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Blue Dogs are often most reviled for crossing the aisle and voting with Republicans on key issues like healthcare reform and financial reform. Last November, when 39 Democrats voted against healthcare reform, for example, 25 were Blue Dogs. And when the reconciliation changes came to the House March 25, and 32 Democrats voted with the GOP, 25 were Blue Dogs.

Next week it will be one year since the House passed a hate crimes prevention bill that included the LGBT community. Seventeen Democrats crossed the aisle of bigotry and voted with the Republicans. All but one of them were Blue Dogs: Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN), Bart Gordon (Blue Dog-TN), Parker Griffith (then a Blue Dog/now a Republican-AL), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN), and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS.

But Blue Dogs do even more damage than just by voting with the Republicans against working families and against equality and liberty. The worst damage they do is within the Democratic caucus, where they constantly work to pull caucus positions ever rightward, farther and farther away from the Democratic base. In committees you constantly have corporate shills— which, in the end, is what all Blue Dogs are— undercutting all attempts to work on behalf of regular American families.

I spoke to two DCCC-endorsed candidates yesterday who told me that when they got to Washington for briefings they were forced to listen to warmongering Blue Dog Jane Harman— perhaps best known for her quote, “I am proud to be introduced as the best Republican in the Democratic Party,” a distinction she shares with Joe Lieberman— on, what else, foreign policy. One candidate told me that he was sickened to hear her reciting talking points he’s heard over and over again repeated on Fox News. She and Lieberman were on the radio this week telling an NPR audience that what the U.S. ought to do is expand military operations into Yemen.

An arm of Blue America, Bad Dogs, is dedicated to working toward replacing Blue Dogs like Jane Harman and John Barrow with progressives like Marcy Winograd and Regina Thomas, and toward defeating Blue Dog incumbents like Florida reactionary Lori Edwards.

Ever since Rahm Emanuel’s chairmanship, the DCCC has practically been an arm of the Blue Dog caucus, and institutional support within the Democratic Party, particularly from Steny Hoyer, is gigantic. The DCCC always indoctrinates its candidates with Blue Dog messaging and framing courtesy of Third Way, a very reactionary Blue Dog-oriented policy shop— with leaders like Jane Harman, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Tom Carper, Melissa Bean and Mark Pryor, all as firmly under the aegis of corporate overlords as any Republican. On top of that, yesterday six of the most notoriously corrupt K Street lobbyists, including conservative ex-congressmen Bud Cramer (AL) and Charlie Stenholm (TX), formed a new corporately oriented anti-family organization called the Blue Dog Research Forum. Their goal will be to continue pressuring the Democratic caucus to move farther and farther right and to give up on ordinary working families and accept GOP and Big Business guidelines when formulating legislation.

In a letter to Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition, Cramer and Stenholm wrote that they were establishing the organization to “ensure there will always be a forum in Washington to mark that middle ground when it comes to issues affecting the country’s fiscal health.”

The group’s goal is to be an incubator for policy ideas affecting the economy, such as energy, health care, tax policy, national defense and entitlements.

The research forum takes its name from the 54 fiscally conservative Democratic Members who have emerged as a powerful voting bloc on major legislation, but no current lawmaker has been involved in setting it up, according to Cramer, an original Blue Dog and president of the new research forum.

“They actually legally cannot dictate control or dominate what happens here,” Cramer said. “We can involve them. We can involve any Member in the policy forums we will carry forward, and we hope to be able to do that.”

However, as the lobbyists quietly set up the organization over the past several months, they have kept Blue Dog leadership generally informed. And Cramer, who now lobbies at Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, said the Members have been supportive so far.

In addition to Stenholm— who works at Olsson, Frank & Weeda— and Cramer, the board of directors for the new venture includes Jeff Murray of the C2 Group, Vickie Walling of Prime Policy Group, Stacey Alexander of Elmendorf Strategies and Libby Greer of Cauthen, Forbes & Williams.

Murray, who serves as the forum’s treasurer, said he expects to send out solicitations in the near future asking potential corporate, union and other donors for pledges worth about $10,000 each to participate… “A lot of ideas don’t get to see the light of day,” said Greer, former chief of staff to Blue Dog Rep. Allen Boyd (Fla.). “We want to give them a place to breathe.”

Greer and Boyd worked closely with George W. Bush to destroy Social Security, for example, an idea that was embraced by Wall Street, of course, but rejected by most of Congress and most of the public.

Help fight the Blue Dogs today and get an opportunity to win an RIAA double platinum record award for the Baha Men’s smash hit “Who Let the Dogs Out.” It isn’t something you can buy in a store, but any donation today on the Bad Dogs page will enter you in a drawing to win the unique framed plaque.

Win the award

Of course you do! Your ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War (on the anti-conservative side), right? And closer relatives fought in the Civil War (on the anti-conservative side), right? My family tree doesn’t have American roots that deep. My great grandfather fought against the czar in Russia and my grandfather fought against industrialists for the right of working people to form labor unions here in America. I never thought that gave me any special rights to bitch about anything though— just some inspiration to do something about social and political injustice.

