The Blue Dogs claim they have to vote with Republicans on the issues because their mostly rural constituents are Red and demand it of them. Michael Tomasky crunches some numbers and finds that particular excuse is more fiction than fact.
He looks at the Dem House members that represent districts where McCain beat Obama. (Not all of them are Blue Dogs, but most are, and it gives an objective basis for comparison.)
For example, Tennessee's Jim Cooper is a leading Blue Dog. Obama won his district (Nashville) by 13 points, and he beat his opponent 65-31%. But still he thinks he's vulnerable. Whatever. The point is, most Blue Dogs represent red districts, as defined by the presidential outcome in that district.
So what I'm trying to get at here is: how vulnerable, really, are some of these Blue Dogs? To hear them talk sometimes, you'd think if they depart one iota from a basically conservative agenda, the voters will toss them out.
He looked at how much each of these 49 Red-district House Democrats won their district by and compared it to how much McCain won it by to find out just how vulnerable each of them really is in their generally Republican-leaning district.
If I represent a district that I won handily and McCain squeaked by, that's a very different thing from my squeaking by in a district McCain won handily, and it dictates different voting behavior by me once I'm in Congress, if I want to stay in office.
The results are rather different from what the Blue Dogs would have you believe. In fact, many of them ran unopposed or won their districts by crushing margins, while it was McCain who squeaked by.
a large percentage of these people won their districts by more than McCain did – in most cases (yes, most), a lot more... 40 of the 49, or 82%, won their races by double digits.
Clearly some of these Blue Dogs are in very precarious positions in strongly Red districts and should be cut some slack, but most of them are not.
You'll notice, if you're familiar with the current debates and with some of these people, the interesting fact that some of the more vocal Blue Dogs are among those with the most comfortable margins...
You can see also how many of these members either run unopposed or face only token opposition in these red districts. Many of them are long-time incumbents and fixtures.
So these people are not being truthful about their real motivation for blocking the Democratic agenda. They should stop blaming their obstructionism on their constituents.
Any Washington reporters interested in asking them what they're really up to and why?
Check out Tomasky's column for the full list of names, ranked by how vulnerable they really are.