Sean Braisted:

Rep. Jim Cooper is more than happy to lend a hand to Republicans who want to ignore Democratic successes in Congressional special elections in favor of using the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Florida as barometers for the mood of the country....

Weakening the head of your party going into the mid-terms is the surest way towards seeing a change in partisan control of Congress. If you sound, act, and vote like a Republican in all things but the vote for Speaker of the house...why wouldn't voters just elect Republicans?

GoldnI:

Running away from your job lest the tea-baggers say mean things is not the way to win more seats, Congressman. It only makes you look afraid--and of what? Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck? The people protesting outside of the Capitol with the Holocaust poster and trying to equate it to the healthcare plan (cue the "Leftist plant!" cry in 5, 4, 3...)? I'm not saying you have to go all Alan Grayson on us, but now is not the time to back down.

This is surely the lesson that Jim Cooper wants politicians and political observers alike to draw from the 2009 election results - that Blue Dog Democrats, like himself, need to become more oppositional to White House priorities and more obstructionist to Democratic legislation if they stand any chance of winning. Here's Cooper speaking to the Los Angeles Times yesterday:

"There are going to be a lot more tensions between the White House and Congress," predicted Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats. "They've been under the surface so far -- and they're going to come out in the open."...

...exit polls indicate that Obama remains relatively popular with voters, even among those who chose Republican candidates Tuesday.

But "lesser mortals need to be worried about their independent voters," Cooper said, "because they have shifted strongly against Democrats in recent months. Independent voters tend to look at the issue, not the party, and they don't like a lot of what Congress has done."

Problem is, Cooper's curiously self-serving analysis gets it exactly wrong.

To start, Cooper, lesser mortal that he is, would be better off worrying about his own "independent voters," especially on health care. Independents in TN-05 both strongly disapprove of Cooper's actions on health care and strongly favor "creating a new public health insurance plan that anyone can purchase."

But more importantly, the Blue Dogs have a more fundamental misunderstanding of the lay of the land for the 2010 midterms. Namely, they are either unwilling or unable to see the clear evidence that 2010 will be a base election, and that firing up the base, especially in blue districts like Cooper's, is the only path to avoid losses. Here's Taegan Goddard's take:

Throughout the campaign, virtually every poll showed a lack of Democratic enthusiasm for their candidates this year. In fact, while Republican turnout yesterday in Virginia and New Jersey was consistent with last year, Democratic turnout collapsed.

Looking ahead to next year's midterm elections, Democrats must energize their base if they hope to do well. There is no better way to get your voters to stay home than by failing to deliver on your agenda. That should be the biggest takeaway from last night's results for Democrats.

PPP pollster Tom Jensen agrees:

Nailing down some solid accomplishments, like passing health care, should get the Democratic base a little more energized about coming out next year to vote to continue the progress. But that won't save them today.

Chuck Todd agrees:

"VA numbers tell you there was a BIG enthusiasm gap between GOPers and Dems."

As does Mike Lux:

In the face of a weak economy, angry voters, and a discouraged Democratic base, Democrats have exactly one chance at surviving the elections a year from now: deliver the goods.

You ran on change in 2008, and voters don't feel like things have changed enough. You ran on taking on the powerful special interests and they still have too much power. You can't afford to get even more cautious, to change things even less, to take on the powerful not so much. We need health care reform that checks the power of the big insurers, and banking policy that ends the overwhelming power of the big banks. We need to produce good jobs now, and not wait for the trickle down policy of waiting for the banks to someday lend to business which will someday hire workers.

Yet, getting "more cautious" and refusing even more to take on entrenched corporate interests seems to be exactly what Jim Cooper is now proposing. Of course, Cooper should know better - as he himself found out in 1994, depressing your base (by say, for instance, scuttling health care reform) is a recipe for electoral suicide for Democrats. And today he finds himself representing a much more Democratic district than he did when he embarked on a statewide run in 1994, one that heavily supported Barack Obama one year ago and wants to see his domestic priorities enacted.

Jeff Woods writes at the Nashville Scene that this is "proof" Cooper isn't worried about a primary challenge:

"If you need proof that he's not the least bit worried about a Daily Kos-inspired challenge from the left, here it is. You won't hear Cooper challenging Democrats to stand tall and stay true to their principles. To the contrary, Cooper is telling his Blue Dog buddies to run like scalded dogs."

