Will Jim Jordan's defiance jeopardize his 4th District?

[safeinOhio]

Source: The Courier

Rep. Jim Jordan's open defiance of House Speaker John Boehner's efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe House seat in next year's election, a newspaper reported.
Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed that Jordan's disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Jordan, a tea party favorite who leads the 170-plus member Republican Study Committee in the House, has stymied Boehner's efforts to raise the debt ceiling.

"He doesn't know it, but he solved a problem for Republican line-drawers by (figuratively) standing up and saying, 'I'm a jerk and I deserve to be punished,'" one of the sources told the newspaper.

Read more: http://www.thecourier.com/Issues/2011/Jul/30/ar_news_073011_story1.asp?d=073011_story1,2011,Jul,30&c=n

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This is the best news I've heard in a long time about my district. Jordan was a college wrestler that got dumped on his head too often and now he is pissing off the establishment repubs along with me.

[WCGreen]

1. Ohio is going to lose two seats and there are 13 GOPand only 5 Dems...

So it's more than likely that the two seats eliminated will both be GOP. But even if it is one and one, his district could easily be the od man out...

[ps1074]

9. Apparently the new map will be 15-3 republican

Saw it the other day on DKos I think. Republicans will create 3 very safe dem districts (80+ dem) and 15 republican districts. Some of these districts will be only 52-48 but still with republican advantage. How about that for a gerrymandering? A state where Obama won by 5% or so will have 15 republicans and 3 democrats.

[No Elephants]

2. Happy to see him go, but this is one more example of why people need to stop blaming voters.

The people of his district elected him, but his perceived disloyalty to Party powers trumps that and, when that happens, Party powers could care less what the people who vote really want. And guess who has more ability to see that their desires override any contrary desires?

This is even more so in the Democratic Party, where Super Delegates can override the will of primary voters.

Yet, some blame voters, not Party leaders.

[quakerboy]

11. A question

is there a time in our history where the so-called Super Delegates overrode the choices of Democratic primary voters, giving the nomination to someone other than the candidate who captured the most regular delegates?

[No Elephants]

13. Not yet, but that is the very reason they were created.

"After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party made changes in its delegate selection process, based on the work of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. The purpose of the changes was to make the composition of the convention less subject to control by party leaders and more responsive to the votes cast during the campaign for the nomination.

Some Democrats believed that these changes had unduly diminished the role of party leaders and elected officials, weakening the Democratic tickets of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter.
<snip>

Interesting. How does diminishing the role of Party leaders in choosing the nominee weaken a ticket? Either you have a strong nominee or you don't. And there's the rub, as Hamlet might say. Party leaders wanted more ability to choose the nominee, something they had had in "smoke filled back rooms" before McGovern Commission attempted to democratize the Democratic Party.


Remember as well, many other things had changed between the time that that the Super Delegate idea was first discussed circa 1969 and 1996, when all members of Congress were added to the roster of Super Delegates, making the Super Delegate vote even more powerful.

Among those things was the rise of the DLC, which yanked the Party to the right. (By the way, Southern white males figured prominently in both the early DLC and the push within the Democratic Party for Super Delegates. I'm not sure what, if anything to make of that, but I did notice the congruence.)

Another change was the tremendous increase in the role in D.C. of lobbyists, which sharp increase began after 1980. And, as we know, campaign ads get more and more expensive. And the increased role of lobbyists and corporate campaign donations also made D.C. in general lean right.

The role of media changed as well. Media seemed to go from reporting on the nomination process to taking the side of one candidate, or at least taking sides against a candidate. In 2004, the DLC blessed Kerry. After watching Dean's yelp-- and the horrified faces of the media airing it-- at least a hundred times within a couple of days, I am convinced the media was allied against Dean. (I was for Kerry myself then, but that's beside the point.)

Moreover, the Party has other ways of controlling the nomination besides an overt override, which well might get Madame DeFarge a-knitting again. Money, statements made by respected Party leaders, endorsements of respected Party leaders and probably more things that I don't know about. So, in all, an overt override by Super Delegates has become less and less necessary than was contemplated in 1982, when Super Delegates were first formally instituted. Nonetheless, the Party did keep increasing the number of Super Delegates through 1996, just in case.

Remember that story that surfaced about Harry Reid, trying to sell Obama to Democratic Party leaders by saying Obama spoke with no dialect, or whatever? Why did Harry have a need to campaign for Obama among Party leaders?

If it's really as simple as primary votes picking the nominee, unless we actually see the Super Delegates override, you just wait until the winner emerges from the primary, right? Then the Super Delegates and the rest of the Party either gets behind the nominee or the Super Delegates override for all to see, right?

BUT, Harry Reid was not making his sales pitch for an overried after the primaries ended. He was telling party leaders Obama should be the Party's nominee well before that.

That was the story behind that story about Harry Reid's unfortunate word choices. But, everyone seemed to focus only on the politically incorrect words Harry used while making his sales pitch upon behalf of Obama and few seemed to wonder why Harry was making the pitch in the first place. And, lo and behold, Obama came from 40 points behind Hillary to emerge the nominee.


Anyhoo, that was far more info than you requested. However, I'm guessing you knew the answer to your precise question before you posted it to me. So, I thought I'd try to give you your money's worth because to have answered only your question would have left a misleading impression.

Here are a couple of questions for you:

If all Super Delegates do and ever intend to do is rubber stamp a primary, then:

(a) why was Harry selling Obama to Party leaders well before the primaries ended; and

(b) why does the Democratic Party still maintain, and spend a lot of time money and energy on, Super Delegates?

[rucky]

3. They only have to zero out two districts, right?

Kucinich & Kaptur

If they zero out Kaptur, Jordan's kingdom will grow. And he was state high school wrestling champ, so as long as he has a district, his seat is safe for as long as he wants it.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "We're jerks and we deserve to be punished." - Republicons (R)

Honorable Americans already are acutely aware of this reality.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. While the results are fine with me, I still wish his seat were jeopardized

because his constituents would vote for a better candidate. What's troubling is that he'd probably be re-elected after his vote.

[Le Taz Hot]

6. I think a whole lot of these tea party

assholes are going to find themselves out of a job in the next election. People won't forget this.

[Weird Liberal Head]

7. Yeah

they will. People conveniently forget things inconvenient to the big business-water carriers (Republicans in Congress) with the help of the mainstream corporatist-conservative media.

[julian09]

8. If Ohio hasn't enough issues with republican Gov

and his anti labor, anti woman rights, pro privatization positions.
Now this tea party jerk, who thinks Boehner "from his own state", isn't wacky enough.
It's time that Gop stands up to the Tea Party minority and challenge them. They are destroying the Gop.

[Warpy]

10. Only if sensible people get off their sofas and vote him out

Maybe if we mined all the couches in the US we'd get more people who cared enough to keep morons like this one out of office.

I can't think of anything else that would do it.

[quakerboy]

12. The Republicans gerymandering him out of a district would do it

That was the point of the article.