The Myth of the 2006 Elections

[Colin]

What the hell is this piece of an article?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/10/new.dems/index.html

First of all, Casey is no conservative. Only 4 of the new house dems can be classified as such. Tester is actually very liberal, more liberal then Hillary Clinton and John Kerry probably.

You're an idiot conan. You know that don't you? You're almost as dumb as the person who actually played Conan the Barbarian.

Getting back to the point there are two axes in politics. One is the economic scale and goes from left to right. The other is social scale which goes from left to right. This splits up the political world into four quadrants. The upper-left one being the Populist quadrant, economic left socially conservative, the lower-left is Liberal or Leftist, economic left socially liberal. The upper right one is conservative, economic right socially conservative. The lower right one is libertarian, economic right socially left.

This creates a picture much like this:



Thus while the stupid tradition left-right axis would place people almost at random on the basis of where you feel they are this positions them more exactly. Most of the newly elected Democrats, as Al said before, come form the top left quadrant, labeled as Authoritarian Left in this picture but usually rendered on the forum as Populist. This means that these people are usually social conservatives, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-religion, but also economically left-wing, anti-free trade, pro-minimum wage hikes, anti-business etc. So while in you're, I must say, wrong one dimensional world view all of these people that have one are died in the wool "liberals", God I hate that word since it's come to mean the opposite of what it actually means, in reality they are very different from those other Democrats in the Left Libertarian quadrant. They are as different from them as a Conservative is from a Libertarian.

For more information you can also read this very in depth article from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

House:

Kagen - *

Liberal.  Pro-choice to the point of birth, brags about how his father was an Anti-Vietnam activist.

Appleton is much more liberal than Green Bay, and definitely changed the balance of WI-08 when it was added to it in 2001.

Appleton voted for Bush, Green Bay for Kerry.

I do like Kagen though!

[Ben.]

Boyda is decidedly liberal.

er... no... she's pretty conservative and with her district you can understand why.

Overall there where a few liberals but a lot of the candidates elected for the Dems where good fits for their districts rather than good fits for some centralised dem leadership... as a result most where moderate to conservative, but you get plenty of liberals like Whitehouse and Brown, Tester is a libertarian more than anything with some conservative fiscal and social views (in short he's very hard to catagorise), Casey, Webb and McCatskill are all moderate to one extent or another, sure they have protectionist leanings and are generally critical of Bush on Iraq but so where most Dems this year.     

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

House:

Kagen - *

Liberal.  Pro-choice to the point of birth, brags about how his father was an Anti-Vietnam activist.

Appleton is much more liberal than Green Bay, and definitely changed the balance of WI-08 when it was added to it in 2001.

Appleton voted for Bush, Green Bay for Kerry.

Holy crap, you're right.  NE Wisconsin is a strange area, nearly impossible to understand even when you've lived there for nearly 20 years.  Green Bay is uber-conservative in that they hate anything different and new, and they hate intellect and ideas in general.  Yet they'll vote Democrat, which makes no sense to me.  Appleton is a much more reasonable place, more open and accepting, but more Republican.

Green Bay is a conservative Democrat city, and Appleton is a moderate Republican city.

[nclib]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are likely to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

Also John Sarbanes (MD) and Keith Ellison (MN), who replaced retiring Democrats, are likely to join.

The Progressive Caucus will be the largest Democratic House caucus in 2007.

[Ben.]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are expected to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

The Progressive Caucus will be the largest Democratic House caucus in 2007.

At the same time there's five or six who would be likley to join the "Blue Dog Coalition".

[Deano963]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are expected to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

The Progressive Caucus will be the largest Democratic House caucus in 2007.

At the same time there's five or six who would be likley to join the "Blue Dog Coalition".

Such as......?

[Adlai Stevenson]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are expected to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

The Progressive Caucus will be the largest Democratic House caucus in 2007.

At the same time there's five or six who would be likley to join the "Blue Dog Coalition".

Such as......?

Heath Shuler (D-NC)
Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
Joe Donnelly (D-IN)
Baron Holl (D-IN)
Nancy Boyda (D-KS)
Nick Lampson (D-TX)
Zack Space (D-OH)
Chris Carney (D-PA)

Just my guesses.

[TheresNoMoney]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are expected to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

I have never heard anything about Paul Hodes joining the Progressive Caucus (although it would be awesome if he did). Where did you get this info?

[Deano963]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are expected to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

The Progressive Caucus will be the largest Democratic House caucus in 2007.

At the same time there's five or six who would be likley to join the "Blue Dog Coalition".

Such as......?

Nick Lampson (D-TX)
Zack Space (D-OH)
Chris Carney (D-PA)

Just my guesses.

I doubt all of those.

[nclib]

Six of the new Democratic pick-ups are expected to join the Progressive Caucus:

Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)

I have never heard anything about Paul Hodes joining the Progressive Caucus (although it would be awesome if he did). Where did you get this info?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20061110/cm_thenation/1139093

All those Representatives were likely to join, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

[TheresNoMoney]

That would be awesome if Paul Hodes joined the progressive caucus. Thanks for the info.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It's sad to see how many people are buying into the right-wing media spin here. The fact is, the one seat we picked up in KY was won by a Planned Parenthood director.