Welcome to BlueDogNight - Democrats in the Real World

A first post is a daunting challenge.

Make a good impression on the reader - good balance of substance and style. Create rapport and begin a relationship. It's alot like dating - but the sway of ideas replaces the primal urges that create face-to-face personal chemistry.

BlueDogNight is created to share ideas from a life-long political junkie. I have been active in NY, Ohio and national electoral politics; sometimes engaged in policy and adminstrative settings. I have witnessed and worked with some of the most effective leaders in US politics; I also have had experiences with the mediocre and the clueless. Most unfortunately, I have also witnessed the venal.

Through all of those years of involvement (from 1966 and the unsuccessful campaign for Ohio governor of a Frazier Reams, Jr., who lost to Jim Rhodes by nearly 30 percentage points), I have believed in the primacy of the center in American politics.

I am a centrist; a Blue Dog.

Sometimes, I lose my way to the center; the same can be said of the American voter.

I did so in 1972 as I followed the good Senator from South Dakota, George McGovern, as he led Democrats to ruinous defeat and a realignment of the Democratic Party that ended its coalition of the center. Campaign '72 was a lesson in how to lose all in politics except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. I learned my lesson well.

The American voters lost their way as they began a right-of-center shift in 1980, peaking in 1994, and continuing through November 2006.

With the results of Election Day 2006, the promise of the center re-emerges.

I am a centrist; a Blue Dog.

BlueDogNight is committed to celebrating and analyzing the center of the political spectrum and the extremes that balance and pull that center.