Today: A Preview Of What The Next Four Years Will Look Like In The House

Pace Soren, I tend to agree with Pejman's view of the collapse of the bailout bill.  Quite frankly, I don't think Nancy Pelosi is smart enough to look as many steps ahead as Soren posits.  Maybe Barney Frank, but even then, there were too many variables at work for them to make that kind of a play.  At best, I'm willing to concede that she was indifferent to the outcome, seeing potential either way.  But given that everyone seems to agree that Republicans were expected to supply quite a few more votes than materialized, I think everyone thought the bill would pass.

What we're seeing, I think, is a preview into what awaits a likely President Obama.  I've written this before, but the Democrats have a party that is custom made for controlling Congress, but they don't have a party custom made for governing it.  The reason is simple.  Begin with some theory:  Keith Poole maintains a rank-ordering of Congress by looking at all votes cast in a given Congress.  I won't go into the details, but the bottom line is that the rank ordering is generated by a complex computer algorithm, not by any subjective measurement.

Go take a look at the rank ordering.  Democrats control 235 seats in Congress.  The most liberal Republican -- Wayne Gilchrist -- has a lifetime ACU of 60.  That's not real conservative -- and wasn't conservative enough for the voters in MD-01 -- but it is still pretty conservative.  Count 15 seats into the Republican caucus -- about number 250.  That's Todd Platts.  Todd Platts has a lifetime ACU of 76.  That is not ultra-conservative, but no one is going to mistake him for a liberal.  Count in 45 seats, to Latham.  He's a member of the class of 1994, with an ACU of 86.  (Again, Poole-Rosenthal is different than ACU, but I thought it would be useful to give some type of reference point for people).

Now take a look at the Democratic caucus.  Its most conservative member is Tom Barrow.  HIS ACU is lifetime is 47, and has gone as high as 76 last year (well into the Republican caucus).  15 in is John Tanner, who still has a lifetime ACU of 43.  Go in 45, and you find Congressman Costello, whose lifetime ACU is 34.  Go another 20 in, to 65, and you're at Congressman Ortiz, whose lifetime ACU is 33.  You're now a little less than 1/3 of the way into the Democratic caucus, and you have a member who votes with the ACU about 1/3 of the time.

In other words, well into the Democratic caucus, you have members with some pretty conservative instincts.  There's a reason for this -- many of them represent district carried by Republicans -- indeed, prior to the 2006 elections, 31 Democrats say in districts where Kerry got less than 47% of the vote.  Only five Republicans had that dubious distinction.  And that only got worse after the 2006 midterms.

This is the Democrats' strength, and their weakness.  Theirs is a broad-based, non-ideological coalition, which can play in the most liberal districts and the most conservative (Taylor represents a district that gave Richard Nixon his absolute highest share of the vote in 1972).

But it is also their weakness.  The end result is that John Boehner runs a caucus where he has to govern Wayne Gilchrist and John Shadegg.  This isn't always easy, but when I think of those two (or, say, Chris Smith and Jeff Flake), I don't shake my head in disbelief.  I'm guessing if those guys sat down to discuss politics, there would be disagreement, but no fisticuffs.

But Nancy Pelosi has to govern a caucus that includes Dan Boren and Tom Barrow and Gene Taylor (who repeatedly refused to vote for Gephardt for speaker in the 90s) on the one hand and Pete Stark and Barbara Lee (who voted against the Afghan War), and Mo Hinchey and Dennis Kucinich on the other.  How do you do that???

The answer is, you don't.  There's a reason Republicans have had so many Congressional victories over the past Congress, and its because there is still a working conservative majority in Congress, just as there has been since, with a few exceptions, 1938. 

Now take a look at the vote on the bailout bill.  It is a classic means-against-the-extremes vote in the Democratic caucus.  Pelosi lost the conservative members, people like Barrow, Taylor, Shuler and Matheson.  She also lost some of the most liberal members, like Sheila Jackson-Lee, Bobby Rush, and Lynn Woolsey, who thought the bill didn't regulate enough.

That's her problem.  If Pelosi tries to ram through a partisan bill, as some have suggested she will, she will lose most of her Republicans.  While she may gain back the Lynn Woolsey's and Bobby Rush's of her caucus by moving left, she will presumably lose more of the Borens and Ellsworths and Tanners of the caucus.  I'm not certain she can pass a more liberal version of the bill.

And what happens in a situation where Obama is the President?  Republicans then have no incentive to go along with much of anything controversial.  Pelosi will have to craft legislation to get the votes of Tim Matheson, who represents a district that will go for McCain by 40 points, without also angering Maxine Waters, who represents a district where McCain might not get 40 votes.

The one saving grace for Dems is that the financial collapse may well give Democrats a large enough caucus to give them flexibility to allow conservative members to go their own way.  But the problem is this:  The expanded caucus will largely come by winning yet more conservative-leaning districts.  Democrats can crow about winning AL-02 in the fall, but then they have to deal with Bobby Bright, who considered running as a Republican, and who is an unlikely footsolider for President Obama.  Remember, in 1992 (which many thought was the end of the Reagan Revolution), Democrats had 258 members.  They had to struggle to get through pretty minor changes such raising the top income tax bracket 6%, assault weapons ban, don't ask, don't tell -- most of these barely passed Congress -- and they lost 52 seats.

In the end, the discussion of a New Deal re-alignment and 30 years of Democratic control is far oversold, and ignores the reality of the New Deal re-alignment.  I've written pretty extensively on this, but the New Deal alignment was over as of 1937, and things had reverted to normal.  But for World War II and Hitler's invasion of Poland, Roosevelt would have lost, the Democrats would have lost control of Congress, and the New Deal likely would have been repealed.  What saved the Democrats' bacon was a war that allowed the economy to recover, and the repeal of many New Deal measures in the immediate Post-War era (and during the war, as cost-saving measures).

I've written before that winning the Presidency might not be a good thing.  As one commenter put it, winning it might be offering a thirsty man a drink from a poisoned chalice.  People may blame the Republicans for the panic in the short term.  But people have short memories, and after about a year, if things don't get better, it will be Obama's recession.