What Should Be Done About Blue Dog Democrats?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Chad Rubel

They wear the same theoretical uniform as Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer. Yet the way the Blue Dog Democrats go about the game of legislation is a startling contrast.

There have been massive disagreements between traditional Democrats and the Blue Dogs, some of which you get when your party is more open and less disciplined than the other major party on the landscape.

But on health care reform, the Blue Dog Democrats are ready to derail vital desperately needed changes in our failing health care system.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) isn't the Blue Dog that normally comes up in these battles. Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson are the usual suspects. But Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has the spotlight on him in this health care battle.

And the news isn't encouraging. From the Billings Gazette:

In the past six years, nearly one-fourth of every dime raised by the Montana Democrat and his political action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical supply firms, health service companies and other health professionals.

The total is $3.4 million from January 2003 through 2008.

Baucus' anti single-payer mentality stretched to an extreme when he had 13 people arrested for "disruption of Congress." Of the 41 people who testified at those hearings, no one was a single-payer advocate. And though Baucus offered to drop the charges, he was adamant that no single-payer advocate be allowed to testify.

It's one thing to not be in favor of single-payer, but when a Democratic chair works this hard to not even let their voices be heard, something is seriously wrong.

The milquetoast theme continues with former Blue Dogs. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, President Obama's first choice for Health and Human Services, being behind a watered-down plan that offers insurance pools from states (the vast majority of which are severely broke), not the federal government.

Blue Dogs are afraid of significant change of any kind. If we drifted in the same sort of direction, they would be happy.

And that might have worked in 1968 or 1977. But in 2009, there are big holes in what we do as a society. Change was what people voted for in 2008, and these Blue Dogs don't want change.

The Republicans don't want change, and they are certainly fighting health care reform. But their biases, odd as they are, are a known quantity.

But the biases of the Blue Dogs -- we don't want to make significant change -- are much harder to battle. Certainly those who live in Montana (Baucus), Landrieu (Louisiana), and Indiana (Bayh) would certainly benefit from a greatly improved health care system. But their representatives aren't always listening.

As bad as things were in 1994, we are at a point where no reform or watered-down reform may be just as dangerous as the status quo. So how do progressives fight this battle with those wearing Ds on their theoretical caps?

What are your thoughts? Give us some insight about how to score political points with this group? Compromise on other issues? Intimidation? Go over their heads? Let us know in the comments section below.

A BUZZFLASH DISCUSSION