Senate

The latest AP/AOL poll shows that Americans are behind what what might be seen as a would-be Democratic agenda:

Two of the Democrats' top goals — a higher minimum wage and federal funding of embryonic stem cell research — enjoy broad public support as the party takes control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years.

An overwhelming majority also supports making it easier for people to buy prescription drugs from other countries.

On the surface, this sounds like good news. And yet one doesn't have to look back too far to see Democrats bending over backwards to appear as Republican as possible.

In the latest New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew notes:

In fact, K Street will not change a great deal even though the Democrats are in charge on Capitol Hill and Tom DeLay is gone. Democrats have their own K Street connections, and the lobbying firms, anticipating a Democratic win in November, had already begun recruiting more Democrats, and raising more money for the Democratic Party. The Republican lobbyists have no lack of business: they will now devote their efforts to trying to block new Democratic legislation that their clients oppose, such as lower drug prices in the prescription drug program, or elimination of tax breaks. The question is whether, like the Republicans, the Democrats will allow their own lobbyist allies to have the run of Capitol Hill, even letting them write bills there.

Lots of unknowns. Given the lackluster performance and deliberately vision-less stances on issues over the last six years of Congress, I'm not holding my breath for the time when Democrats stand up with any sort of leadership. Nancy Pelosi has been rather underwhelming so far, and Harry Reid manages to talk around and around issues without really saying much of anything.

Yet there will be new committee chairs, which hopefully will lead to some actual participation in the nation's business. On the other hand, with a third of the Senate looking at presidential bids, we might get more peacock feathers than turkey talk.

Lots of unknowns. We'll see.

The AP raises the question on many minds:

It's the question Democrats would rather not ask in their moment of revelry: Are their new majorities in the House and Senate sustainable?

What if the war in Iraq is over by 2008? Or what if it is still being waged despite Democratic pledges to change the course? What if voter antipathy toward President Bush is irrelevant in two years? After all, he will be on his way out....

...As some Democrats begin looking to 2008 and beyond, the challenge is how to turn antipathy toward Republicans into affection for Democrats.

In other words, what will these "new" Democrats stand for? After all, a number of them believe the state should regulate women's bodies. More than a few believe homosexual Americans should be afforded fewer rights on the basis of their sexual orientation. These are issues the Republicans are almost certain to push on over the next couple of years.

What do the Democrats stand for, now that they've dropped the ERA from their platform? Senator Chuck Schumer's answer is (wait for it) a three-point plan. (It's not a real plan unless you can count off the main points on your fingers.)

It would begin with modest plans to increase the minimum wage, provide more tax breaks on college tuition, encourage greater energy independence and require drug companies to negotiate for lower Medicare drug prices.

Democrats then must work in bipartisan fashion to confront the war in Iraq and government deficits, Schumer said.

"Thirdly, we have to try our best to come up with a full vision and platform that points toward '08," he said.

It's that third point that is the biggest challenge. What will this new platform look like? Will the voters who put the Democrats into office see the Democratic Party as representing them and their interests? Or will the Democrats try to look even more Republican so they can win Republican votes?

Of course, all this begs the questions: What will the Republicans do, now that they've received such a drubbing? Some are calling for even more conservatism, more wingnuttery, to appeal to even more hard-core right-wingers. If that's the case, when it comes to hate-mongering by the right, we ain't seen nothing yet.

I would hope they would rediscover the roots they claim to have, and look more to Goldwater conservatism rather than Pinochet conservatism, and give up their dreams of establishing a religious police state. Maybe that's too much to hope for.

The Republicans have a reputation for being disciplined and that reputation extends to the Republicans members of the House and Senate. The GOP Congressional members move largely in formation. Today that formation resembles a bunch of lemmings moving to perdition.

After a huge layoff, if I still had my job, but many of my colleagues did not, irrespective of the industry, when I got to my desk the next day, I would have to take a long and hard look at my own survivability. I would close the door and sit down and rethink what career issues were at stake for me. If I was a GOP member of Congress (or a Dem, too) I would take a long, hard, and frank look at myself and wonder if I should walk in lock step with anyone, except for those who determine whether or not I keep my job. I would look at those who no longer around and take a lesson.

Did the voters who put me in office put me there to be a GOP rubber stamp? I might have been swept in by a GOP tide and my State or District may have gone for George W. Bush, but did they want we to be one of the lemmings? When does discipline begin to become corrosive?

