I'm Not Thrilled

[JSojourner]

Written for my Democratic friends.  No offense intended to my GOP pals.  This is just my gut reaction and not intended as an insult to anyone.

Okay, call me eeyore or just a plain pessimist.  But Tuesday's victory, and it IS a victory, rings a bit hollow for me.  Here's why...

1.     Virginia and Montana are too close for comfort.  I'll grant you, we did   
        exceedingly well to have candidates in the lead this late in the game. 
        And if we win both, we control the upper chamber.  (Too, Webb would
        have notched a clear win if the Green Party candidate in Virginia had
        not been on the ballot.  Shades of Nader!)  But in a year when the
        President has us mired in a war based on lies and myths of his own
        creation...in a year when at least 15 separate Republicans in the
        House and the Senate are neck-deep in scandal (to say nothing of 
        other GOP scandals in various states)...and in a year when good jobs
        are being lost in record numbers, replaced by low-wage service and
        retail sector jobs...we should have done better.  By
        "better", I mean we should have won all the states we now have,
         plus the two still in play and with Arizona and Nevada thrown in for
         good measure.  Still, I will feel better if and when we are declared
         winners in the Old Dominion and up in Big Sky country.

2.      When Republicans swept the House in 1994, they netted 55 seats
         without losing a single one.  The scandal?  A few dozen House
         members of both parties kited checks using the House bank.  The bad
         policy that hurt Democrats?  A plan to make sure all Americans had
         health coverage, not just the middle class and wealthy folks.  In
         1994, those two issues -- no immoral war based on lies, mind you --
         moved people to vote Republican.  Even Democrats.  Our 2006 victory
         is a victory.  No doubt about it.  But why is it not nearly as robust as
         the GOP landslide of 1994?  There is something radically wrong with
         an electorate that is more bothered by a national health care plan
         than by the deaths of nearly three thousand American and a million
         Iraqis in a miserably executed, mismanaged war crafted for the sole
         purpose of enriching Bush campaign donors in the defense and oil
         industries. (And let us not forget the "other" war -- the one we
         should be fighting with vigor and overwhelming might -- the war in
         Afghanistan, which this administration treats as an afterthought.) 

3.       Indiana disappointments?  I have to put up with Mark "Remove FDR
          from the dime" Souder for two more years.  Okay, no one really
          expected anything different from mindlessly conservative Fort
          Wayne, Indiana.  But Hoosiers seemed to wise up in three other
          districts.  Why not here?  (The difference may just be abortion.  All
          three winning Hoosier Democrats are anti-choice.  Souder's
          opponent would not make having an abortion a jailing offense. 
          Maybe to win this district, we need someone with all of Tom
          Hayhurst's intellect and compassion...PLUS a far right position on
          abortion.)
         
4.       Other "let-downs":   It looks like Marylin "I do Dobson's bidding"
          Musgrave will be in Congress for two more years.  Colorado is
          tracking more centrist and we picked up one House seat and the
          Governor's mansion.  Musgrave almost lost.  That's good. But
          not good enough.  We should have swept all three Connecticut
          House races.  We took Johnson's seat and Shays kept his.  The
          other one is separated by a few dozen votes and will be recounted. 
          We could have and should have done better in a liberal state like
          this.  In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth lost.  She was a peach and it's a
          pure damn shame she couldn't hold on.  A true American hero. Tom
          Reynolds in New York and Deb Pryce in Ohio survived.  Weren't they
          Tom Foley enablers?  I think one or two other Foley protectors also
          staved off defeat.  Hell, we almost lost to Foley in his own district! 
          What's wrong with this picture? If a Democrat had been chasing skirt
          in the House, his goose would be cooked. (He'd be impeached, at
          the very least...LOL!) The Republican mistress-beater in Pennsylvania
          lost.  I guess that's some consolation.

