Early Intel — Democrats May be More Liberal After Elections

A top Democratic strategist and advisors to two struggling Democratic candidates tell Power Play that they see a very different Democratic Party coming out of the fall elections.

“The south is gone,” the strategist, a veteran of presidential campaigns, told Power Play as he surveyed his party’s chances in the Nov. 2 congressional elections. “And now the Midwest may be too. All the states [Hillary Clinton] carried in 2008. ”

Moderate Democrats, mostly Clinton supporters from the 2008 primaries, suggest that the huge projected losses for Democrats in the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the upper Midwest, could leave Democrats as a coastal more liberal party.

In states like West Virginia and Arkansas where Democrats have maintained majorities through moderate fiscal policies and conservative social stances, the efforts to pump up liberal enthusiasm have been disturbing.

In places like Indiana and Ohio where Democrats have prospered in recent years by staking out similarly centrist positions, the anxiety level is just as high.

“When we hear ‘fire up the base,’ we know they’re not talking about our base,” said one swing state Democratic strategist. “They’re talking about the president’s base.”

And while the president has worked hard to save liberal Sen. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and Gov. Ted Strickland in Ohio, some Democrats see self-interest there. Without both those states, Obama’s reelection is much tougher. Without Ohio, it is all but impossible.

But in the great swath of conservative America reaching from central Pennsylvania to Oklahoma and from Western North Carolina to Wisconsin, Democrats are in retreat this year.

Some Democrats in that region worry that the White House looks at them as casualties of a political realignment that benefits Obama, who seems very intent on remaking the Democratic Party to reflect his community organizer’s approach to politics. Instead of a political party, national Democrats sometimes more resemble a movement.

“We’re casualties in their march to 2012,” said another Rust Belt Democrat. “Health care and cap and trade are just death.”

But is it even a good strategy for Obama?

When the party takes shape again after the midterm elections, many of the casualties will be from moderate, swing districts, as expected in any tipping-point election. That means that the small Democratic majority or minority that returns will be more liberal and more beholden in many ways to the demands of the big-city liberals who already dominate the party.

Red state Democrats who say Nancy Pelosi might not be speaker again in a Democratic majority are likely saying so because they are very vulnerable themselves and want to show moderation. But most liberals, with the exception of a few Obama babies who slid into office in the 2008 surge like Virginia’s Tom Perriello, are in no danger of defeat.

A Republican wave like the one forecast by Gallup and others would eliminate Democrats in the American interior except for those in large urban centers. A party built on San Francisco, Chicago and New York is going to be even more liberal than one that has to make room for some red staters.

The Progressive Caucus is already the largest in the Democratic side of the House with some 90 members. Few, if any, will be defeated this fall. Their power will only grow inside the party next year.

If Obama hopes to make a pivot to deficit reduction and reform during the second half of his term, how willing will his fellow Democrats be to go along? How much pressure will he face on his Afghan surge and inability to close Gitmo?

President Obama and his team have also focused on capitalizing gains in the mountain west from 2008, but polls indicate that the Rockies have a reddish hue this year. That color will only deepen if the party can’t move to the right after a big defeat this year.

Plus, the idea that Obama can pick and choose a few states – Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado and Nevada – to hold even as the regions around them turn away from him and his party is pretty grand thinking.

Democrats can’t be a viable party and Obama can’t win reelection with a greatly reduced role for Clinton Democrats in the heartland.