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March 24, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Are Democrats, who aren’t 100-percent Obama, lapdogs?

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — When I hear a call from progressives to mobilize against some obstructionist politicians, I’m ready to respond with e-mails or phone calls to the enemy camps to let them know where I stand.

When I read about the national “Dog the Blue Dogs” campaign against conservative Democrats, my liberal antennae began wiggling in eager anticipation.

True, two of the main targets of the campaign are my U.S. congressman, Brad Ellsworth, and Indiana’s U.S. senator, Evan Bayh. But an obstructionist is an obstructionist, even if he’s your voice in D.C.

The dog-the-dogs movement was created by Campaign for America’s Future, a decidedly liberal organization of folks who — like a lot of us — heard some of our favorite music being played during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

The songs we heard were about a grown-up, big-picture perspective of this nation’s real problems — oxymoronic health care, 19th-century energy and environment models, over-regulated but under-funded public education, big business squeezing the life out of the middle- and working-class while the wealthy, Wall Street and Washington lobbyists enjoy government protection.

We heard the songs, too, about how difficult, expensive and elongated the solving of those problems would be — and we understood why and were OK with that.

We knew, however, that Obama is no socialist, as conservatives portray him to be. Many of us recognized that Obama is not even a screaming liberal and, on more than a few issues, is barely a liberal at all — again, no matter what the right says.

But we diehard progressives knew that Obama and his value system were our best hope to make some, well, progress as a nation instead of to lie dead in the water or float backward.

We were realistic. Or at least, I thought we were. Then I sat in on a telephone news conference yesterday with three of the “Dog the Blue Dogs” leaders, and I wasn’t certain anymore about “we.”

As I mentioned, the group, which includes Campaign for America’s Future and an admirable (to me) grass-roots coalition, USAction, is encouraging progressives to “push against conservative Democrats who are blocking the reforms President Obama promised during the campaign.”

The push looks like contacting these Democrats to tell them “not to be the lapdogs for the Dr. No’s on the right who want to obstruct the administration’s common-sense agenda.”

Sixty-seven Democratic members of the House and Senate have been identified as lapdog/collaborators, with eight earning color photos on the dog-the-dogs Web page:

Bayh, who has been very public about his disagreements with some of the president’s spending plans, leads the pack of senators, Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Ben Nelson (Nebraska) and Mary Landrieu (Louisiana). Ellsworth is sandwiched among the representatives between Alabama’s Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith, who are followed by Mississippi’s Gene Taylor.

During the telephone news conference, a speaker, the passionate and bright Jane Hamsher (firedoglake.com), said the group’s effort was “primarily an education campaign” to make people aware of what their congressional representatives are doing — kow-towing to big business special interests.

When Q&A; time came, a reporter from the Gannett newspaper chain asked the presenters what I considered the $64,000 question. She prefaced it by saying that a lot of the lapdog Democrats represent conservative areas. Indiana, for example, “gets 95 percent of its power from coal,” she said, thus maybe giving ordinary Hoosiers a rooting interest in what is capped and traded.

“Why do you assume he [Bayh] kow-tows to special interests and not to constituents?” the reporter asked.

Nobody really answered that question.

Hamsher beat on Bayh’s stance on the “cram-down” mortgage default bill. Robert Borosage, the thoughtful co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, rapped Bayh’s conservative plea for the government to tighten its spending belt as “simply wrong-headed.” USAction’s William McNary said Bayh needed to “articulate” to the White House whatever changes he wanted to see in the president’s budget, but “not join with Republicans to defeat an up or down vote” of the budget.

The trio’s take seemed to be that because Obama won Indiana, a majority here would support his sweeping plan if only people were educated about how good it is for them. Congressional Democrats who publicly buck the White House either don’t understand the program or are so cowed by big special interests, they’re ignoring the will of the people who gave Obama the presidency.

It was only a few hours after the dog-dogs news conference that I remembered a few things:

Obama won Indiana by 1 percent of the vote, losing 77 of 92 counties. Here in the 8th District, he was thumped, while Ellsworth swept into his second term with nearly 67 percent of the vote.

We Hoosiers really do draw 95 percent of our power from coal. As a result, Indiana is the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the nation, trailing Wyoming. As a liberal, anti-coal Hoosier friend puts it: “Cometh a carbon tax or forced carbon sequestration, and the coal utilities are toast. And this state will be hurting.”

My politics and social values tell me that 95 percent and the No. 2 CO2-spewing spot are shameful and must change. But the sober realist in me knows the change will take considerable time and many more carrots than sticks to create the necessary political will.

Trying to make this change in a time of astounding economic instability will take divine intervention.

I wish that Brad Ellsworth and Evan Bayh were elected in Indiana because they are liberal Democrats. But they weren’t and aren’t. To accuse them of being lapdogs who sell out their constituents because they openly balk at some of the president’s spending plan, is the kind of thinking that makes my liberal antennae droop.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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