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November 10, 2006
How the Democratic Victory Makes Congress More...CONSERVATIVE?
(NOTE: a couple of commenters got the impression from the post below that I believe Congress will behave more conservatively now. I do not. Just making the point, that the leftward shift may not be as dramatic as some expect.)
Republicans lost seats in both houses of Congress, Democrats gained majorities in both houses, so Congress moves to the left, right? Well, yes and no. Republicans scoured the archives during the campaign for any reference by Democratic leaders to their wish to do something that might be characterized as extreme by conservatives. They used these quotes, and some embellishments, to scare conservative and moderate voters: the Democrats will raise taxes drastically, they will de-fund the military, they will cede our sovereignty to the U.N., they will make gay marriage legal everywhere, and they will impeach the president!! Of course, they will do none of these things, mainly because very few of them want to, but also because they couldn't these things if they tried, and even if they could, it would spell their political doom and destroy their new and narrow majority.
Every race is different, but let's look at what kind of Democrats won and what kind of Republicans lost in the seats that changed hands: many of the Republicans who lost were moderate to liberal, while many of the Democrats who won for the first time were moderate to conservative. The result: both the Republican and Democratic caucuses, on average, moved to the right. Don't read too much into that, Democrats will now control the agenda in Congress, so it will move to the left, but they can't be bomb-throwers because it will get the Heath Shulers (D-NC) and Jim Webbs (D-VA) beat when they run for reelection. That's what happened to Republican moderates like Nancy Johnson of Connecticut or Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island - their caucus went far to the right of the American people and was punished for it. They could protect their most conservative members, from their most reliably conservative districts but they could not protect the moderates in "blue" or "purple" areas. So..
.. progressives will be disappointed by the moderation and cautiousness of the new Democratic Congress and conservatives will find their worst fears to be unfounded. Democrats will pass popular measures that the President will have to accept, like a minimum wage hike, some lobby reform, relief on prescription drug costs, implementing 9/11 commission recommendations and maybe deductibility of college tuition. They will prevent truly extreme nominees from being confirmed to the federal bench or key appointed jobs, but they won't be able to install their own people. Forecast: moderation, with scattered partisan bickering, and occasional horse-trading. Chance of impeachment, almost nil. Unless there are new revelations.
Now, if we can get a Democratic president in '08, we can start making more dramatic changes, but even then, Dems will (or should) be striving to avoid the overreach that brought down the Bush/Rove "permanent majority." Our democracy is highly imperfect, but still a democracy. If you ignore the wishes of the people, sooner or later they are going to yank the leash.
Posted by TFW at November 10, 2006 2:31 PM
Comments
Very plausible. I would add that if a Democratic president is elected in 2008 and does try to implement some slightly more leftist measures, that will almost guarantee that Congress goes back to being Republican in 2010 as it did in 1994.
Posted by: y81 at November 11, 2006 4:22 PM
I think your math is wrong. To see which direction Congress was moved, you need to compare the new members to the members they replaced, not the average of the previous Congress or, even less relevent, the average member of their party. For example, the fact that a Dem who won for the first time was "moderate to conservative" doesn't matter if the specific individual they replaced was even more conservative, which they almost always were. Also, I think you generally meant "moderate to conservative for a Democrat" and "moderate to liberal for a Republican", which means your equation used two different number systems.
10 minus 10 doesn't equal zero if the first 10 is decimal and the second 10 is binary, it equals 8. Yes, the average within each party is slightly more conservative than it was, but the overall Democrat caucus is far more liberal than the GOP caucus and, since it got much bigger in proportion to the GOP part, the overall balance moved to the left, not the right.
But I'm willing to do the scientific thing and test our competing theories. If the legislation passed (vetos don't count) by the new Congress is, on average, more conservative than that passed by the previous Congress, I'll admit that you were right. If they're really even more conservative than the previous bunch I'll probably have to admit it from a gulag, but I will admit it.
Posted by: Mojo at November 12, 2006 11:50 PM
The argument you criticize involves a textbook fallacy, Simpson's Paradox. It's possible for the median legislator in both parties to move to the right &, at the same time, for the median legislator in the whole body to move to the left. I assume that's what happened in this case.
Posted by: KH at November 12, 2006 11:56 PM
I believe that the body will be a lot like it was in the 1980s from my reading of the history. The Democrats have always had a body of congresscritters that follow the conservative path and this is the same thing. Generally unless the entire country is in a huge mess (either real as in 1932 or basically imagined 1980), there will not be a wave of change to one idealogy or another.
Posted by: Elizabeth at November 13, 2006 10:58 PM