But it's exactly this attitude of Cooper's and other Blue Dogs that both makes Democratic primary challenges to Blue Dogs even more viable, and makes them more vulnerable in general elections in Democratic districts like TN-05. To win in any election in 2010, Blue Dogs need to ensure that the Democratic base is energized and that they have real results to take back to their constituents and run on. If not, furious Independents and a depressed Democratic turnout will ensure that it's the "lesser mortals" in the Blue Dog Coalition who will take the bulk of losses in 2010 - in both primaries and general elections.

Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a leader of the moderate-conservative "Blue Dogs," called the result "a wake-up call for Congress. A tidal wave could be coming."

- Jim Cooper to David Broder, today, after yesterday's elections which featured Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey.

Taken from the South's longtime description of a party loyalist as one who would vote for a yellow dog if it were on the ballot as a Democrat, the "Blue Dog" moniker was taken by members of The Coalition because their moderate-to-conservative-views had been "choked blue" by their party in the years leading up to the 1994 election.

- "The Blue Dog Coalition: 15 Years of Leadership", from the Blue Dog Coalition's official website.

One key failure of the 1994 campaign was the Democratic party's feeble and belated effort to motivate the party's base.... Running as center-right Democrats didn't save candidates like Jim Cooper, the man who spent much of 1994 undercutting the Clinton health initiative. If Democrats are to win even some seats in culturally conservative regions where there is little progressive infrastructure, they will do it by running as economic progressives....

- Robert Kuttner, writing about Democrats' 1994 election losses in the American Prospect, December 1st 1994

Tennessee contributed to the Republican push to control the Senate as the party picked up two seats there.... Fred Thompson, a former investigator for the Republicans on the Watergate committee, defeated Representative Jim Cooper, a Democrat. Mr. Cooper's campaign was heavily financed by medical industry representatives who liked his moderate alternative to the President's health care proposal.

- "THE 1994 ELECTIONS: STATE BT STATE; South", NY Times, November 9, 1994

The more things change...

Via C-SPAN's archives, Rep. Jim Cooper (then TN-04) on the importance of "bipartisanship" in health care reform:

"The president gave an excellent pep talk today. Both he and the first lady did an excellent job highlighting to the American people the importance of this issue, the necessity for change, and the importance of reaching the goal of universal coverage for all Americans. Most members of Congress are fully in support of those goals. The only question is how best to achieve them. But I do think we'll pass health care reform in this Congress."...

"Based on newspaper reports, it doesn't seem as if the President's proposal will achieve universal coverage until the year 1998. We think we can achieve universal coverage on the same timetable with the President. We're both working hard to achieve the same goal, which is a comprehensive benefits package for all Americans. As the President has said on many occasions, there are differing views on how best to achieve that. The president has also said there is plenty of room for honest disagreement. And I said no less than three times today, there is no pride of authorship. We don't have any pride of authorship either, in fact, we offered them our whole bill. We are the only bill with bipartisan support. We think bipartisanship is really important. There was one Republican Senator that I could find standing behind the president and first lady today. There need to be more. We need to have a genuine bipartisan reform effort...

"I think most Americans wanted President Clinton to excel on domestic issues. They felt shortchanged by the Bush administration and their excessive focus on foreign policy issues. Health care is the number one domestic policy issue. It's an issue that strikes every family and every home in this great country. We've got to reform health care, we've got to get the solution right. We've got to get good medicine across this great land. And I think that's what we'll be struggling to do in the next 12 months."...

"The real decision makers in this debate won't be in the White House or Congress, they won't be lobbyists, they'll be the folks back home, as they decide for themselves what's good medicine for them and their families....

"Lots of groups have lots of different views on this debate. Some are for the Clinton plan, some are opposed to the Clinton plan, some are for part of the Clinton plan, some are opposed to parts. There must be 10,000 health care lobbyists in America, they're all trying to make their views known. But the real lobbyists who are important, the real folks who are important are the folks back home. They're the ones around the kitchen tables of America who will be deciding whether this plan is good medicine or not, whether it can be improved or whether it's perfect as is, whether they want to pick up an idea from the Senate or the House, from Republicans or from Democrats. The key is bipartisanship. As was said many times today, this is the biggest policy initiative perhaps since the Social Security Act itself. It's important that we draw on the collective wisdom of both parties. And so far, ours is the only proposal to have genuine bipartisan support, genuine bipartisan enthusiasm....

