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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
9, 2006
What Can We Expect from the Democrats?
The
Repudiation of One-Party Rule
By ALAN MAASS
Going into the midterm congressional
elections, Republicans held all the power in Washington. But
after the drubbing they got on November 7, only the White House
remained firmly in their grasp.
The Republicans' 30-seat majority
in the House of Representatives was turned around, into a Democratic
majority of nearly 30 seats. Even more remarkable was the Democrats'
near-total sweep of competitive Senate races, giving them a majority
if razor-thin leads in Virginia and Montana held up through the
final count and likely recounts. The Democrats also won enough
governorships to take a majority of state mansions as well.
For millions of people who
have opposed George Bush and his right-wing agenda for six long
years, this election is a long-awaited cause for celebration.
It represents a rejection of one-party Republican rule and the
GOP program on a range of issues--corporate greed, political
corruption, Religious Right fanaticism, and, looming above them
all, the disastrous U.S. occupation of Iraq.
This is why the 2006 vote took
on much greater importance than most midterm elections. A Gallup
poll in the lead-up to the vote found that half of respondents
were paying "quite a lot" of attention to the elections,
the highest since 1994 when the Republicans took control of Congress
in the so-called "Republican Revolution." Nearly two-thirds
of people surveyed in Election Day exit polls said they voted
on the basis of national issues, not local ones.
On those issues, the tide has
turned dramatically against the Republicans. A USA Today poll
survey found that six in 10 Americans were dissatisfied with
"the way things are going in the country."
Exit polls showed almost the
same proportion opposing the Iraq war, with the overwhelming
majority of them voting Democrat. A succession of scandals culminating
in the Mark Foley congressional page scandal took another leg
out from under the Republicans--exposing the hypocrisy of party
leaders who covered up for one of their own.
The right did have some successes
pushing through ballot measures on hot-button issues such as
banning same-sex marriage, making English the official language
of Arizona and supporting the death penalty in Wisconsin--even
in states where the Republicans suffered significant losses.
As in 2004, these referendums passed not because masses of people
embrace the Religious Right, but because Democrats ducked every
opportunity to make the case against them--leaving the debate
over them one-sided in favor of the right.
By contrast, the best news
of the night on ballot measures--the sound victory for a South
Dakota referendum to overturn a state law banning virtually all
abortions--was the result of a grassroots effort by pro-choice
supporters to win opinion to their side.
* *
*
Already on Election Night,
the professional pundits were spinning the results into a new
conventional wisdom that Democrats won because they ran more
conservative candidates.
In Indiana, for example, Brad
Ellsworth, the Democrat who beat Rep. John Hostettler, brags
about the "A" rating he received from the National
Rifle Association. In North Carolina, Heath Shuler, who trumpets
his evangelical Christianity and opposition to abortion rights,
defeated incumbent Republican Charles Taylor.
But the idea that Democrats
won because they were more conservative is as wrong-headed as
the idea that the election represented no change at all.
The fact about the U.S. two-party
system is that it normally presents voters with two choices--the
status quo or "throwing the bums out." The Democrats
became the beneficiaries of a mix of sentiments, most of them
against Bush and the war, without doing much at all to present
an alternative.
But in an election like this
one, that hardly mattered. According to ABC News exit polls,
62 percent of Rhode Islanders said they supported the job that
incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican, was doing.
Yet Rhode Islanders voted Chafee out of office anyway--as a clear
protest against Bush and the Republicans.
The Democrats did their very
best to win this election without proposing any concrete alternatives
on the Iraq occupation or other major issues. But among those
who voted against the Republicans by voting for the Democrats,
there is nevertheless an expectation that a Democratic Congress
will make some difference.
According to a New York
Times/CBS News poll, for example, nearly three-quarters of
respondents say they expected U.S. troops would be withdrawn
from Iraq more quickly under a Democratic-led Congress. The poll
also showed that people expect a Democratic Congress to try to
deliver a minimum wage, lower health care and prescription drug
costs, and an improved economy.
But these expectations won't
come close to being met if Democrats are left to themselves.
As left-wing writer Joshua Frank pointed out on the CounterPunch
Web site, two-thirds of Democrats in tight House races oppose
even setting a timetable for troop withdrawal--in other words,
"exactly the same position on the war as our liar-in-chief,
George W. Bush," Frank wrote.
Even setting aside these party
conservatives, though, the Democrats share much more in common
with the Republicans than they differ on. As a party, the Democrats
are the U.S. ruling establishment's B-team, coming off the bench
to save the game after the A-team Republicans have nearly blown
it.
Thus, on Iraq, the Democrats--when
they say anything concrete at all--propose a repackaged occupation
in Iraq, not an end to it.
The Democrats are not defining
themselves as opposed to the Republicans, but rather as the not-Republicans--and
that is a crucial difference. The party leadership wants to become
the new "center" in American politics, uniting sensible
liberals--so long as they've broken with inconvenient illusions
that Democrats should oppose war or increase social spending
or roll back tax break giveaways to the rich--with conservatives
who were at home in the Republican Party until the right-wing
kooks took over.
In an interview with Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius, Hillary Clinton used all the
catchphrases we can expect to hear from Democrats for the next
two years. "Americans are primarily pragmatic," she
said. "We are both conservative and progressive. In the
pragmatic center, you get people together; you listen, you learn;
you don't draw lines in the sand."
Expect the Democrats to push
for measures they know Republicans will be hard-pressed to oppose,
like a long-delayed increase in the minimum wage--or, as House
Majority Leader-to-be Nancy Pelosi never tires of repeating,
implementing the national security recommendations of the commission
that investigated the September 11 attacks.
But on the issue of the war,
reports the Wall Street Journal, Pelosi "is privately
trying to insist that liberals tamp down expectations of getting
out of Iraq now. Democratic allies in the House say she wouldn't
do anything to jeopardize the new recruits' electoral future,
and by extension Democrats' newfound power."
* *
*
The Democrats won't pose a
real alternative to the Republicans--unless they face pressure
from below. But the demise of Republican one-party rule in the
2006 election creates the potential for this pressure to build.
The right's stranglehold on
politics has been loosened, opening up new space in the mainstream
debate that can embolden people in their growing questioning
of U.S. government policies overseas and at home.
On Iraq, Republicans and Democrats
alike have vowed to seek a "new direction"--in other
words, a Plan B that will repackage the occupation. But even
a debate over pro-imperialist alternatives for Iraq will open
splits at the top that can cast further doubt on the legitimacy
of the occupation and give confidence to activists to press ahead
with their ideas and activism.
Already, the movement of active-duty
GIs and antiwar veterans has taken some new steps forward--these
can serve to inspire a revitalization of the wider antiwar movement.
What's more, the Democrats'
newfound power in Congress will force them to define their proposals
more clearly--exposing them in the eyes of people who believe
they represent a real alternative to the Republicans.
The key in all this will be
to take advantage of every opportunity opened up by the crushing
election rejection of the Republicans to rebuild the struggles
against war and for justice and democracy.
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