Democratic House Chairmen Suffer Brutal Election ....Huff Post..

[Stuart G]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/democratic-house-chairmen_n_778124.html

The 2010 midterm elections have been catastrophic for House Democrats, with the party losing at least 60 seats in the lower chamber. The electoral tsunami was so powerful that virtually no one, no matter how powerful, was fully protected from its wrath. Three House committee chairmen learned this the hard way on Tuesday.

Ike Skelton, a Democratic fixture from Missouri, served more than 30 years in Congress, rising to the post of chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Just two years ago, he was reelected with nearly two thirds of his district's votes. This year, however, he lost to GOP challenger Vicky Hartzler.

House Budget Committee chairman John Spratt was another casualty. The 68-year-old South Carolina congressman spent 28 years in the House. In 2008 he won more than 60% of the vote, but his Republican opponent Mick Mulvaney emerged victorious on Tuesday.

The third chairman to fall is Jim Oberstar. The Minnesota Congressman was first elected in the famous Democratic class of 1974. He has chaired the Transportation and Infrastructure committee since 2007. On Tuesday Oberstar was declared a loser this year, falling to Republican Chip Cravaack.

[dennis4868]

1. Have a link for this?

[Stuart G]

2. link now posted...

[bemildred]

3. Can we go back to what won in 2006 and 2008 now? nt

[Recursion]

4. What won was the people that lost last night, unfortunately

So we need to find something new.

[bemildred]

5. Nah, the Blue Dogs got their clocks cleaned, progressives did OK.

Here is what Jim Dean at DFA had to say:

Thank you.

You and DFA members nationwide did incredible work trying to save Democrats from themselves.

You deserve the credit for never giving up and fighting all the way to the end.

Together, we raised over one million dollars for progressives candidates, made over one million phone calls in 16 tight races, and delivered over 250,000 volunteer hours on the ground.

While it was a tough night, we had a few important victories too. DFA 2010 Progressive Hero Barbara Boxer won. Public Option Heroes Michael Bennet, Kristen Gillibrand, Jared Polis, and Chellie Pingree all won without running away from their votes for Healthcare. Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Raul Grijalva was in the fight of his life and won. In fact 94% of the rest of the Progressive Caucus also won (compared to only 47% of the Blue Dogs).

Florida amendments legally requiring fair redistricting of congressional districts -- instead of Republican-controlled gerrymandering -- won. The anti-environmental Proposition 23 in California, which could have rolled back some of the most important clean air laws in the country, was defeated. And bold progressive Peter Shumlin was elected the first Democratic Governor of Vermont since Howard Dean left office in 2002.

The fact is progressive heroes who lost last night like Russ Feingold and Alan Grayson became collateral damage in a toxic election environment created by weak leadership and corporate Democrats who refused to stand up and fight for real change. Progressives like Annie Kuster, Mary Jo Kilroy, and Tom Perriello ran some of the strongest grassroots campaigns in history, but were drowned out by unregulated corporate front groups that spent hundreds of millions to scare and lie to voters.

The biggest lesson from last night is actually pretty simple. For Democrats to win in the future, they need to fight for the people they represent and stop cutting deals to water down reform with the same corporate interests who will turn around and spend unlimited amounts of money to defeat Democrats year after year.

It was a tough election and it's a tough fight ahead of us, but we have no regrets for fighting every day to move America forward -- and we never will.

Thank you, *****, for everything you do.

-Jim

Jim Dean, Chair
Democracy for America

[Recursion]

6. Isn't that what I said?

The blue dogs that got us the majority in 2006 got wiped out.

[bemildred]

7. I disagree.

What won in 2006 and 2008 was progressive politics, the promise of "change you can believe in". What lost last night was the failure to address that mandate energetically. I read what you said to suggest that what won in 2006 and 2008 lost in 2010, if I was wrong in that, I apologize. Many of us here said long ago that the Democrats would regret that health care reform bill, and for the same reasons the exit polls gave: the insurance mandate.

[Recursion]

8. I didn't see much of a progressive campaign in 2006 and 2008. What did you see?

I saw us running against George W. Bush; I saw a "competence" campaign and a deliberate decision to back moderate-to-conservative Democrats to unseat Republicans, getting us the majority. And I saw these moderate-to-conservative Democrats kicked out of their seats last night. I saw Pelosi promising no hearings or impeachments -- she didn't do that to piss us off, she did that to reassure nervous voters that they weren't handing the keys to a bunch of commisars.

Come to think of it, the 2006 campaign was one of the least progressive ones I'd seen in years.

[bemildred]

9. Ah, I see where you are coming from.

Like I said, though I do understand and even agree with some of your complaints, I disagree that it was the wish-washyness that won, and I don't see how being wishy-washy should get credit for the win then, if it is to be held responsible for the loss now. I think it's a loser all the time.

[Recursion]

10. And I get what you're saying, though I wouldn't call e.g. Webb "wishy washy"

Some talking head (Bill O?) said after 2006 "Yeah, but Webb isn't exactly a moveon.org type of Democrat" which floored me because he was literally their star candidate that year. Even though he is much more conservative than your average moveon.org donor. I see somebody like Lieberman (or, on the other side, Jeffords or Specter) as wishy-washy, willing to just take whatever opportunistic position works for them at the moment. Webb, and even Nelson and Baucus, have positions and beliefs they hold to, even if a lot of them are not what we would like them to be.

I disagree that it was the wish-washyness that won, and I don't see how being wishy-washy should get credit for the win then, if it is to be held responsible for the loss now.

Because we didn't deliver results fast enough, and since we ran on "we will make government work again", we got booted when it still didn't work 4 years later. There may also be some level of nostalgia for the 90s, and since the economy started surging under a Democratic President and Republican Congress, that division might feel good to a lot of people.

[bemildred]

11. Well, politics is "messy".

We lost some good people. I hope some of them come back for another shot.

We fended off some of the wingnuts, I have no doubt we will see some of them try again too.

I think you are absolutely correct in saying that it was the failure to deliver real change, in the form of a government that serves the people instead of helping exploit them, that cost us. Even a stirring failure to deliver "real change" would have been better than the timid tweaking of the status quo that we got.

[Recursion]

12. Ain't that the truth

We fended off some of the wingnuts

Yeah, though the ones that got in are crazy. Actually in a weird way Rand Paul may help us, because he's either going to have to tremendously disappoint the crazies or tremendously terrify the normals.