Sadly, other obligations kept me from participating in yesterday's blogosphere wide discussion on Ellen Tauscher, which was spurred on by
the Washington Post's article on how she could face a difficult primary challenge. Even though I am late to the fray, I wanted to give further emphasis to
what BooMan pointed out yesterday, which might just be the most salient bit of commentary I have ever seen about Tauscher. There have long been self-hating Democrats, who tend to congregate within what I have termed the DLC-nexus. However, Tauscher takes self-hating a step further. For at least six years,
she has openly feared having more Democrats in her district (emphasis in original):
Let's go over this slowly. Ellen Tauscher's 10th district was redrawn in 2001 to make it much more Democratic, and Tauscher interpreted this as punishment for supporting Steny Hoyer over Nancy Pelosi for minority whip.
Since at least 2001, and most likely much earlier, Ellen Tauscher has viewed her biggest danger to re-election coming from a Democratic primary challenger, not from a Republican in the general election. Why else would she be upset that her district changed from being a "swing" district to a solidly Democratic district? She is afraid of having more Democrats in her district. She views having more Democrats in her district as a danger to her re-election chances. She views having more Democrats in her district as a form of punishment. She doesn't want to represent a solidly Democratic district.
As BooMan wrote in response to this:
How do you know when a Democrat is really not on your side? There are many ways, and the voting record is not always the best indicator. But I don't know that I have ever seen a better indicator than [this]
The primary strategy of
Working for Us is to target incumbents who are out of step with their districts in primaries. Is it even possible to be more out of step with your district than to view its residents as a form of punishment hoisted upon you? I can't think of a way. Is it even possible to be more destructive to your party than to actively hope there are fewer members of your party in your district? Once again, I can't think of a way.
There is a reason Ellen Tauscher has feared a primary challenge for years, even before the blogosphere and Working for Us came onto the scene. The reason is that she is afraid of Democrats and doesn't want to represent Democrats. Knowing that she cannot justify much of what she does and says to the majority of rank and file democrats, she would much rather be in a swing district, where she can justify every anti-Democratic thing she does by saying "vote for me, or Republicans will take the seat." Since her solidly blue district makes her unable to say that, she has long been wary of Democrats deciding to dump her. The netroots and Working for Us are merely catalysts to a possibility that has been around for a long time.
I don't know if Ellen Tauscher can be defeated in a primary, since that is an extremely difficult thing to do, but given her feelings toward Democrats it does seem pretty obvious that if she is defeated in a primary she will go the CA-10 for Tauscher route, ala Lieberman in Connecticut. There is no way that someone who hates and fears Democrats this much will respect the decisions of its voters in a primary election and simply step aside the event of defeat. Thus, any campaign targeting Tauscher will probably require a sustainable Republican in the race, so that she can't soak up Republican votes in the event of an Alan Schlessinger, pathetic Republican scenario. Who knows, Tauscher may just flip to the Republican side altogether, making her the real threat to a moderate Republican taking the district, not anyone else.
