Written by Michael K. Cantwell   

In “‘Blame the Blue Dogs’ Theory for Democratic Losses Doesn’t Add Up,” November 8, 2010, Matt Bai dismisses the claim that “centrist Democrats doomed the party when they blocked liberals in Congress from making good on President Obama’s promise of bold change . . . [by] . . . refus[ing] to adopt a more populist stance toward business and oppos[ing] greater stimulus spending and a government-run health care plan.” Quite apart from the question of whether this is editorializing in the news pages (certainly the title of the piece is), it seems to me that it is his analysis – rather than the theory he purports to examine – that “doesn’t add up.”

Mr. Bai first suggests that because “liberal activists” sought out Blue Dogs in their successful effort to recapture the House, these same activists have no cause for complaint if Blue Dogs act like Blue Dogs:

For one thing, many of these same liberal activists were saying something very different in 2006, when Rahm Emanuel, who was then overseeing House campaigns for the party, recruited a slate of less ideological candidates to compete in more conservative districts.
His next argument (actually more an observation) is that Republicans are far better than Democrats at creating an ideologically homogeneous majority:

Second, while House Republicans have now managed to cobble together a majority that is more or less ideologically cohesive, history would suggest that the same feat isn’t so easy for Democrats, who have actually never succeeded in pulling it off.
Whether or not liberals had a right to expect Blue Dogs to behave differently and whether or not liberals were even capable of forcing Blue Dogs to behave differently are both wholly irrelevant to the question posed and then completely ignored by Mr. Bai, namely, what would have happened if the Blue Dogs had behaved differently – that is, if they had supported “greater stimulus spending and a government-run health care plan.”

It smacks of sophistry to reject the argument that “frustrated voters rejected the [Democratic] party for its timidity” without any consideration of what would have happened had the Democrats been less timid or had the Blue Dogs not “opposed greater stimulus spending and a government-run health care plan.” Would Mr. Bai have reached the same conclusion if he had done his due diligence?

It’s The Economy, Stupid

Mr. Bai completely ignores the potential game-changing impact on the midterms had the stimulus been on the order of the $1.5 to $2 trillion proposed by Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz as well as numerous other economists in early 2009. Worse still, Mr. Bai ignores the salutary effect of the less ambitious package of $787 billion that was all the Democrats were able to pass. What would have happened might be conjecture but what did happen is not only empirical evidence but evidence that could (and should) have informed Mr. Bai’s opinion.

What did happen? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus has:

• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,

• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and

• Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent.
See http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1326; http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/117xx/doc11706/08-24-ARRA.pdf

The CBO also ranked the various types of stimuli included in the bill (including direct purchases of goods by the federal government, transfers to the states for infrastructure repair and retention of police/firefighters/teachers, home sales credits, and tax cuts) and concluded that tax cuts to the wealthy were the least effective of these measures; close behind was tax cuts to the middle class.
See http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/117xx/doc11706/08-24-ARRA.pdf, Table 2.

These estimates undermine the claims of Republicans who uniformly insisted that the stimulus was a waste of taxpayer money and that tax cuts alone would be an adequate response to the greatest crisis facing the U.S. economy in over 80 years. Indeed, they give us a picture of the disastrous consequences to the economy had the Republicans been in charge of the recovery.

They also support the claims of “liberal activists” (derided by Mr. Bai) who had argued that a more robust stimulus was needed. That is, it is fair to conclude that a stimulus on the order proposed by Messrs. Krugman et al. (i.e., double the size of the stimulus that passed and tax cuts constituting a much smaller portion of the total dollars) would have resulted in even more significant increases in employment and corresponding reductions in the unemployment rate than estimated by the CBO.

It is by no means certain that such a bill could have passed even with the support of Blue Dogs, but this is irrelevant to the theory breezily rejected by Mr. Bai because their opposition ensured that it had no chance of passage. And although we can never be entirely certain of the effect a larger stimulus would have had on the economy, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the unemployment rate would have been in the ballpark of the 8% predicted by Larry Summers and promised by President Obama, if not lower. Could Mr. Bai seriously maintain that the Democrats would have lost 60+ seats in the House if they had managed to keep the unemployment rate at 8% or less and had created or saved between 3 million and 6.6 million jobs in the face of near unanimous Republican opposition?

Health-Care Reform

If “it’s the economy stupid,” then the higher-than-predicted unemployment rate and widespread fears over jobs almost certainly played the principal role in the midterm losses. Still it is clear that the health plan enacted by the Democrats was the other major cause. Its complexity made it difficult to explain (and easy to misrepresent) what it did (e.g., “death panels,” “government bureaucrats instead of doctors”).

Once again, Mr. Bai completely ignores what would have happened if the Democrats had been bolder. For example, single payer (“Medicare for all”) is easy to understand and, if enacted, could not have so easily been demonized, particularly in light of the fact that it had always consistently enjoyed widespread public support:

• In a February 2009 New York Times-CBS poll, 59% said that the government should provide national health insurance, including 49% who said that such insurance should cover all medical problems. http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/SunMo_poll_0209.pdf

• In a peer-reviewed study published in 2008 in the prestigious Annals of Clinical Medicine, 59% of members of the American Medical Association (probably the most conservative physicians’ organization in America), favored a single-payer system.
http://www.pnhp.org/docsurvey/annals_physician_support.pdf

• In a May 2007 CNN/Opinion Research Poll 64% favored national insurance even if it meant higher taxes.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/may/new_polls_on_univers.php

• In an October 2005 Wall Street Journal poll, 75% of respondents favored universal health insurance (vs. 15% opposed).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112973460667273222.html

• In an October 2003 poll, 62% favored a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that’s run by the government and financed by taxpayers.
http://abcnews.go.com/images/pdf/935a3HealthCare.pdf

Yet the Democrats deemed single payer off-the-table before the debate had even begun, and passage of a government option was prevented at the end by the Blue Dogs, who, it is worth noting, received an average of $63,000 more in campaign contributions from the health-care sector than other House Democrats over the past two decades.
See Dan Eggen, “Industry Is Generous To Influential Bloc,” Washington Post, July 31, 2009, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073004267.html.

Again, it seems to me extremely unlikely that the Democrats would have lost 60+ seats in the House had they passed a health-care bill that was easier to understand and harder to demonize. Mr. Bai and his editors are free to dispute this but not, it seems to me, justified in refusing to consider the question.

Finally, Mr. Bai not only fails to offer any evidence to rebut the contention that “frustrated voters rejected the party for its timidity” but ignores substantial evidence supporting the claim – namely, the widely reported “enthusiasm gap.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

Mr. Bai is far from alone in arrogantly acting as if the claim that Democrats were insufficiently liberal is so patently absurd as not to require serious examination. It seems to me, however, that the evidence I have presented argues not only for a more respectful treatment of this claim but quite a different conclusion than the one Mr. Bai reaches. Indeed, what seems to be absurd is the claim (rapidly becoming common “wisdom” as it echoes throughout the punditocracy) that the Democrats must now move even further to the right.

Now one might reach a different conclusion than mine after considering all the evidence, but as a general matter I believe a newspaper does a disservice to its readers when its reporters are permitted to deride an argument without being required to address the very evidence supporting that argument. And specifically (in my opinion) The Times will have done a disservice to the American people if its reporters continue to claim that the midterms mandate that the Democrats move to the right but refuse to consider the substantial evidence suggesting the midterm losses were in fact caused by their moving to the right, for the predictable result will be that the Democrats do move to the right.