In the 110th Congress, there were 236 Democrats in the U.S. House, 49 in the Senate, and two "Independents" who caucused with Democrats. Of those 287 congresscritters, 74 were members of the New Democratic Coalition, which is affiliated with the DLC. Overall, 25.8% of the Democratic members of the 110th Congress were openly affiliated with the DLC. An additional 31 members of Congress are affiliated with the Blue Dogs, but not with the New Democratic Coalition. If the Blue Dogs are included, the overall DLC-Blue Dog membership in of Democratic congresscritters increases to 36.6%, and 38.1% in the House.That's Chris Bowers asserting that Obama's cabinet is actually to the right of congressional Democrats. Leave aside the statistical problems of comparing a group of hundreds, with a group of 16. Leave aside that Bowers doesn't include Obama's White House staff. Leave aside that the source for that contention that half of Obama administration is the DLC, comes from Politico. And how does Politico know that half of the new administration is DLC? Why the DLC told them, of course! And the DLC has no incentive at all to inflate their importance. No, they'd never do that.
Now, compare this to Obama's cabinet selections. Of the eighteen cabinet members (not counting Joe Biden, who I have seen listed as a cabinet member at times), sixteen are Democrats. Of those sixteen, eight are affiliated with the DLC, or 50%. Obama's Democratic cabinet selections have twice the DLC representation of the Democratic membership of Congress. This list does not include Rahm Emanuel, who will be the first White House Chief of Staff during the Obama administration. Nor does it include national security advisor Jim Jones, who supported McCain during the election.
Leaving all that aside, this just feels like a kind of tokenism which ultimately says nothing about policy. And where does all this head-counting leave us?. At war with Bill Richardson? Outraged that Tom Daschle addressed the DLC? Is this what it was about? Really?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
some people just need things to bitch about.
GMAFB. Obama could cure all disease, stop all hunger, repair the world economy, end all wars and resolve the BCS conundrum, and people like Bowers (or Big Tent Democrat) and his ilk would still be complaining about their lack of a pony.
When the only tool you have is a hammer...
Seriously, why does anyone pay attention to Bowers and Stoller? When was the last time they mattered, 2004? The term one trick pony comes to mind.
Ed Kilgore laid the smack down yesterday,
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2008/12/labeling_the_cabinet.php
Eh, cleek's got it right. Bowers' been hostile towards Obama since the primary, and he's always looking for reasons to justify that hostility.
Somebody wake up the Republicans so the press can cover a fight between people who actually differ on issues, and aren't just narcissists.
Anybody who censors dissent on their website should just shut the fuck up whilst grown folks are talking. But in this case I really hope Chris Bowers keeps talking because he is showing himself to be more and more of a crackpot and he is going to have a lot more people running away from him and marginalizing him the more he talks. Now if we can only get the mainstream media to quit acting like he is some kind of spokesman for the left. But of course he will probably get airtime on FoxNews after putting that post up.
These guys use DLC like McCarthy used "commie". Stoller even called Blago DLC after the scandal broke, though a few commenters called him out on it.
They do think they are at war with the DLC and other centrists. Kos, in a moment of extreme egotism, once pronounced that he was going to finish them off once and for all.
I have to wonder if some of these guys thought that Dems in power would bring them more relevance. Pelosi and Reid pretty much ignored them and Obama largely bypassed them on his way to the Presidency. For a short time, they were the Belles of the Ball (the fawning press coverage of the first YearlyKos and the Dean rise). Sometimes it seems similar to the Hillary sense of entitlement.
It's worth considering if folks are really as ideologically centrist as their voting records suggest or if they're ideologically centrist because they are voting.
Everyone has heard of the Blue Dogs, CBC, and Progressive Caucus. But the New Democratic Coalition? Huh? The DLC spells w-a-c-k-n-e-s-s.
One of the most surprising thing to me working on the Hill was all the progressive, cool, and radical members of Congress hidden away in random corners that we never hear about. Earl Blumenauer and his bike caucus? Danny Davis with a Black Power flag in his office? Lynn Woolsey holdin' it down for the welfare moms? Mike Honda on the trilingual immigrant-rights tip? Don't believe the hype there are no fresh people in Congress. They're just outnumbered.
He says that 8 of 18 is 50%. This is...not true. It is 44%. So, 38% of the House is conservative democrats, and 44% of the cabinet is. The variability factor here is one cabinet secretary.
Can someone tell me what makes Stoller and Bowers such leftists? What policy proposals do they have that are so remarkably "progressive" as compared to those of Obama, or those of the DLC?
If these two actually did attack people as "ideologically centrist because they are voting" -- that is, because they support the basic structure of our electoral democracy -- then I'd at least give them credit for being meaningfully left of the conventional terms of discussion. But they just aren't, and they are a bit of a joke when compared to actual leftists in say, Greece, Italy, Nicaragua, Mexico, etc., that is, most other democracies.
Even if we cede Bowers point, it seems to me that the relevant point here is that Obama's administration is full of mainstream establishment Democrats, and according to Bowers the congressional median is to the left of them. That's actually a very good thing, as Congress is much more central to domestic policy and a more progressive Congress is much more important than a progressive President.
I thought Yglesias had the best riff on the Bowers/Kos/Sirota/Stoller/Etc. crowd when he sort of back handedly noted that their problem is they elevate questions of tactics and strategy to matters of principle. The obvious result of that is they wind up in fights with people who disagree with them about fairly trivial things and inevitably marginalize as a result. After all, if you're being called "Republican light" because you support cap-and-trade, universal healthcare gay marriage, EFCA, withdrawing from Iraq, and repealing the Bush tax cuts but don't think Congressional Democrats should put up a bill to do all of those things on Day 1, sooner or later you just get tired of those people because you can't have a "debate" with them any more than you can debate an Obama birth certificate truther.
I feel like if you're going to allege that there are these big statistical problems with comparing hundreds to 16, you need to say what problems you're talking about. There's a lot of BS stats running around, but it's not as if Beaudrot is a statistical illiterate.
Oops, I see that I hallucinated you mentioning that Beaudrot was where you read the stats. Not sure I have an explanation of that, save the fact that he did comment on them elsewhere.
Got Viruses? Get Panda Internet Security 2009 for $20Apparently an end of year special thru 12/31/2008
http://www.tinyurl.com/a3cyw6