Bush Ignores Democrats

It seems that Bush is still excluding Democrats from the decision making process in spite of the fact that the Democrats now hold both Houses of Congress.

President Bush yesterday began promoting his plan to send more troops to Iraq, bringing more than 30 Republican senators to the White House as part of a major campaign to rally the American people behind another effort to stabilize the country.

So the Democrats won an election recently, largely because of anger over the Iraq war, yet the President still wont talk to Democrats? Interesting.

Democrats Move to Bring Back Cooperation in Congress

The Democrats are moving towards restoring rules that were eliminated by the Republican Congress from 1994 through 2006 in order to give the minority a voice in what goes on.

After chafing for years under what they saw as flagrant Republican abuse of Congressional power and procedures, the incoming majority has promised to restore House and Senate practices to those more closely resembling the textbook version of how a bill becomes law: daylight debate, serious amendments and minority party participation.

Beyond the parliamentary issues, Democrats assuming control on Jan. 4 said they also wanted to revive collegiality and civility in an institution that has been poisoned by partisanship in recent years. In a gesture duly noted by Republicans, the incoming speaker of the House, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, offered Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who is remaining in Congress, the use of prime office space in the Capitol out of respect for his position.

Kos believes that this constitutes a "completely unneccessary act of kindness." He is completely wrong on this count for reasons that I will explain after giving a clearer explanation of what Kos meant.

But on collegiality -- If Pelosi and company are just blabbing about "cooperation" for PR purposes, that's fine. But it should be nothing more than rhetoric. We've already seen that Blunt and Company can't help themselves and even bother reciprocating the empty platitudes. They respond to them with insults and threats of political gamesmanship.

This is an era of hardball politics, and the GOP clearly has no intention to play nice. They aren't even going through the motions or pretending to be more collegial. So while our side can talk nice, their actions should reflect the current political reality.

What Kos is correct about is his contention that the Republicans seem to "have no intention to bother reciprocating." That doesnt change the fact that this is a very smart and good move by Pelosi and company. Regardless of whether Republicans will bother reciprocating, procedure in the House and Senate has been altered dramatically for the purpose of keeping the minority out of the process. That is not how democracy is supposed to work, let both sides come to the table, let both sides offer amendments, and at the end of the day let an honest and open vote determine whether we're going to pass X proposal into law. The oft observed end of bipartisonship and cooperation in American politics in recent years I believe is entirely the fault of the Republicans who have cynically destroyed any ability for the minority party to be involved in the policymaking process. It needs to be changed, and change requires at this time that Democrats be the better men. I dont care if it doesnt do anything for our agenda, Congress needs to return to its roots in this regard. Perhaps Kos, and any Democrats taking his side of this need to be reminded that 44% of the American public voted for Republicans this November. Does Kos really support acting like the Republicans and ignoring 44% of the voting American public entirely? I hope not. Let's take a look at what exactly has gone on in the last 12 years and what exactly is being proposed by Pelosi and Co here.

But to Congress watchers who grew increasingly outraged over Republican conduct of the House during the rule of Mr. Hastert and the majority leader Tom DeLay, the Democrats are definitely heading in the right direction.

“The House has been so egregiously run for a number of years that it was seen as contributing both directly and indirectly to the election results,” said Thomas Mann, a Congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. “There really is a strong political incentive to try to do business differently.”

Democrats said explicitly that they would abandon some of the most disputed Republican practices. They point in particular to the vote on Medicare prescription drug legislation in 2003, when Republicans refused to shut off a House vote for three hours so they could twist arms and push the measure through just before sunrise. Democrats stipulate that votes should be completed within 15 minutes and not held open simply to manipulate the outcome.

Democrats are developing a proposal to guarantee that lawmakers have at least 24 hours to examine legislation. They have also called for “an end to the two-day work week” and the beginning of a “predictable, professional, family-friendly schedule that allows the legislative process to proceed in a manner that ensures timely and deliberative dispensation of the work of Congress.”