"Health care reform is different. This is not an abstract issue. This is not a foreign policy issue. This is an issue that affects every family, every human being in this great country of ours. I think people of good will in both parties want to work together to craft a solution that won't pass by one vote, but will pass by 100 votes, or maybe even more, a consensus measure so that all Americans can get health insurance if they want it, they can keep it if they switch jobs or get sick or whatever. The security that the President has promised is very important in health care reform. Most of us agree with that, the only question is how best to achieve it. Do we need a 1,600 page bill to do it? Is 1,300 pages right? Is 300 pages right? That's open to legitimate debate."

A Jim Cooper constituent comments today in a post on BuzzFlash about the recent rise of a tea-party endorsed third-party candidate in the special election in upstate New York:

I am writing from Jim Cooper's (D-TN) district, a very liberal blue district represented by one of the most visible Blue Dogs.

God help us from yet another Blue Dog. What good is a Blue Dog? Yeah, you can have their votes 90% of the time when you don't need them. But when it is crunch time, there they are in the caucus carrying water for the Republicans, and more specifically corporations. Look, I understand and support Blue Dogs who are running in reddish-purple districts. They have to do what they have to do. But all too often, Blue Dogs, such as Jim Cooper, represent very liberal districts. Usually, these types of Blue Dogs have been bought and paid for by corporations.

Those of you who "ain't from around here" probably do not know that Nashville is one of the major national hubs of healthcare.... So, who do you think Cooper really represents in the healthcare debate?

NY-23 is a dark red district that has been represented by Republicans for over a century, and as such was fertile ground for a right-wing extremist challenge like this. The Blue Dog Democratic nominee here was likely to lose anyway -- splitting the right-wing vote in two was his only possible path to victory.

But more broadly speaking, while Blue Dogs still are able to achieve major policy successes like recently helping to kill the most robust public option under consideration in the House, they seem to find themselves with waning national influence, as evidenced by their fundraising performance:

It’s official. The Blue Dog’s fundraising slowdown was not just a symptom of the dog days of summer. Newly released public disclosure forms indicate that over September, the coalition’s PAC took in its smallest monthly total yet this year.

Our analysis of the fiscally conservative and increasingly influential Blue Dog Coalition and its funding noted that the group’s political action committee had averaged more than $176,000 in receipts from other PACs over the first half of 2009. Their monthly haul dropped to a surprisingly low $27,000 in July, rebounded somewhat in August, and but then dropped again to just $12,500 in September.

Marcy Wheeler notes:

Obviously, this is not just about health care–Blue Dogs suck at the teat of a range of onerous business interests. But at a time when Blue Dogs might be exercising maximum influence, they’re not getting any return as a group. I wonder if that stems from a lack of leadership as a block–particularly Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s repeated embarrassment as Raul Grijalva repeatedly out-whipped her on the public option....

Obviously, this is just two or three months data. But it raises the possibility that the Blue Dogs, as a block, are losing some of their clout.

We'll really be able to see what type of "return" Blue Dogs and Cooper get in the coming months, as the health care industry begins to "thank" them for their work weakening reform.

Brantley Hargrove has written a 4,000+ word article in this week's Nashville Scene that examines Jim Cooper's instrumental and complex role in killing Bill Clinton's health care reform in 1994, and the similarities and differences in 2009:

Eventually, the game would go down as a loss for almost every player concerned—including the millions of Americans who watched the promise of health care coverage evaporate in puffs of hot air. Now, 15 years later, the battle for health care is being fought once more—and in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again.

Hargrove goes on to describe at some length Rep. Cooper's intransigent insistence - then and now - on pushing his own legislation, even if that meant the death of wider reform and, surely just coincidentally, the filling of Cooper's campaign coffers with massive amounts of insurance company and health care industry contributions. This was how he describes 1994 from Cooper's perspective:

[Cooper] was tired of withholding his own bill. He'd found a co-sponsor in Sen. John Breaux, a fellow New Democrat from Louisiana. "I offered [the Clintons] my whole bill," Cooper recalls. "For six months I didn't even introduce my own bill because I wanted them to have it. Because I had found the middle ground. But all they wanted to do was this strategy of going way to the left in the House, then go to the middle."

