| The rabble-rousers over at Open Left (Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, and Mike Lux) have launched a campaign against "Bush dogs", defined as Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have in 2007 both capitulated on the Iraq funding bill and voted to allow Alberto Gonzales warrantless wiretapping powers.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that IA-03's own Leonard Boswell makes this list. Like many in the group, he is in the "Blue Dog" faction in the House. (Other "Bush dogs" are in the "New Democrats" group in the House, but Boswell does not belong to that club.) Boswell's disappointing vote on these issues is only the latest in a long string of disappointments for me, from voting for all of Bush's horrible energy bills to supporting permanent repeal of the estate tax to voting for the "torture" bill in the fall of 2006. Does Boswell really represent such a conservative district that he "has" to vote with Republicans on these issues? No, he does not. His district actually has a partisan index of D+1.4, whereas many of the Bush dogs are in districts that lean Republican, or deep-South districts where rank and file Democrats tend to be more conservative. Chris Bowers specifically criticized Boswell in this post, in which he made the case that Boswell is NOT "voting his district" when he casts his lot with the Bush White House. Paul Rosenberg provides some interesting data on the "Bush dogs" and how vulnerable they might be to a strong challenge: click here for more. Some in the blogosphere have criticized this effort to target in possibly hit Bush dogs with primary challengers, saying it could endanger our majority in the House and is bad form to "meddle" in other states' politics. Chris Bowers responded to the criticism here, and Mike Lux weighed in on the dispute, and his desire to promote progressive voting in Congress without harming Democrats in truly vulnerable positions, here. What do you think? I support letting Boswell know when we are upset about his voting, but I don't see a primary challenge as having much chance here. Anyway, Iowa is going to lose a district after the 2010 census, and Boswell will likely retire at that point. Primary challenges against other "Bush dogs" may be well worth the effort, on the other hand. Even if we don't beat these people in the primary, we can push them to vote better, as Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher (both California Democrats) have been doing since netroots progressives targeted them for primary challenges. |
![[Bleeding Heartland Logo]](http://www.bleedingheartland.com/upload/logo.jpg){kind=logo}
