So says NPR's "Political Junkie".
I did a double-take when I heard it this morning ... thankfully, I'd already finished my cup of coffee by then, else it would have been a spit take.
From the Morning Edition transcript, as Mara Liasson listens in, Ken Rudin responds to Steve Inskeep's question (emphasis added):
INSKEEP: Do no harm. Let's talk very, very briefly about Congress. Up to a 14 percent approval rating, by the way, Congress. More conservative Democrats, a couple of them in Pennsylvania, lost in primaries. And a couple of more mainstream Republicans, Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar, face primaries coming up.
RUDIN: Well, let's talk about Congress. First of all, you have these centrist Democrats, Jason Altmire and Tim Holden of Pennsylvania, they both voted against the President Obama's health care bill. They were defeated by liberals and the unions. And it seems like as a Tea Party is moving the conservative party more to the right, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, what's left of it, is trying to move the Democratic Party farther to the left.
Maybe Rudin's trying to say that Holden lost to the liberals and Altmire to the unions. Which would, of course, be an accurate assessment. But unless you already know quite a bit about what was going on in the Pennsylvania primary, there's no way that the bolded sentence could ever be construed thusly.
I also like the snide "what's left of it", as if it was the Progressive Caucus, not the Blue Dogs, that suffered the 2010 teahadist onslaught.
Sigh...
PS. I'm surprised that there was absolutely nothing said about this before my post. Neither "critz" nor "altmire" showed up in the diary searches I did before posting. Am I the only Kossack who wakes up to NPR?