<p>Sorry to start yet another thread. I was gone for a couple of days and I didn’t see any current thread that related directly to what I wanted to say. Since I am a Democrat, I’m going to refer to the party as “we”, although I am not an activist.</p>
<p>Both parties have a core of supporters who will always vote the ticket. The core GOP clearly outnumbers our core. However, neither core is a majority. There are a number of independents, or at least people who lean one way or the other but can switch sides depending on the candiates and the issues.</p>
<p>Karl Rove has stated in the past that these independents tend to fracture down the middle and that the key to elections is getting out the core to vote. This is usually a good strategy. But in this election, the independents were with us, about 60% or so. These people have serious misgivings about the war and about Bush himself. </p>
<p>A good chunk of the races we won featured more moderate candidates than you may have seen from us in a while. Even so, many of the key contests were very tight. </p>
<p>While liberals like Pelosi will hold a disproportionate share of power in the new Congress, the caucus itself is more left-center than it is being given credit for. The moderates can’t be ignored if we hope to accomplish much. Yeah, maybe in my heart of hearts, I’d like to see Congress give Bush a rough time. But for the long-term health of the party, the leadership needs to pick and choose its battles carefully. Going about things willy-nilly just won’t do.</p>
<p>It was enough for this election to be the “Non-Republican” party. But for us to keep a majority in Congress, much less gain the White House, that won’t be enough.</p>
<p>Let’s hope that both parties concern themselves not with the ‘health of the party’ but rather, the best interests of the citizens of this country. As politicians though, I’m not convinced this will always happen.</p>
<p>The media is pretty clueless often and the current meme about the Democratic electees being more conservative is lazy reporting. Yes, you can point to Ellsworth and Shuler, Casey and Tester and Webb. You can also point to Shea-Porter and Space, Klochubar and Brown and Whitehouse. It’s a good broad range of the Democratic party.</p>
<p>The ideologues of both parties tend to fall back into a “we weren’t extreme enough, offering a clear enough choice” mode after a loss. I’m going to enjoy watching the GOP intramurals the next couple of months.</p>
<p>Dadguy, there’s a book by Scammon & Wattenberg, some 35 or so years ago, whose thesis is that elections are won and lost in the center. I think this is largely true and view the Rovian successes as mostly an abberation. I’m looking forward to compressing the GOP into a regional Southern-based party. The Democrats actually control 60 percent of the seats outside the South. </p>
<p>Of course, when the Dems achieve a certain critical mass and have had power for a while, the center-left fracture lines will occur but I’m okay with that. Anything as long as the Republicans don’t come back to power for at least three generations.</p>
<p>I agree with you about the Democrats needing to pick their battels. No impeachments, a selective approach to investigations (but the ones they pick should be doozies), a they-shall-not-pass approach on conservative judicial nominations.</p>
<p>Oh, and the differential between the size of the cores is dimishing. If you check Rassmussen, the Dem-GOP spread has increased by roughly five percent since 2004 and the Republican self-identifiers, as a whole, are down to just 31.9 percent vs. 37.3 for the Democrats.</p>
<p>When the Democrats leave the middle and go left they will remind the electorate why they kicked out the Dems in 1994. The conservative-leaning Democrats who were just elected should not allow entrenched liberal partisans to do this…</p>
<p>Democrats did not receive a mandate to drive the nation left…be forewarned.</p>
<p>“This is the age we live in: One day in the future either New York or Washington or both will be hit again, hard. It will be more deadly than 9/11. And on that day, those who experience it, who see the flash or hear the alarms, will try to help each other. They’ll be good to each other. An elderly conservative congresswoman will be unable to make it down those big old Capitol steps, and a young liberal congressman will come by and pick her up in his arms and carry her.”</p>
<p>It’s too bad the young, strapping conservative left the old liberal lying on the steps for the past six years.</p>
<p>NOW, Noonan etal would like to see the spirit of help and cooperation. I agree, but it’s curious that this quality wasn’t important to anyone in the past six years, but now is of paramount importance.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s pretty funny. These people were so sure that their majority would last forever, they thought they had a mandate to act as badly as they wanted. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they’re going, “You won’t do what we did? Right? Right?”</p>
<p>The thing is, the Democrats won’t. They will take the high road, as of course they should. And two years from now, the Republicans will be seizing on that as evidence of superiority–that since they weren’t ruthlessly excluded and disenfranchised for payback, their party must have something to offer that the Democrats need. But it’s ok to ruthlessly exclude and disenfranchise Democrats, because they have nothing to offer. They will completely ignore the fact that it’s about process and not merits.</p>
<p>Peggy Noonan is a great writer, always has been. But that last line of hers is awfully misplaced. If I were a freshman legislator, it would NOT be my ambition to have people think as well of me as they would after my concession speech!</p>
<p>I must admit, though, that I don’t understand the “middle” idea right now. Most people I know, when they are being honest, have a mixture of “conservative” and “liberal” takes on things, and have a pretty good understanding of what is realistic and achievable in the actual world. For years, the Democrats and Republicans have presented a fairly clear choice. They are not a diametrically opposed as people like to think, but the differences in philosophy and priorities are unmistakable. Most people know which of the poles they stand closest to.</p>
