Nancy Pelosi's Leadership Driving Blue Dog Democrats From House

As we learned during the Obamacare vote, there isn't any such thing as a 'blue dog' democrat. If Pelosi needed a vote, she got it.

Via Politico:

In 2010, Nancy Pelosi starred in $75 million worth of negative ads that helped Republicans win control of the House and wrest the speaker’s gavel from her.

Now, the relative handful of moderate Democrats left say the fear of a rerun helps explain why so many of their breed are headed for the exits and why others ignored the pleas of party leaders to make comeback bids in 2012.

Three of the four leaders of the moderate Democratic Blue Dog Coalition have announced that they will retire at the end of this year. The latest to leave is Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), who got a country butt-kicking when he ran against Pelosi for House Democratic leader after the last election.

The argument, made by several sources who called POLITICO without solicitation, goes like this: Even if a moderate can withstand a bad lot in redistricting, raise millions of dollars and overcome ads warning of a second Pelosi speakership, his voice will be ignored in the next Congress.

“What I think is really lost here is a lot of the retirements were preordained the minute Nancy Pelosi decided to run again for speaker,” one retiring centrist said in an interview last week.

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