Incapacitated by a stomach virus for a little over 48 hours, I figured that while I was off-line and out-of-sorts, another House Democrat would have announced retirement.

Instead, I find that House Democrat Parker Griffith is now House Republican Parker Griffith.

In a way, this wasn’t surprising; back in August, Griffith said he couldn’t vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker again. Griffith had to be at the top of everyone’s list of House Democrats most likely to switch parties.

What is a bit surprising is that Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership didn’t do much to mitigate Griffith’s discontent; this can’t have come as a huge surprise to them, either. They knew they had a wavering member, and let him flip.

As everyone has noted, Griffith comes from a very conservative northern Alabama district. In short, there are certain districts that you just can’t elect a Democrat from, or at least elect one who can vote with Nancy Pelosi more than occasionally on non-procedural votes.

But this is also perhaps a bit of a rebuke of the strategy Rahm Emanuel put in place when he aimed to take back the House.

Earlier this year, Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) blamed Rahm Emanuel’s recruitment of conservative Democratic candidates when he headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the difficulties in passing health care. She noted that the party had assembled a majority of Democrats but not a majority of progressives, and now conservative Democrats were effectively calling the shots.

This morning, Democrats are grumbling that the DCCC spent more than $1.2 million to elect Griffith this year.

One million spent, to elect a Democrat, for about twelve months.

The last time a Republican held Alabama’s 5th congressional district? 1869.

UPDATE: Argh. This happens almost every time I refer to the history of a congressional district. Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics writes in:

[Griffith’s district] was created in 1876 after the end of reconstruction to break up the pro-Union vote in the northern portion of the state (Winston County actually seceded from the Confederacy). Before that, two districts ran down the sides of the state. It was numbered the 8th, then became the 5th of necessity in 1972. It was held by a Greenbacker from 1876-1880.

Bottom line, this has been a Democrat-held seat for a long, long, long time.