Although typically it is not good for a party to lose an elected official, this is actually good news for the Democratic Party. Parker Griffith had voted against almost all of the Democrats' major initiatives, including health care reform, cap and trade, and others. He would never have been the Democrats' 218th vote on anything important. Don't be fooled by the misleading statistic that Griffith voted with the Democrats on 84% of the votes; most of the votes in the House of Representatives are for meaningless things, like renaming post offices or recognizing " Appreciation Week". The 16% where Griffith opposed the party were the important votes.

If anything, this rids the Democrats of a poison. It's one thing to quietly vote against the Democrats' policy initiatives; it's another altogether to suggest, as Griffith did, that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House Democrats, belongs in a mental hospital. By becoming a Republican, Griffith has delegitimized himself; it's expected that Republicans won't say nice things about leading Democrats, but having a Democrat saying those things harms the party. Besides, Griffith's district, at R+13 in Republican-trending northern Alabama, would have been annoying to defend and very costly to the DCCC.