This image, of a donkey poking his head up where the sun don't shine seems appropriate given the post-election whining from putative "moderates" in the party.
“Two conservative Democrats, Representatives Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Jim Matheson of Utah, went public on Thursday with their view that Ms. Pelosi should step aside as leader after devastating losses to House Republicans,” reports The Times’s Carl Hulse. “ ‘This is about being a team player,’ said Mr. Shuler in an interview, adding that he and others did not believe the party can recover if Ms. Pelosi remained at the helm. ‘I don’t see us having the ability to recruit moderate candidates if she were to be the minority leader.’ ” (more here)So, let me see, the Blue Dog caucus - to which Shuler and Matheson belong - gets it's butt handed to it (losing very nearly half its members in the House) while the Progressive Caucus loses nearly no seats and we should be recruiting more "moderates"?* Are you kidding? Look up "Dim Bulb" in the dictionary and there smiling out at you will be the images of Shuler & Matheson. I am not a big fan of Pelosi, but her mistake has been giving too much credence to wanna-be types like the Blue Dogs. Given a choice between a genuine Republican and impostors, voters seem to have chosen the real thing.
And, another thing, Shuler is going on about being a "team player" after his caucus has spent a couple of years more or less systematically undermining the Democratic leadership in the Congress? We get crappy, incoherent legislation because the leadership has to accommodate ridiculous demands from members like, well, like Shuler.
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* This from a little bit further down the page at The Times: "The Blue Dogs . . . were decimated on Tuesday, and now number only 28 members. Overall, most of the Democrats picked off in the Republican tide — 48 out of 60, by one party strategist’s count — were moderates representing swing districts, resulting in a Democratic caucus that is now more liberal than it was before." The point is reiterated in this report from npr.
