Red Dog Democrat. A democrat who will “Take no sh*t and win Red States.”

We started out with Yellow Dog Democrats in 1928 when Al Smith ran for President against Herbert Hoover. In response to Senator Tom Heflin's (Dem-Alabama) decision to back Hoover, many of his constituents are enraged and swore that they would vote for a yellow dog if it ran on the Democratic ticket. Then, in 1995, Representative Pete Green (Dem-Texas), a conservative in his party, who said he had been “choked blue” by those radical right wing dogs who he perceived as dominating the party at that time, thus coining the term “Blue Dog Democrat.”

Just a decade later we learned of the Red Dog Democrats. Based on the emergent nomenclature of red and blue states, the former being Republican and the latter Democratic, these were the candidates “ who can win elections in states that tend to vote Republican”

On the site democraticunderground.com one member went to far as to take a poll which included seven types of Democrats “coded by color just like our terror code…it appears”:

Blue Dog Democrats - Moderate to Conservative coalition. Yellow Dog Democrats - Vote Democratic, no matter what. Red Dog Democrats - Take no Sh*t and win Red States. Pink Tu-tu Democrats - Dance and Roll over for the GOP Purple Democrats - DINOs (a la Barney) Gold Democrats - Northeastern usually comes with losta money Green Democrats - Enviroment is the priority

While the term appears to have been coined in 2004 as a part of the consideration of what the Democrats needed to do to retake the White House, Obama's win has not obviated the term. When New York Governor David Patterson appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate in January 2009, the former was desribed in more than one quarter as a Red Dog Democrat, despite the fact that New York is a solidly blue state.

Where will it all end?

see also: red dog
cf: Yellow Dog Democrat; Blue Dog Democrat