How far right (or left) will the Party move next year?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

We have an interesting collision of factors here.

Most losers this year will be "moderate" Dems. (Being from more "moderate" districts.)

The Party as represented in congress will be smaller and more liberal.

The President (read as shorthand for the prez, the administration and current national Party apparatus) has known for some time that this was not going to be a good election and has been seeking to arrange things so that something called "the left" will be blamed for defeat.

This is weird since no sane person can mount a cogent argument as to how anything called "the left" has been much of an inconvenience for the administration/Party. Jay Leno is more influential politically than the entire left-o-sphere combined. And there has been no extreme legislation passed nor any good legislation prevented by "the left."

Blaming the powerless does, however, have its PR advantages. Most people don't like "the left" (whatever it is) so blaming the left is a free shot.

So what will give? Will a congressional Democratic caucus that will be liberal accede to a scapegoating of liberals?

Will the remaining caucus support further right policies despite being representatives of further left districts?

It will be an interesting period in Party history.

And if we hold both houses it will really be wild because in that case we will not have effective voting majorities in either house while the Party in congress is more concentratedly liberal... yet will be expected to govern while needing pug cooperation to do anything.

And even if we wanted to move the Party to the right, where is there to go? We are so close to the center-line that the only policies to the right of our very moderate current stances are actually insane... monstrous and destructive. There are no respectable RW ideas left. We absorbed them all while the RW booked passage to crazy-town.

So how does one compromise with destructive madness?

[rainy]

1. The party will move to the left. It couldn't go left right off the bat

we would lose too big. The real progressive work will begin in ernest after Obama gets elected for the second time.

[Edweird]

2. DLC = GOP, So as far right as possible while still sucking slightly less than the r's.

[xchrom]

3. Depends on how effective folks like bloomberg are

At getting 'moderates' elected. In part.

If guys like him succeed in pushing back
Against the Tea nuts and get more
'moderate' dems elected - beholden to
Corporate money -- well Katy bar the door.

[mmonk]

4. It will continue to move right unless the people stand up

and/or understand how we got here. The big money is arrayed against the common citizen.

[BzaDem]

5. I don't think it will matter. We arent going to get much of legislation done over the next 2-6 years

I think the Republicans will definitely take the House, and the tea party wing of the party will not allow any compromise. This will probably culminate into a long government shutdown, of which I think (and hope) Obama will win. But after that, I still don't see much legislation getting through other than appropriations bills to fund the government.

While we will probably hold the Senate in 2010, we will almost certainly lose it in 2012 (given we will be defending 22 seats, of which many are in marginal districts, while Republicans will be defending only 9 primarily safe seats with one exception). 2014 will also likely be unkind to our prospects of retaking the Senate (I doubt Begich will win in Alaska again, etc), as the "6 year itch" often hurts the party in the Whitehouse for the past 6 years (and we will still have far more seats to defend than Republicans).

So in the end, I think it will really come down to how much Obama can get done without additional legislation, how much he chooses to get done without additional legislation, and how much damage Republicans can cause by defunding and shutting down the government.

[Fumesucker]

6. The party moves inexorably to the right, with the occasional head fake to the left..

Right before elections..

Bipartisanship uber alles!

[ThomWV]

7. Until the Party moves to the left it will not rebound

It was the perceived move to the left that brought out voters in 2010 and it is the shattering of that perception that will keep them home in November.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. If the Democratic Party loses, and stays in power, it will move right.

The reason, of course, is because the right won.

Since the right won, that must be what the American people want.

Since the American people who voted wanted a more right wing government, the Democrats will hear that message and move right. This will be compounded by the fact that all those new minted Republicans will have greater numbers to push any kind of legislation father right, even if they don't have a majority. In the Senate, where Republicans, along with a few Centrist and Center Right Democrats, have been successful at forcing legislation to the right, this will make things far worse. Even in the House, should Pelosi succeed in holing on to the house, will find that blue dogs with a larger Republican minority are able to stop most liberal legislation.