Choked Blue

House Democrats who voted against healthcare: John Adler, Jason Altmire, Mike Arcuri, John Barrow, Marion Berry, Dan Boren, Rick Boucher, Bobby Bright, Ben Chandler, Travis Childers, Artur Davis, Lincoln Davis, Chet Edwards, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Tim Holden, Larry Kissell, Frank Kratovil, Dan Lipinski, Stephen Lynch, Jim Marshall, Jim Matheson, Mike McIntyre, Mike McMahon, Charlie Melancon, Walt Minnick, Glenn Nye, Collin Peterson, Mike Ross, Heath Shuler, Ike Skelton, Zack Space, John Tanner, Gene Taylor, Harry Teague.

Blue Dogs who lost their seats: Mike Arcuri, Allen Boyd, Bobby Bright, Christopher Carney, Travis Childers, Kathy Dahlkemper, Lincoln Davis, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, Baron Hill, Frank Kratovil, Betsy Markey, Jim Marshall, Walt Minnick, Harry Mitchell, Patrick Murphy, Scott Murphy, Glenn Nye, Earl Pomeroy, John Salazar, Zack Space, Gene Taylor, Charles Wilson.

Blue Dogs who tried unsuccessfully to get into the Senate: Brad Ellsworth, Charlie Melancon.

Blue Dogs who tried successfully to get into the Senate: None.

Blue Dogs who retired: Marion Berry, Bart Gordon, Dennis Moore, John Tanner.

Blue Dogs in races still too close to call: Sanford Bishop, Jim Costa, Gabrielle Giffords.

You have to laugh.

At their best, the House Democratic leaders should seek to accommodate and to reflect the Blue Dog Coalition, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, and the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, taking into account those who belong to more than one of these and those who belong to none. Within and under that, they must seek to accommodate and to reflect the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the huge number who do not and cannot belong to any of those three.

Not necessarily an enviable task. But a nobler one than doing nothing more than give the Tea Party whatever it is that it wants while nursing those whom it has merely not yet succeeded in supplanting. Nobler, and in the long run infinitely more politic. However, each of those factions, interests, or whatever you want to call them needs to recognise that accommodation works both ways, as well as being, again, infinitely more politic. Those who in any case voted against a landmark piece of legislation which had been heavily diluted in order to suit them have now in many cases paid the electoral price.

All that is missing from the Democratic Party at national level or with a national profile, such as Governors, or the Mayors of the largest cities, is any significant presence of economically left-wing social conservatives who oppose the war agenda and its attendant assaults on constitutional liberty; who see, for example, the connection between the exportation of jobs to sweatshops and the importation of those sweatshops themselves. Causes that are, as much as anything else, very dear indeed to the hearts of black America.