Last week the three most powerful Democrats in the state of West Virginia — Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Senator Joe Manchin and Rep. Nick Rahall – made a public display of turning their backs on President Obama by announcing plans to skip the Democratic National Convention.
The president lost West Virginia in 2008 and his polling there remains weak. So local Democrats have decided they have no problem embarrassing the man whose name will be on the top of their ticket in November.
The same political distancing act is on display in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district. Conservative Democrat Mark Critz also says he has better things to do than go to the convention. Rep. Critz said he will be working in his district instead of “focusing on the agendas of the political parties.”
In the harsh, polarized world of Washington politics, Republicans take delight in opposing every legislative proposal from President Obama.
But when the history of Obama’s first term is written, conservative Democrats will also be remembered for regularly throwing wrenches into any plans coming from this president.
The conservative Democrats — mostly elected from swing states in the anti-President George W. Bush wave elections of 2006 and 2008 — gave the president headaches even when Democrats controlled the House and Senate.
The best example was the fight over healthcare reform.
Republicans did not give the president a single vote despite a plan that followed previous GOP proposals — most notably Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts law — and excludes a public option for insurance. That left the president in need of every Democrat’s vote. Note that liberal Democrats who wanted a public option did not abandon the president.
But those conservative Democrats squeezed the Obama Team for concessions and amendments that allowed Republican critics to disparage the negotiations as “Chicago-
style” bribery used to win support for a bad proposal.
Words and phrases such as “kickbacks” and “sausage making” became associated with healthcare reform. And they became Republican talking points that drove down public support for the healthcare deal even as most Americans praised the individual changes the bill achieved.
The president again had trouble with conservative Democrats in April when he said he would veto any transportation bill that included the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. Conservative Democrats walked out on the president when 69 of them joined the GOP to vote legislation that included the oil sands pipeline.
And in the last week, seven conservative Senate Democrats undercut the president’s negotiations with Republicans over a budget deal. They have declined to adopt the president’s negotiating position against another extension of the Bush-era income tax rates.
The move weakens Obama in negotiations with the GOP.
Read More at The Hill