According to The System, a breathtakingly well-sourced post-mortem published in 1996 by Washington Post reporters Haynes Johnson and David Broder, the first lady believed Cooper's political ambitions drove him. A Senate seat had opened up in Tennessee, and his gaze was fixed on it. To be sure, his bill made him a darling to insurance companies and the health care industry. In the last six months of 1993 alone, the consumer organization Citizen Action reported at the time, his campaign raked in nearly $200,000 from health and insurance interests.

Cooper, of course, was subsequently crushed in that open-seat Senate race in 1994, and in 2002 was elected to Congress by voters of a much more Democratic district. Now, in 2009, Cooper is reprising the same role of relying on the stance of stubborn support for only his own proposals to slow down the process and ensure he and his Blue Dog colleagues can weaken the final product as much as possible (with the threat to kill it as he did in 1994 always implicit as well):

This influence, however, worries some. Will Cooper doggedly hang on to a model based on his own intellectual preferences—letting, as he often says, the best become the enemy of the good? At almost every speaking engagement, Cooper mentions the Wyden-Bennett legislation—a fiscally conservative bill that would create state-based purchasing pools, an indvidual mandate and near universal coverage by roughly 2014 without adding to the deficit. The bill is not under consideration, giving some Democrats flashbacks to his unyielding commitment to his own bill in the 1990s. Cooper says he's just trying to be realistic about what can actually pass in the Senate.

And finally, as with many interviews with Jim Cooper about the Clinton years that last longer than 5 seconds, he couldn't help himself from taking a shot at Secretary of State Clinton, this time joking about President Clinton's courting of him during the 1994 health care fight while Cooper was trying with all his ability to derail Hillary Clinton's health care plan by bringing up their marital relationship:

Cooper was "a real fraud. I hope he doesn't make it to this place," Johnson and Broder report that [Sen. Jay] Rockefeller said, referring to the U.S. Senate. Ironically, this was right about the time President Clinton was taking on speaking engagements for Cooper and inviting him to go jogging. Cooper shrugs it off today with a joke: "He knows what Hillary's anger is like."

You stay classy, Jim Cooper.

Chalk this up as a major win for Jim Cooper and his corporate health insurance industry contributors, and a loss for his constituents in desperate need of bold health care reform - Blue Dogs have defeated the most robust public option in the House:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to unveil a health overhaul bill Thursday that includes the public health insurance option favored by her party's centrists.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) will introduce a plan similar to what a group of Blue Dog Democrats negotiated in July to get a healthcare bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The proposal calls for the officials who run the public plan to negotiate rates individually with physicians and hospitals.

Jon Walker's take at FDL Action:

The Blue Dogs fought hard and they won a big victory for the for-profit health insurance companies. If I were an insurance company CEO, I would be writing each of them a very large thank you note (i.e. a campaign contribution). Of course, today was a huge defeat for the American taxpayer, serious health care reform, and working class Americans who are going to be denied a robust public option which could have saved them thousands of dollars.

Indeed, Rep. Cooper had been strongly opposed to a robust public option tied to Medicare rates, despite strong support for a public option from his constituents. Back in June, Jim Cooper and the Blue Dogs attempted to stall progress on health care reform specifically over the issue of making sure rates were not tied to Medicare (and would therefore be less effective in driving down costs).

And you can already see the health care industry "thank you notes" to Jim Cooper starting to pile up here -- with many more sure to arrive in the coming weeks and months.

Jeff Woods picks up this morning on a recent opinion piece by longtime Democratic strategist Bob Shrum that mentions the potential backlash Blue Dogs like Jim Cooper may face in 2010 over obstructionism on health care reform. Shrum uses Cooper's experience in 1994 - losing his Senate race badly to Fred Thompson - as a warning to the 2010 version of Jim Cooper:

First, the history. Blue Dog Democrats who abandoned Bill Clinton on health care in 1994 were conspicuous among the casualties of that November's congressional elections. Their flight from Clinton alienated Democrats without placating other voters. Just ask Sen. David McCurdy of Oklahoma or Sen. Jim Cooper of Tennessee.

Oops, they're not senators. Both were favorites who lost their respective races after calculated decisions to turn away from Clintoncare. If they had stayed the course, they might not have won; but in 1994, they and others proved that apostasy is not the path to victory. (McCurdy now runs a trade association. Cooper is back in Congress after eight years in the wilderness.)

Woods argues forcefully but anecdotally that it was not Cooper's primary role in killing health care reform in the 90's that sank his Senate campaign, but rather the national Republican wave and Bill Clinton's rising unpopularity in Tennessee:

If anything, Cooper was helped in that election by his opposition to Clintoncare. Bill Clinton was about as popular as Pol Pot in this state then.

