A Progressive Sweep? Hardly (Joshua Frank)

Joshua Frank -- World News Trust

Nov. 11, 2006 -- John Nichols of The Nation claims that the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is now "crowded" as a result of last week's Midterm elections. Indeed the CPC will be growing by eight, which is almost on par with the growth of the conservative Blue Dog faction. Nick Burt and Joel Bleifuss of In These Times also chime in, writing that the Democratic takeover of the House was not a victory for centrist Democrats, but for left-leaning progressives. “CPC members will now be in a position to both promote progressive legislation and investigate administration wrongdoing."

All of these sentiments are extremely misleading. If you combine the growth of New Democrats and Blue Dogs, two of the more conservative Democratic groups in the House, their numbers far surpass the numbers and growth of the CPC this year.

“Do the math,” Nichols challenges. “While the Blue Dogs are predicting that the membership of their caucus may grow from 37 to 44 members, and the New Democrats hope their membership will edge up from the mid-forties to over the 50 mark, the Progressives are looking at the prospect that their caucus -- the most racially and regionally diverse ideological grouping in the Congress -- could number more than 70 members once the new House is seated.”

Okay, let’s do the math. According to the numbers Nichols provides, the Blue Dogs grew by seven seats (it’s actually going to be eight or nine) and the New Democrats by at least five. That’s a total of 12 seats gained by conservative Democrats providing no overlap between the two groups. The PCP, on the contrary, gained only eight seats. More importantly, the total number of seats now controlled by conservative Democrats in the House is well over 90, as compared to the CPC’s 70.

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http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=594

You know you can join more than one caucus right?

a horse's ass, and the OP never, ever responds to posts. Hope he/she proves me wrong in this thread.

Youth in government is required for maximum freshness.

Of the new members of Congress, five (all Democrats) will be under the age of 40 in January when they are sworn in.

on edit: i originally posted that one of the five was a repub. that was a mistake on my part. the list of new members I was looking at incorrectly had an "R" next to the name of one of the new members who is in fact a "D".

The entire Congress was elected, so the only gains that sould be gained are those Republicans that were ousted. These, by defnition, are not liberal districts, so it is obvious that centrists would be elected primarily.

The fact that the progressives added members equal to the moderates shows how strong the our ideas did resonate.

An analysis of the issues shows, however, that economic populism and transparent government won the day. Social issues took a back seat.

I wish one of our Dem spokespeople would bring that up.