The Democrats are very far right of where they were a generation ago. It isn't that the country has suddenly shifted to "liberal" values. No. Then I look at Lincoln Chaffee, and he's out. It's not about the politics. It's about the party. It's about the way that Congress isn't doing its job. It is no longer behaving like one of the branches of government.

If this were a corporation, it would be equivalent to terminating an employee who is content to just sit around and sign off on everything without adding value. We've seen it in industry where the Board of Directors or the top management team kowtows to the boss. The word in my parent's generations for this was "being a yes man."

I would realize on the morning after that there is a way to disagree while still being loyal. I would recognize that the electorate (beyond the base) had come out to register their displeasure with those who did not demonstrate that they had a bit of a spine. I would understand that George W. Bush is a lame duck. I would know that "staying the course" has been repudiated at the polls, although I would know there are those who will continue to advocate it until the bitter end in November, 2008.

The vote on November 7, 2006, was in part a message to Congress that ideology was not as important as getting to work. If I were a Senator or Representative, I would know that a wakeup call had been sent out for us to get off our collective duffs and do the job we were getting perks and pay to perform.

I would know that George W. Bush and his inner circle are marching into history, but that my own career might span a number of terms well beyond that.

At one point coat tails can turn into anchors and loyalty can backfire if it appears I am not thinking for myself and not listening to the electorate.

I would know that in two, four, or six years I would be measured by what I had done and not purely on loyalty to the White House. The clock would be ticking and it would be the first day of the rest of my career.

Because if you don't vote, you don't matter to the people making the laws.

Because you will negate the vote of a voter who disagrees with everything you believe in.

Because you double the vote of a voter who agrees with you.

Because elections reflect the will of the people only if the people vote.

If you don't vote, don't bitch about the consequences. If you're too apathetic to vote, why should anyone care what you think?

Vote today!

...and help define our political future.

"Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves — and the only way they could do this is by not voting." — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The Associated Press story is quite amusing:

"If he loses one house here, President Bush will enter the last two years very wounded," said David Gergen, a former White House adviser who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

"He will have the capacity to say no to Democratic legislation, but he won't have the capacity to say yes to his own legislation," said Gergen, who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Democratic victories essentially could block Bush's remaining agenda and usher in a period of intense partisan bickering over nearly every measure to come before Congress.

As if there hasn't been intense partisan bickering since the Republicans took Congress in 1994. As if the Republicans didn't escalate that intense bickering to a new level by politicizing 9/11 and making support of the Bush Administrations military adventurism in Iraq a litmus test for patriotism itself. As if the Republicans haven't spent the last 12 years painting the Democrats with lying labels.

The Republicans broke bipartisan collegiality, and now they own the consequences.

Loss of either chamber also could subject his administration to endless congressional inquiries and investigations.

After the rubber-stamp Congress of the past six years, it's about time. If the Bush Administration had sought bi-partisan support of its agenda, maybe this would not be so imperative now.

"There's no question that the Republican coalition is stressed over the way Washington has been handling fiscal matters, the Foley affair, the
Iraq war," said GOP consultant Scott Reed. "All of these are coming together at the same time."

Note the spin here: Republican coalition ≠ Washington. Isn't that convenient. Never mind that the Republicans have called all the shots in Washington for six years now.

Bush, in his own get-out-the-vote appeal, told Republicans: "The consequences of not succeeding this fall are dire for our agenda for America."

A quagmire in Iraq. Torture. Record deficits screaming ever upward. Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan. Spying on Americans without warrants. Forced pregnancy and state-run breeding slavery laws. Attempting to block Plan B and the cervical cancer vaccine. Head-in-the-sand thinking on global warming. FEMA incompetence post-Katrina. Energy policies focused on the 20th century oil industry. No health insurance plan, corrupt education programs, Fortune50 pharmaceuticals-friendly Medicare drug benefits, removing bankruptcy protection for the poor and middle class, the K Street Project, tax cuts for silver-spoon heirs, attempts to gut Social Security (the one federal government program that actually turns a surplus every year), multi-billion-dollar sweetheart deals for Halliburton, leaking Valerie Plame's covert CIA status, Terri Schiavo, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Mark Abramoff, Macaca Allen....

Yes, I am counting on "dire" consequences for the Republican agenda.