We keep reading how the Democratic base is as let down as the GOP base is fired up. Democrats didn’t bother turning out to vote in Virginia, New Jersey or Massachusetts— 3 states Obama won last year— because they are pissed off that a Democratic president with gargantuan majorities in the Senate and House is either unwilling or unable accomplish what made them vote for him, volunteer for him, donate to his campaign. I lost count months ago of how many e-mails, Facebook messages and comments here at DWT I get from ex-Obama supporters.

Back in 2007 I let Jamil, a young friend— the son of old college buddies— talk me into taking a less anti-Obama line at DWT. At the time I warned him that if Obama were to win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency, his record clearly indicated that he would be a tremendous disappointment to anyone who was reading too much into that “Change and Hope” campaign slogan thing. Castigating Hillary Clinton for talking out of both sides of her mouth on environmental issues, I pointed out that Obama was every bit as bad. (Remember this is in 2007:)

A consistent and craven compromiser on almost every progressive value or principle he’s had to confront since being elected to the Senate (from Republican “tort reform” to legalizing credit card usury), Obama’s environmental record has clearly been “one of accommodation to big corporate interests” and “his ‘new kind of politics’” is nothing more than a charismatically delivered sham: “the old kind of influence peddling, caution, and smallness that most Democrats [at the grassroots level] reject.” His environmental record is nothing Bush Republicans need to fear.

He is the Senate’s leading Democratic supporter of “coal to liquid,” a technology that can make gasoline out of coal. Only problem: it produces double the global warming pollution that regular old dirty oil does. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Obama actually voted for George Bush’s energy bill despite more than $27 billion in subsidies for the oil, nuclear and coal industries, its weakening of clean air and water laws, and the fact that it gave electric companies the power to charge consumers high rates while doing almost nothing to tackle global warming or increase consumer protections. Why is Obama so willing to “trim his sails” so often— despite the consequences to working and middle class Americans and the environment? It’s not just that he apparently believes accommodation— even of right-wing extremists— can be both right and politically useful. It’s something deeper. In his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, Obama admits he has a hard time feeling a truly pressing sense of urgency about the great issues of the day.

He’s not the leader America so desperately needs to clean up after the worst presidential regime in history, no more than Hillary Clinton is. It’s not enough to drive Republicans out of government, even if that is a well-deserved and worthwhile first step. It’s just as important to find BETTER Democrats. Substituting horrible, compromised Republicans with horrible compromised Democrats, symbolized by Insider hacks like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer, who control the Democratic House caucus, will solve little if anything.

As you probably heard, after he won, Emanuel was Obama’s first high level pick for his fledgling Administration. It was hard not to despair on the spot. At least, I thought at the time, he’s off the fast track that would have led to the Speakership. He’s done more than enough damage, though, bolstering and amplifying all of Obama’s worst flaws.

Sure progressives are complaining! How could they not? Anyone who wanted unending war voted for McCain and the Republicans. People who wanted peace voted for Obama and the Democrats. There’s a disconnect there. So what’s the answer? It’s still the same— complain all you want; sign petitions, write letters to editors, curse, scream, bang your head against a wall. But unless you leave the plethora of bad Democrats to rot with the Republicans who make up the other half of the Establishment and actually do something real to help elect the kinds of BETTER DEMOCRATS who really believe in fighting for a better America and a better world, it won’t do you or anyone else a bit of good. You’ve had a chance to see what happens when we elect men and women like Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, Jeff Merkley, and Jared Polis. They fight the Establishment and that includes not just taking the battle to the craven defenders of the status quo in the Republican Party and the Blue Dog caucus, but also standing up to Obama when he goes off track.

There’s a lot of frustration, hopelessness and anger in the country right now. It’s what helped elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts and it’s helping a snickering and manipulative Establishment to propel the right-wing, Know Nothing populist movement (i.e., Teabaggers). But it’s also an anger that can be turned against the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic Establishment that has saddled us with the Ben Nelsons, Joe Liebermen, Blanche Lincolns, Tom Carpers and Mary Landrieux in the Senate and Blue Dogs who have voted again and again with the GOP on important matters before the House, from newly minted anti-family spoilers like Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL) and Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD) to longtime, confirmed reactionaries like John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Jane Harman (Blue Dog-CA), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Ed Case (sleazebag-HI), Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA) and Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN). The anti-incumbent mood of the country is something that should help us defeat Blue Dogs like Harman, Barrow and Holden, each of whom has a progressive challenger and to defeat Blue Dog and DCCC-backed hacks like Lori Edwards in Florida. Blue America is helping to identify them and make sure they’re the real deal. Please take a look at the Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand page and ask yourself if today might be a day to chip in as little as $5 or $10 to help give fighting progressives like Alan Grayson and Donna Edwards and Dennis Kucinich and Raul Grijalva some company and some back-up when they’re taking difficult stands against the Rahm Emanuel-Joe Lieberman-Harold Ford wing of the Democratic Party.

Yesterday we saw Ohio bloggers celebrate a huge victory, not just driving horribly reactionary and bigoted ConservaDem Jennifer Garrison out of the Secretary of State race, but out of politics entirely! We can do this; we must.