As for Shrum's larger point--"that Democrats are better off being Democrats than trying to triangulate themselves into some dubious pale blue mutation"--it's hard to know whether that's true in Tennessee. Liberals make the argument all the time. But how long has it been since anyone in Tennessee won a statewide election by running as a true Democrat?

Cooper lost that open seat Senate race in 1994 by a margin of 61% to 38%. If he was indeed "helped in that election" by his work killing health care reform, it's hard to imagine how poorly those who believe so think Cooper would have done otherwise.

But the larger point that the author of the post misses is this: in 1994, Cooper was representing a different, more conservative Congressional District, and running for a statewide office. In 2010 he will be running for re-election in a strongly Democratic district whose voters strongly support healthcare reform including a robust public option which Cooper has indicated he will not support.

Whether "Democrats are better off being Democrats than trying to triangulate themselves into some dubious pale blue mutation" is question that seems to have been largely answered in recent cycles, but might still be one worth debating in elections in conservative districts and red states. In TN-05, though, where Obama won 56% of the vote in 2008 and 60% of all voters and 77% of Democrats disapprove of Cooper's actions on health care, it is simply not.

Democrats in districts like Jim Cooper's are certainly better off being Democrats, if they want to avoid the same fate of 15 years ago.

Ryan Grim of Huffington Post got Jim Cooper on the record on at least one specific version of the public option (of the "18" he has said he may or may not support):

UPDATE II: Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) supports a public option with negotiated rates, which the progressive caucus opposes. He was asked by HuffPost if he would oppose the bill it had a stronger public option. "As the president said this weekend, he'd like to see a public option but he's not insisting on it," he said. "This is not, you know, a dominant issue."

That certainly doesn't sound like the language a Representative who is fighting for his constituents, who support a public option by a substantial margin.

But the larger context here is that Cooper's "fiscally conservative" Blue Dogs have been coming apart at the seams over the public option, even if it is supposedly "not a dominant issue". Here's Congresswomen Jane Harman and Loretta Sanchez earlier this month, writing in The Hill:

Throughout the congressional health care debate, considerable attention has focused on the Blue Dog Coalition - a group of House Democrats committed to fiscal responsibility and budget discipline.

We're Blue Dogs, too, and we believe in the group's core principles. But we've broken with our Blue Dog sisters and brothers over their lukewarm support for the public insurance option a concept we think must be part of a successful health care reform package.

Far from being an option of last resort or a government-funded takeover of the country's health care system, we see the public option as a critical market mechanism that will drive down costs, foster competition and expand Americans' insurance choices.

This is not just smart health care policy, it is smart economic policy.

The last sentence is the crux of the matter, and the reason why Blue Dogs are fracturing on this. The Congressional Budget Office has scored the "robust" public option as reducing the deficit more than any other plan under consideration, and covering 96% of Americans in the process, more than any other plan under consideration. It's a tough spot for "fiscal hawks":

The analysis finds the reconstituted House proposal to be deficit neutral, and require less than $900 billion (reportedly around $870 billion) in new spending, over ten years.

The bill remains nominally more expensive than the Senate Finance Committee proposal, but would cover 96 percent of all Americans, providing greater bang for each federal dollar spent.

The House vote may be a tough decision for Jim Cooper -- will he stick to his rigid ideological beliefs and the wishes of his corporate contributors from the health insurance industry and vote against a bill that is the most effective of those under consideration at both reducing the deficit and covering the uninsured? And which would even lower premiums for families on private plans? And which his constituents support?

If Speaker Pelosi has the votes to put the robust public option up for a vote next week, we may all be able to see for ourselves.

According to Roll Call, Jim Cooper might be changing his tune on the robust public option currently under consideration in the House:

"We really have no details,” complained Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), another Blue Dog. Cooper, who supports some versions of the public option, said he wants to expand the pool of Americans allowed to choose it. Under the existing bills, only about 10 percent of Americans would be included in the health insurance exchange — largely people who do not have insurance now.

“That’s a pretty small group,” Cooper said. “We should be talking about a robust exchange at the same time we’re talking about a robust public option.”

Just last week, he said the robust public option was unworkable in an interview with the New York Times. Now he is making noises about possibly supporting it.

Is the pressure of a possible primary getting to him?