mark Pryor (D)
Dianne Feinstein (D)
Barbara Boxer (D)
Ken Salazar (D)
Christopher Dodd (D)
Joseph Lieberman (D)
Joe Biden (D)
Tom Carper (D)
Bill Nelson (D)
Daniel Inouye (D)
Daniel Akaka (D)
Richard Durbin (D)
Barack Obama (D)
Evan Bayh (D)
Tom Harkin (D)
Mary Landrieu (D)
Paul Sarbanes (D)
Barbara Mikulski (D)
Ted Kennedy (D)
John Kerry (D)
Carl Levin (D)
Debbie Stabenow (D)
Mark Dayton (DFL)[8]
Max Baucus (D)
Ben Nelson (D)
Harry Reid (D)
Jon Corzine (D), until January 17, 2006 Bob Menendez (D), from January 18, 2006
Frank Lautenberg (D)
Jeff Bingaman (D)
Charles Schumer (D)
Hillary Clinton (D)
Kent Conrad (D)
Byron Dorgan (D)
Ron Wyden (D)
Jack Reed (D)
Tim Johnson (D)
Patrick Leahy (D)
James Jeffords (I)
Patty Murray (D)
Maria Cantwell (D)
Robert Byrd (D)
Jay Rockefeller (D)
Herb Kohl (D)
Russ Feingold (D)
In 2006 there were 43 Democratic Senators with 2 others who caucused with the Democrats. Those two were Mark Dayton who was from the DFL Party in MN (essentially the Democratic Party) and Independent Jim Jeffords of VT. The first thing one should notice is how conservative the Democrats were (the 2004 Democrats were even more so with the likes of Zell Miller, Bob Graham, John Edwards, Fritz Hollings, Tom Daschle and John Breaux). Fully one third of the Democratic Senators in 2006 could be considered Conservative Democrats or what we would consider Blue Dogs. That is Democrats who tended to be more conservative socially, economically and/or on foreign affairs. They would often cross the aisle to vote with the GOP and many would even show up on FOX or some other form of right wing media bashing Dems in one way or another. Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad are some examples of these Conservative Democrats. Today, for various reasons, most of them are no longer in office.
The second group of Senators make up another third more or less. They fall into a group who would likely be more aligned with New Democrats (Formerly the DLC Democrats) than Blue Dog Democrats. These tended to be more socially liberal but economically conservative (or neo liberal in some cases) and many were war hawks when it came to foreign policy. These were the Establishment or more mainstream Dems who generally didn’t make waves (like bash Dems on FOX) and on most issues stuck with the Party. They were generally more supportive of Free Trade, market based economic solutions to such things like poverty, education, healthcare and so on. Much like the country they have adapted and changed their position on various social issues and foreign policy issues. John Kerry for example by this time had completely changed his position on the Iraq War. President (then Senator) Barack Obama would eventually change on DOMA and DADT. Diane Feinstein, Joe Biden, Tom Carper, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, John Corzine are some examples of the Dems who fall into this category.
Finally the third group of Dems were those who would likely be called Progressives. These are Dems who scored 90% or higher on crucial progressive votes over their lifetime (as per ProgressivePunch.org) and stuck with the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party on key votes. They tended to generally be less pro war than their Dem counterparts, more socially and economically liberal as well. Russ Feingold, Jack Reed, Dick Durbin, Tom Harkin, Barbara Boxer, Frank Lautenberg and Pat Leahy would all fall under this category.
So 10 years ago the 45 Democrats in the US Senate were more or less evenly split between right, center and left within the Democratic Party with the center probably coming out slightly ahead (not going into where exactly the Center is/was at this point). In the US House the situation was essentially the same. The Blue Dog Coalition had roughly 40 members in 2006 out of the total 202 Democrats. Ironically this group was named and founded in the 80’s by by a few Democrats (Billy Tauzin, Jimmy Hayes and Pete Geren) who flipped to the Republican Party later on. At that time they believed that the Democratic Party had moved left and in the process left them out in the cold like a pack of dogs. Hence the name Blue Dogs. On the left side of the Democratic tent in 2006 there was the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) which was founded in the early 90’s. The CPC had only slightly more members than the Blue Dog Coalition and included founding members Pete Defazio, Maxine Waters and Bernie Sanders as well as Barney Frank, Jim McDermott, Jerry Nadler, George Miller, Pete Stark, Lynn Woolsey and others. The remaining 100 or so Democratic Representatives fell somewhere in the middle with many being part of the New Democrats or what was the DLC before it folded.
That was the composition of the Democrats in the congress in 2006 heading into the elections. In 2006 we witnessed sort of a great Democratic reawakening. In particular in terms of the Iraq War. In 2004 Kerry got hammered for flip flopping on the Iraq War. But by 2006 the Democratic Party was changing as a whole. Many Dems who ran that year ran against the War. Groups like VoteVets first started sprouting up and in CT a virtual unknown named Ned Lamont single handedly took down the biggest of Democratic war hawks (Joe Lieberman) in the state’s Democratic Primary and won over the netroots with his anti-establishment and anti-war campaign. Unfortunately Joe Lieberman went on to win the November election as an Independent but that would be the last one he would run in and he was the exception, not the rule. Howard Dean pushed a 50 state strategy and the Democratic Party ran against George Bush and the War. The result was the Democrats were swept into the majority in the House AND Senate in November 2006. In the Senate we saw Ben Cardin replace Paul Sarbanes, Amy Klobuchar replace Mark Dayton and Independent Bernie Sanders replace Independent Jim Jeffords. Moderate Democrats Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, Bob Casey and Jim Webb joined Progressive Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown in the Senate as well. In the House we saw a similar dynamic as Democrats made gains on a wide variety of fronts and had new members from across the political spectrum. Both the Blue Dogs and CPC saw their ranks swell as the Democrats went from 202 seats to 233 seats and former CPC member Nancy Pelosi was elevated to Speaker of the House, a first in our history (Woman and Italian). The House also saw it’s first Muslim member (Keith Ellison) as well as our first Buddhist members (Maize Hirono and Hank Johnson).
So how do we compare today to 2006?
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