In the House and Senate, the leadership is vowing to conduct full and open conference committees that reconcile differing legislation passed by the two chambers and produce a final bill. In recent years, those sessions have all but disappeared, with senior Republicans hashing out final versions behind closed doors, occasionally adding provisions passed by neither the House nor the Senate. Some of the major legislation approved in the final hours of the past Congress was written in private by just a few lawmakers and aides and rushed to the floor.

Good work Pelosi, as for Kos, I agree with you most of the time, but you're on the wrong side of this bud.

Enough With the South!

I bumped into a diary at DailyKos last night which I will use as a jumping off point for something that has been bothering me for quite some time. The diary contended that John Edwards is not the guy to nominate in 2008 because he cant win in the South. This is a questionable claim to begin with, but it builds itself off the premise that Democrats need to win in the South in order to win the Presidency. Its a rediculous argument that a lot of people like to make, I would like to do my part to put it to rest.

After signing the Civil Rights Act, President Johnson said that he had lost the South for the Democratic Party. That still holds true, the South is by and large a dead region for Democrats. Even in a landslide Congressional victory, the Democrats picked up only two Congressional seats in the South, one in Kentucky and one in North Carolina. In the exit polling data, the South is the only region in the entire Country that the Republicans recieved more votes than the Democrats. So even in a tidal wave election in which the Democrats won by overwhelming margins almost everywhere they still did not do well in the South. This demonstrates that the South is far more hostile to Democrats than any other region in the Country. Yet the myth lives on that Democrats cannot win without winning Southern States and that therefore a Southerner on the ticket is needed. These people like to point to the success of southerners in Presidential elections. However, any Republican can be tossed out as irrellevent to Democratic success because the region is so strongly Republican we can expect them to win it regardless of who they run. Advocates of a southern focus for the Democratic Party point to Bill Clinton's electoral success. This actually demonstrates contrary to what advocates of a southern approach tend to argue, that Democrats dont need to worry about the South

If we look to Bill Clinton's elections in 1992 and 1996 in which he won by large margins with a few southern States. he would have won the election whether he won in the South or not. Arkansas, Louisianna, Kentucky, and Tennessee (and Georgia in 1992 but not in 1996) were bonus States for Clinton, they had no effect on the election. Clinton won 370 and 379 electoral votes, in 1992 Clinton won 47 electoral votes from the South. Subtract 47 from 370 and Clinton still would have won 323 and won the White House with a solid margin. Same holds true for 1996 when Clinton won 34 electoral votes from the South in a 379 EV win, subtract the south and Clinton would have won with 345 electoral votes. The South made no difference to Clinton. He won not because he could win in the South but because he had appeal elsewhere. In both elections Clinton won a couple of southern States on the back of Ross Perot swiping votes away from Bush and Dole respectively. So its clear that a) Clinton wasnt as effective in the South as his reputation and b) that Clinton didnt need the South in order to win.

A winning Democratic strategy should not be built arround the South, it is the most conservative region in the country. For every hour you spend trying to convince Southerners to vote for you, you could have spent 30 minutes to convince the same number of voters in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, or the Southwest. Demographic trends are actually promising for a Southwest strategy rather than a Southern strategy. The US population is increasingly shifting to the Southwest, and long term Democratic success would be smart to focus on Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and even Texas. This is where the US population is moving and this is where there are voters who can be convinced to vote Democratic. As the hispanic populations increase in these States there is a potential for it to become a farely strong region for the Democratic Party. There are votes to be won in the Southwest, not in the South. I'm sick and tired of this claim that the Democrats cant win if they cant win in the South. They can, and any Democrat who wins in the South only does so after they won significant victories over the rest of the country.

Certainly any State that the Democrats can pick off from the Republicans would be positive, and if we pick off some States that happen to be part of "the south" then that's great. Certainly Virginia increasingly looks like a State where Democrats might be able to win. But focusing on appeal to southerners is wrongheaded, Democrats should seek to appeal to States that can reasonably be won with some efficiency like Ohio, Florida, or accross the Southwestern region. Below is an electoral map I compiled based on census data, it shows where electoral power will lie in 2030 if the demographic trends continue as they have. Whoever wins in the Southwest, California, and Texas will likely control the White House in the future.