The Democratic leadership ought to be talking to the President every day. Ad hoc groups of Democrats who aren't in the leadership who are meeting with the President to discuss areas of mutual cooperation should be seen for what it is: undermining the Democratic Congress before it even takes power. And that's what happening... and gues who's part of the group?
President Bush has invited leaders of the conservative Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions to the White House Friday to discuss areas of "mutual cooperation" in the words of one Democratic Congressional aide.
The outreach comes at a time when Bush's image on Capitol Hill and around the country has taken a serious beating. The meeting is scheduled just two days after the Iraq Study Group is scheduled to release its findings and one day after the Senate Armed Services Committee plans to hold hearings on them.
Reps. Alan Boyd (Fla.), Dennis Moore (Kan.) and Mike Ross (Ark.) will represent the Blue Dogs, a coalition of usually southern, conservative-leaning Democrats and Reps. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), Artur Davis (Ala.), Ron Kind (Wis.), Adam Smith (Wash.) and Ellen Tauscher (Calif.) are set to represent the New Democrats, a group of business-friendly centrists, at the meeting, which the president is expected to attend.
The President is deeply unpopular because his policies are deeply unpopular. While the midterm elections may not represent a mandate, but certainly the country is giving the Democrats the opportunity to govern. Except for these Democrats, who think it's still 2002 and want to suck up to the White House in the belief that it will... what? Help their career? Make them popular in their districts as bold compromisers?
Ellen Tauscher is symptomatic of a DLC mentality that thinks the only way to capture power is to subvert all Democratic principled. She couldn't be more wrong, and she and her colleagues are signaling what amounts to a mutiny. This misbegotten belief that Democrats won by tacking to the right this cycle is just not true. If anything, economic populism was ascendant.
I'm all for a big tent and welcoming of opposing viewpoints within the party. Going outside of it and breaking protocol to try and make deals to make yourself look like a maverick independent (instead of a right-wing shill) is damaging to the party brand. That's what Ellen Tauscher is doing.
