You'd have thought eight years of the George W. Bush administration, eight more years of Republicans losing their damned minds over the Barack Obama administration, and then a massive blue wave in response to the first two years of Donald Trump's squatting in the Oval Office would be enough for the new Democratic majority in the House to learn from. You'd be wrong.
The so-called moderates who have enabled Republicans to embarrass fellow Democrats twice in recent months (on the fundamental issues of gun safety and Trump's border policy) seem to think furthering the "Democrats in disarray" narrative is a good thing. So is being embraced by the appeasement wing of the chattering class, like Laura Hall of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.
"If you're Speaker Pelosi or another member of the Democratic leadership, you have to always be thinking about those members whose seats went from red to blue and helped to flip the House," she said. Those members whose seats flipped would be well-advised to think about why that happened, and how a wave of new and enthusiastic Democratic voters made than happen. They might come up with the idea that it was in response to Trump and the Republicans. They might want to consider whether or not they're still going to have enthusiastic and energetic supporters behind them in 2020 if they keep giving their own party a black eye and handing Republicans wins.
They're encouraged in this by Pelosi deputies Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, old blue dogs who apparently can't learn new tricks, or evaluate years of experience in which they told these purple district members that they could blunt Republican attacks by voting with them on the messaging bills Republicans put forward for the sole purpose of embarrassing Democrats. They haven't learned from the experience of seeing their ranks dwindle to near-extinction due to their penchant to vote like Republicans. Bucking the party has never stopped Republican attacks and it has never made a Republican vote for a Democrat over a Republican, certainly not in the numbers to keep winning.
Playing this stupid blue dog game now, when the Republican party is the most dangerous, irrational, autocratic, and destructive it has ever been, is verging on criminal.
They're abetting Trump in his fight against Nancy Pelosi and any power she might have to put a check on him. They'll get little in return. Where they could be building up the Democratic base in their districts for 2020, they're instead betraying all those voters who swept them in.