Democratic Move to the Center?

I'm seeing a big shift taking place right now in the in the innards - in the middle ground - of the Democratic caucus. This has been one of my mantras for several weeks now.

As Larry Sabato pointed out on tonight's show, there's somewhere north of twenty moderate to conservative Democrats poised to be elected to this new Congress. This crew is pro-business, pro-life on abortion, supported by the NRA and so forth.

Get this: Over thirty of the Democratic candidates for the House are conservative enough to have been green-lighted by the Blue Dogs or the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

This remarkable shift has been flying largely underneath the radar screen of most of the press.

The Los Angeles Times caught on to this shift and ran a piece on this very subject this morning.

From today's paper:

He is pro-business and antiabortion. He is an evangelical Christian and an avid hunter. But, unexpectedly, Heath Shuler is a Democrat, and he is running for Congress in North Carolina.

Shuler is part of a phalanx of unusually conservative Democratic candidates who may deliver crucial victories over GOP incumbents and help their party win control of the House....

Of course, if the Democrats win control of the House, the old liberal guard will run the important committees. But underneath the rusty, old guard appears to be an increasingly conservative bunch of Democrats.

This is a very good thing for the American people.