The Importance of Moderate and Conservative Democrats

On his show from the other night Lawrence O'Donnell explains very clearly why we need moderate and even conservative Democrats in Congress. Because the alternative often as not is a rightwing nutjob like Todd Akin. Not every state is Massachusetts. Not every seat represents a liberal or progressive district.

But if we can get a moderate to sit in the Senate for the rather conservative state of Missouri, we get to have Pat Leahy chairing the Judiciary Committee instead of Orrin Hatch, and we get Supreme Court justices who respect women's rights and minority rights and the rights of average working people instead of another rubber stamp for the Koch Brothers. We get representatives who can help broker deals and get actual legislation and responsibly funded budgets passed. We might even see a Congress that functions. But more importantly, by electing moderates like Claire McCaskill we get a Democrat sitting instead of a bizarrely ignorant Republican like Todd Akin. It's about numbers.

This year the GOP has purged several more conservative but rational members of Congress, who knew how to cooperate with others to get things done, and replaced them with fruitcakes who behave like ayatollahs, who refuse to compromise, who want the economy to fail so the black guy doesn't get re-elected, who want to turn America into a large non-union sweatshop, or, better yet, want to help their wealthy contributors ship more American jobs to Indonesia, who want to make rape victims bear the children of their rapists as long as their rapists didn't break their arm or their nose and said thank you afterwards. Think about this next time you criticize the moderates in Congress. They are an endangered species.

Republicans Are Bad For Business

According to this story in The New Republic, business leaders are starting to doubt their allegiance to the Republican Party.

Reason: the Republicans' willingness to endanger the entire economy to score political points, as happened last summer in the insane debt ceiling stand-off, which wound up lowering America's credit rating and affecting the interest rates we all pay. Uncertainty is the enemy of business, and Republicans are using uncertainty as a political weapon.

Besides, recent decades have shown Democratic presidencies are far better for American business than Republican ones.

Bloomberg reports that private sector jobs increase far more under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.

"Since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures.

"Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans. Through April, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans."

Business Week reports that investment dollars have yielded five times greater returns across the past five decades of Democratic presidencies than the same period's Republican presidents.

"$1,000 invested in a hypothetical S&P 500 tracking fund beginning when JFK was president and measured only during subsequent Democratic presidencies would have yielded $10,920 by the time the market closed yesterday. Alternatively, $1,000 invested when Richard Nixon was president and measured only during Republican presidencies would have yielded $2,087 on the last day of George W. Bush’s presidency."

USNews reports that Democratic presidents beat Republicans on 11 of 12 economic indicators. The source is a new book written by a business lawyer and the head of a financial services company. When we started writing, we did not cherry pick any of the data," says Deitrick, who said he knew only the stock market data when he began and "had no idea where the rest of the chips would fall."

"It was overwhelming and surprising to see the Democrats win on almost all of the economic indicators," said one of the authors.