In the 1990s, these Democrats thought Washington was ignoring the white working class
Blue Dog Dems ditched social issues, and made it about the economy, stupid
Two years into Bill Clinton’s first term, some House Democrats missed Ronald Reagan. The military was weakening, spending was out of control, government was expanding. Their party was simply pulling too far left, and they wanted a politics of consensus.
Meanwhile, Republicans were claiming the president wasn’t the moderate New Democrat of his campaign promises — despite the charming Southern accent. It was six weeks before the 1994 midterm elections when the GOP released a “Contract with America.” Promises of lower taxes and welfare reform worked. The Republican Revolution won the party both chambers for the first time since 1954. The election resulted in a net gain of 54 Republican seats in the House, and 8 in the Senate. No sitting Republican governor, senator, or representative lost the vote.
“I’ve never known a better night in electoral politics for the Republican Party, and the best is yet to come,” shouted Bob Dole at RNC headquarters to chants of “‘96! ‘96! ‘96!”
After their party’s sweeping defeat, a group of strategy-minded Democrats began meeting secretly. They decided to form a new coalition. The coalition of mostly Southern House Representatives wanted a return to moderate positions in the name of collaboration and bipartisanship. They called themselves the Blue Dog Democrats.
The Blue Dogs got their name from Texas Rep. Pete Geren, who argued the coalition’s members had been “choked blue” and silenced by an increasingly leftist Democratic party.
The Blue Dogs didn’t utter a peep about social issues. Their rural Southern constituents’ biggest concerns were agricultural policy and farm programs, not same-sex marriage, equal rights, or gun control.
Instead, the 23 founding members publicly pushed for fiscal reform and a balanced budget. They would restore the voices of working-class Southerners who traditionally voted blue but who felt increasingly marginalized by wealthier, urbanized progressives (like Bill Clinton). Blue Dogs positioned themselves as potential swing votes when it came to policy; they signaled to Republicans a willingness to vote red on strategic legislation. In fact, the two founding members, who originally hosted Blue Dog meetings in their offices, switched to the Republican Party in 1995. Today, the coalition’s website reads, “The Blue Dogs are not beholden to any political party leadership, but rather the constituents they represent.”
The group had 37 members by the 108th House. Beyond Tennessee and Arkansas, new Blue Dog affiliates boasted representatives from California to Maine.
The sharp shift to Congressional conservatism in the mid 1990s impacted politics and policy for years. Newly elected Republican representatives were younger (more than half of new House members had less than four years of service), as were the voters who put them there. What’s more, some argue the GOP success during these years shifted Clinton to a more moderate platform.
The Blue Dogs saw all of this as an opportunity. In symbolically splitting their party loyalty, they appealed to fresh voters and a new Congressional roster. Both the White House and the Congressional GOP courted their influence.
“You can’t be in a better position of potential influence than where we are today,” said West Texas Rep. Charles W. Stenholm in 1995, amid bipartisan budget talks that would prove arduous.
By October, the national debt was at $4.9 trillion and growing by more than $2 billion per year. Congress hadn’t passed a balanced budget since 1969, and it wasn’t looking good for 1995 either.
“Essentially, Congress and and President Clinton are going to be staring at each other until one of the two blinks,” said Rep. Glen Browder, a Blue Dog from Alabama. The coalition pounded on Congress’ inability to compromise and drafted its own “common sense” seven-year plan. In an editorial, The Washington Post wrote that the budget was “tougher and more credible than the president’s mushy proposal, but would leave largely intact important federal programs that the Republicans would destroy…It isn’t a perfect plan, but it is a far better solution to the deficit problem than any other in sight just now.”
But it didn’t pass, and Congress was deadlocked into the fall of 1995. The government shut down on Tuesday, November 14. Roughly 800,000 federal workers were furloughed. Negotiations resumed with a December 15 deadline, which came and went, and then another shutdown. Clinton used his veto power, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich extinguished resolutions.
When moderate House Republicans proposed a six-year budget at the end of February, Blue Dogs pointed out its similarities to their own draft. Clinton presented it to Congress, and on April 26, 1996, the budget finally passed.
Browder later said that Clinton “thanked [The Blue Dogs] for what we did and said that he could not have done it without us.”
By 1998, several Blue Dog Democrats announced their plans to vote for Clinton’s impeachment.
It didn’t take long, however, for the Blue Dogs’ power to fizzle. Their fiscal platform appeared to alienate crucial members of their base, or so critics asserted. Their interests aligned more with Wall Street than Main Street, argued Democrats. In 1999, the Senate formed a similar group with a new name and a new brand: The New Democratic Coalition. In the 2010 midterms, the Blue Dogs lost over half their seats to Republicans. At its lowest point in 2014, membership hovered around 14 people. Rural conservative voters who once called themselves Democrats were switching tickets; they too felt abandoned by their party.
“We have become a party of assembling all these different groups, the women’s caucus and the black caucus and the Hispanic caucus and the lesbian-gay-transgender caucus and so forth, and that doesn’t relate to people out in rural America,” said Minnesota Rep. Collin C. Peterson, a Blue Dog Dem, in November 2016. “The party’s become an urban party, and they don’t get rural America. They don’t get agriculture.”
After the 2016 election, the coalition grew — a little. Blue Dog Democrats now have 18 members in Congress. Fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense, and “transcending party lines” are its stated goals. They remain silent on social issues.
