SALENA ZITO ON THE DEMOCRATS’ DIVERSITY CHALLENGE:

Today the Blue Dogs are decimated, there are only 17 left, only two of them women. And every year they face expensive, heated primary battles from progressives, and are about to face the same onslaught next year from the 2018 Bernie Sanders purists who want them out of “their” party.

Legendary Democratic strategist Dane Strother thinks that is a very bad idea.

“If the Blue Dogs do not have a seat at the table, and if they do not rebuild, the Democrats will never hold the majority again,” he said bluntly.

Strother added that if there is a progressive purity test, “Then we will be in the wilderness for the next forty years,” he said.

“I think the Blue Dogs have to be revived and respected this cycle. There will be a test. If the party does not back the incumbent Democrat Blue Dog in the primary then the Democrats will have a big problem for a long time.”

“We can’t become so ideologically pure that we push moderates into the GOP … because that is what we are doing right now,” he said, adding that the party that holds onto the middle is the party that will govern.

Strother believes that the DCCC must back the incumbent Blue Dogs overtly during the primaries to send a message that the party does want a bigger tent.

Since the “Blue Dogs” lied about their moderate stance once – having posed as moderates in 2006, only to serve as what one pundit accurately described as “Nancy Pelosi’s Crash Test Dummies” in order to ram Obamacare through in 2009 – why should voters trust them again?