<p>So who the hell are these “undecided voters” about whom everyone makes a fuss? In the last two federal elections, you would have had to be mentally disabled to make it to the last week before the election and not know where you stood. So they are either lying to the pollsters, or they are fundamentally irrational. That’s why I suspect Rove is right: it’s easier to increase turnout among people who fundamentally agree with you than to come up with the formula that will get more crazy people to vote your way, and even if you did come up with that formula it might alienate more of your base than the number of new (and uncommitted) voters it attracted. </p>
<p>As to why the Democrats won in this election, I think the answer is glaringly simple: As mentally defective as undecided voters might be, anyone who wholeheartedly supports what this Administration has done in Iraq is worse. Liberal, conservative, it doesn’t matter . . . the current team has proved it can’t do the job. The vast majority of people decided that was the crucial issue facing America – they were right – and that a Republican Congress couldn’t be trusted to rein in the incompetents. Of course, in the critical, close races it was also important that the Democratic candidates were as qualified and acceptable to moderate Republicans as possible. (Take away the party labels, and the impressiveness gap between Jim Webb and George Allen is Grand Canyon wide.) Given that the whole shebang in the Senate turns on fewer than 10,000 votes in Virginia and Montana, no one can say that it didn’t matter that the Dems had relatively conservative candidates. But in many of the places where the Dems won, it probably didn’t make much difference.</p>
<p>I read a great article the other day that pointed out that what the Republicans are calling “conservative” and “middle” is shifting around to whatever is popular. This allows them to co-opt the victory either way. We didn’t win, but it’s a victory for our philosophy, or whatever. Sorry, I don’t have a link. Suddenly, things like smaller government (which used to be core conservative values) have become the leftist agenda, if you ask a “conservative.”</p>
<p>I agree that this election wasn’t about political philosophy. It was about corruption and incompetence. On a visceral level, even people who agree with you politically 100% are going to turn against you if you govern as badly and with as much contempt for stewardship as this Congress did. I think a lot of Republican voters felt taken for granted–that their officials were so sure of their unwavering support, they could do whatever they wanted, even if it was illegal or disastrous, and never be held accountable at the polls. Taking people for granted is about the best way you can guarantee to lose their support.</p>
<p>I don’t think everyone does, P2N. Some people have managed to govern well and be ethical stewards, despite the temptations of power; you can’t paint everyone, not even all of this Republican Congress, with that brush. </p>
<p>And some people, like Louisiana’s Fast Eddy Edwards, had sense enough to do at least one right, so that the voters overlook the shortcomings in the other.</p>
<p>But it’s true that absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Which is why one of the first things on the agenda should be to reverse the erosion of checks and balances that’s happened over the past six years.</p>
<p>I hope you’re right, but I wouldn’t count on it. They’re human, and they’re going to have all the same flaws as everyone else.</p>
<p>I sincerely hope that we see more bipartisanship than we’ve seen in the last six years. Of course part of me would like to see us give back exactly what we got, but in the long term that’s bad for both the country and the party. As much as I can, I’m going to encourage Democrats to restore cooperation and reasonable compromise to the Congress.</p>
<p>Well, I think talk radio is a good model. There was a study done recently that shows progressive talk radio gives more air time to opposing viewpoints than the neocon shows. Some of the neocon pundits will make statements like: “I wish some liberal would call up to debate this; I really wish they would” but when anyone takes them up on it, they don’t get past the screeners. </p>
<p>So I hope this interest in fairness and balance on the progressive side will carry over to Congress, since we saw the opposite in both venues on the other side, it supports the idea of congruence in approach.</p>
<p>And I also hope that within a few months, we restore the Fairness laws that were taken out during the Reagan years, so that hour-long political commercials have to be labelled as such, and the opposite side has equitable access.</p>
<p>Every moderate Republican defeated was defeated by a pro-choice, anti-war, anti-tax cut, anti-Social Security privatization, pro-negotiation on drug prices, lberal Democrat. Those who, in opposing moderate Republicans, moved toward the center, lost in vritually every case. </p>
<p>I sincerely hope we see less bipartisanship - MUCH less bipartisanship. Bipartisanship gave us the Patriot Act, the Torture Act, the war in Iraq, the occupation in Iraq, NAFTA, policies bleeding American jobs abroad, the donut hole in Medicare, tax cuts for the rich, and a shared agreement not to tackle Social Security.</p>
<p>Mini - you’re feeling your oats today…those are pretty sweeping statements. I don’t have time today address them, though… :)</p>
<p>Conyat - Yes, every party gets messed up on that one. That illustrates perfectly the wisdom of our political system - the bums get tossed out every so often and then they (those bums) reflect on the errors they made while in power. I rather like it, even if a side I tend to agree with just got the push. They were making too many errors - and failing to correct them.</p>
<p>It will happen soon to the Democrats, too. No party has a lock on integrity or power*. </p>
Mini, is there anything you DO like about the US? Talk about the “hate America” crowd – you must be a founding member.</p>
<p>Americans complained after 9/11 that the intelligence agencies didn’t do enough to protect us. With the Patriot Act, those issues are being addressed.</p>
<p>The Republicans lost voters like my well-educated mother. She couldn’t stand Rumsfeld and the Neo-Con cabal. Their defense of torture in her country’s name was the last straw. I don’t know if she’ll ever vote Republican again. She regrets voting for them in 1998.</p>
<p>The Dems won because of Foley–and because they have put together a winning organization that includes a massive fundraising component outside of Hollywood and Manhattan–in places like Missouri.</p>