5.       We won.  I'm happy.  Really.  But the Democrats who won proved,
          beyond any shadow of doubt, that the people of this country want
          to choose between two types of candidate:  ultra-conservative and
          conservative.  You can stick a fork in liberalism. It's done.  (At least
          until the next time we need it.  Such as after a Great Economic
          Depression.)  Oh, we liberals will continue to do fine in a few places
          like Rhode Island, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.  But in
          most states, future battles for the White House, House and Senate
          will be waged between moderate, conservative and far-right fascist
          types.  How much of a choice is there, really, between Harold Ford
          and Bob Corker? As I have said before, I will welcome Evan Bayh
          with open arms if he wins the Democratic nomination for President in
          2008. Because our most conservative member is better than their
          Rudy Giuliani or John McCain.  But I will still be a little sad, knowing
          we could have had Russ Feingold or Chuck Schumer in the White
          House.

[Gustaf]

I'll comment on the 2nd point that in 1994 Republicans were getting a long over-due victory. They were way behind in Congress (the Senate alignment was 57-43 to the Democrats for instance) and 1994 was the year when things evened out. That's why the victory was so big that time. Adding to this are the facts that the electorate is more polarized and that pro-incumbent gerrymandering has increased, both things that make it much harder to win big (and also to lose big). These facts helped Democrats in their bad years 2002 and 2004 and helped the GOP now.

[cp]

There was a video on Fox News of Tom Delay trying to spin the election loss. It was fun to watch him squirm under the critical glare of an electorate that just ousted him and his party from power, but he did have something very precient to say:

This election was a Republican loss, not a Democratic win. The 'anti-incumbent mood' was just that. It was a purposeless shift in direction away from a Party with which a clear majority of Americans was fed up.

I think what tipped this from a Democrat-gain election to a Democrat-win election (in that their pickups were sufficient to affect a change in the balance of power), was the fact that Americans, for all their ambivalence about the Democrats, were willing to give them a chance. 6 years of Republican rule created the laundry list of problems that people took with them to the voting booth. When it came down to it, most people just wanted to see what *other* solutions could happen, which was only possible with a Democratic majority somewhere

[TX_1824]

and in a year when good jobs  are being lost in record numbers, replaced by low-wage service and retail sector jobs...we should have done better. 

I blame unions for that. Unions are their own worse enemy. Raise the min-wage above the market min-wage and you'll see some more go as well. The government can't create jobs in the private sector, but provide incentives for companies to do so.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I think the Dems would have done even better had it not been for the Kerry comment and the conveniently-timed Saddam verdict.

Also many of the Conservative Democrats are in fact moderates who are conservative on some social issues. For most of the years between 1930 and 1994, moderate and conservative democrats held the balance of power in congress.

[Deano963]

2.      When Republicans swept the House in 1994, they netted 55 seats
         without losing a single one. 

Wrong. Four incumbent Republicans were defeated in 1994.

ZERO Democratic incumbents or Democratic open seats were picked up by the Republcians in the House, Senate or Governorships this year. That has never happened befroe in an election.

[Mr. Morden]

I'll comment on the 2nd point that in 1994 Republicans were getting a long over-due victory. They were way behind in Congress (the Senate alignment was 57-43 to the Democrats for instance) and 1994 was the year when things evened out. That's why the victory was so big that time. Adding to this are the facts that the electorate is more polarized and that pro-incumbent gerrymandering has increased, both things that make it much harder to win big (and also to lose big). These facts helped Democrats in their bad years 2002 and 2004 and helped the GOP now.

Adding to this, the *net gain* by the GOP in the House in '94 may have been bigger, but they were starting from much farther back.  The actual number of seats held by the Dems after this election will actually be a bit bigger than the majority won by the GOP in '94 (though that '94 majority was then padded by several party switchers).

[gorkay]

Geez, aren't you guys ever happy? I'm delighted, myself. I never expected the Democrats to win more than 20 House seats and never dreamed they'd win all the competitive Senate races except one (or two if you count AZ, which a lot of people didn't).
I don't care if Burns and Allen, the Republican comedy team, lost by one vote or a hundred thousand, they still lost.

[Gabu]

Come on, smile a little, JSojourner.  Of course the election wasn't perfect, but you seem to be focusing way too much on the negatives.