To activists on the left, Democratic House member Frank Kratovil is a poster boy for apostasy, with a no vote on both the House health care bill and the president's push for another jobs stimulus. But the representative of Maryland's conservative 1st Congressional District—who did vote for the original stimulus bill—is unapologetic about his disagreements with fellow Democrats. "There are times when I feel like I'm on a different planet from others in my party," he said. "Some of them just aren't concerned about spending in the same way I am."
Call it the Big Tent Blues. When party leaders recruited Kratovil and dozens of other moderates and conservatives to run in "red" House districts in 2006 and 2008, they knew what they'd get if these candidates won: a majority-building boost in numbers but a more fragmented party. Sure enough, these new members—many of whom joined the ranks of deficit hawks in the so-called Blue Dog Coalition—have defied the Democratic leadership on issues dear to the liberal base. 24 Blue Dogs were among 39 Democrats who voted against the House health care bill in November; 29 Blue Dogs voted against climate change legislation in June; 10 Blue Dogs were among the 11 Democratic nays on the stimulus package last February.
Activist anger boiled over online, with bloggers openly rooting for Blue Dog defeats next November. Perhaps they should be careful what they wish for. Analysts like Fritz Wenzel, a former pollster with Zogby International who now runs Wenzel Strategies, see a potential problem for Democrats if too many fiscal hawks go down in 2010. "They are at risk of being out of step with the public," Wenzel said. "My research shows that spending is behind a lot of voter anxiety right now."
The delicate politics now unfolding for Democrats involves their bid to spend additional money on job creation—an outcome that could boost their midterm prospects, but also feed public ire over government spending. How much easier will it be to tag Democrats as the party of big spenders if their coterie of deficit detractors shrinks even more?
We may well find out. According to the Cook Political Report, as many as ten races involving an incumbent Blue Dog are competitive. It's a cruel irony to be taking it on the chin for government spending they often resisted. For instance, two Blue Dogs in tossup races, Bobby Bright (Alabama's 2nd District) and Walter Minnick (Idaho's 1st District), opposed the stimulus bill and joined Kratovil in voting against the House health care package. But Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, said that Blue Dog losses in November shouldn't surprise anyone. "It's tough to hang on to seats when you've won them by reaching into more distant partisan territory," he said.
It only adds to the Blue Dogs' difficulties that the House has already approved the $154 billion Jobs for Main Street Act, which provides new stimulus spending for job creation. The bill is sure to add to conservative pressure on the Blue Dogs, but Democratic strategists see no reason to back off from jobs spending. "Jobs is still twice the concern of the deficit with Democratic and Independent voters, and tied among Republicans," said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster and strategist.
The December passage of the jobs bill shows just how much Democrats believe that unemployment trumps other economic concerns. Among the legislation's chief purposes is to use "saved" money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to fund new jobs—a surplus that many Blue Dogs joined Republicans in arguing should be used to reduce the deficit. Kratovil, aformer state's attorney for Queen Anne's County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland,was among the 10 Blue Dogs who opposed the jobs bill. "I've been hearing a lot of criticism from constituents about federal spending for a year now," Kratovil said. "And I think it's legitimate."
In fact, it's not entirely clear from recent polls whether jobs or federal spending is the greater danger to Democrats. Almost without exception, the economy registers as the biggest concern of those polled, and jobs are at the top of their worries. Federal deficits and debt, meanwhile, register far lower in rankings of "most important issues"— 36 percent lower in a mid-January CNN poll, for instance, and 45 percentlower in a December CBS poll.
But if deficits are recast as government spending, the polling gets more dicey for Democrats. When a Quinnipiac poll in mid-January asked people whether President Obama was being "fiscally irresponsible by spending too much government money," 53 percent said yes, while 43 percent said no. Among critical Independent voters, 58 percent said yes. And when a November Rasmussen poll asked whether tax cuts or additional stimulus spending was the best way to create jobs and lower unemployment, 62 percent went with tax cuts. Just 21 percent chose more spending.
Despite these troubling signs, the Democrats have their game plan set: Put more people to work as soon as possible. David Axelrod, a senior political adviser to the president, is confident of the electoral benefit. "If we see steady months of job growth between now and next November, I think the picture will be different," he recently told a National Journal reporter.
That is the strategy for near-term success, which is a political imperative. As for the longer-term risks, perhaps the January CNN poll encapsulates it well. Asked if they approve or disapprove of the way President Obama is tackling various issues, 54 percent said they disapprove of his handling of unemployment—but 62 percent disapproved of his handling of the federal budget deficit.
True, jobs appear to matter more than deficits right now in voters' minds. But what happens when the job picture brightens and ceases to be the top concern? Federal spending could then become the hottest of the hot-button issues. If that happens, the public—and therefore the Democratic Party—could find itself missing those irascible Blue Dogs.
William Beaman is a principal at OnPoint Strategies and former editor-in-chief of Politics magazine.
