US elections - how did Dems win, and how progressive will they be?

1. Memo to Every Democrat -- by kos/http://www.dailykos.com

Dear Everyone Who Thinks They Singled-Handedly Won the Last Election,

The DNC and Howard Dean couldn't have won this by themselves. They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil.

The DCCC and Rahm Emanuel couldn't have won this by themselves. They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil.

The DSCC and Chuck Schumer couldn't have won this by themselves. They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil.

The netroots and grassroots couldn't have won this by themselves. They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil.

The 527s and unions and allied organizations couldn't have won this by themselves. They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil.

The big dollar donors couldn't have won this by themselves. They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil.

They were all part of a glorious puzzle. And working together, even if not always harmoniously, led to great, great things.

Hugs and kisses.

kos

p.s. As for the know-nothing pundits in DC and the DLC? Well, we won because they were ignored.


2. The Great Revulsion – by Paul Krugman/NY Times

I'm not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give 'em hell, Harry and Nancy!

Here's what I wrote more than three years ago, in the introduction to my column collection "The Great Unraveling": "I have a vision - maybe just a hope - of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country."

At the time, the right was still celebrating the illusion of victory in Iraq, and the bizarre Bush personality cult was still in full flower. But now the great revulsion has arrived.

Tuesday's election was a truly stunning victory for the Democrats. Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a "mandate" two years ago - and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn't been running unopposed.

The election wasn't just the end of the road for Mr. Bush's reign of error. It was also the end of the 12-year Republican dominance of Congress. The Democrats will now hold a majority in the House that is about as big as the Republicans ever achieved during that era of dominance.

Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.

Now, I don't expect or want a permanent Democratic lock on power. But I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.

In saying that, I'm not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that's as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.

But we may be seeing the downfall of movement conservatism - the potent alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. This alliance may once have had something to do with ideas, but it has become mainly a corrupt political machine, and America will be a better place if that machine breaks down.

Why do I want to see movement conservatism crushed? Partly because the movement is fundamentally undemocratic; its leaders don't accept the legitimacy of opposition. Democrats will only become acceptable, declared Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, once they "are comfortable in their minority status." He added, "Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate."

And the determination of the movement to hold on to power at any cost has poisoned our political culture. Just think about the campaign that just ended, with its coded racism, deceptive robo-calls, personal smears, homeless men bused in to hand out deceptive fliers, and more. Not to mention the constant implication that anyone who questions the Bush administration or its policies is very nearly a traitor.

When movement conservatism took it over, the Republican Party ceased to be the party of Dwight Eisenhower and became the party of Karl Rove. The good news is that Karl Rove and the political tendency he represents may both have just self-destructed.

Two years ago, people were talking about permanent right-wing dominance of American politics. But since then the American people have gotten a clearer sense of what rule by movement conservatives means. They've seen the movement take us into an unnecessary war, and botch every aspect of that war. They've seen a great American city left to drown; they've seen corruption reach deep into our political process; they've seen the hypocrisy of those who lecture us on morality.

And they just said no.


3. The Crowded Progressive Caucus -- by John Nichols/The Nation

What will be the largest of the ideological caucuses in the new House Democratic majority?

Why, of course, it must be the "centrists" affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council's "New Democrat Coalition." Yes, that's got to be the case because all the commentators at the Wall Street Journal keep saying that centrists were the big winners on Tuesday.

Er, no.

Well, then, it must be the more conservative Democrats who identify themselves as "Blue Dogs." Surely, that's the answer because all the folks on Fox News keeping talking about them.

Nope.

The largest ideological caucus in the new House Democratic majority will be the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with a membership that includes New York's Charles Rangel, Michigan's John Conyers, Massachusetts' Barney Frank and at least half the incoming chairs of House standing committees.

The caucus currently has 64 members -- up 14 since last year -- and its co-chairs, California Democrats Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, say they expect that as many as eight incoming House Democrats will join the CPC. The number could actually go higher, as several candidates in undecided House races ran with strong progressive support. (The CPC worked with labor and progressive groups to assist a number of candidates in targeted races around the country this year, reflecting the more aggressive approach it has taken since the caucus was reorganized under the leadership of Lee and Woolsey and hired veteran labor and political organizer Bill Goold as a full-time staffer.)

The caucus will need an infusion of new members -- not because those associated with it lost elections Tuesday but because they won . CPC members Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio will be leaving the House to become U.S. Senators. Interestingly, the two members of the "Blue Dog" caucus who ran for the Senate, Hawaii's Ed Case and Tennessee's Harold Ford, both lost.

Says Lee: "Some inside-the-Beltway commentators, columnists, and conservatives want the American people to believe that last Tuesday's election results have especially empowered moderate-to-conservative elements within the House Democratic Caucus in the 110th Congress, but that is an incomplete picture of the new political landscape on Capitol Hill."

She's right. The convention wisdom may say that the new crop of House Democrats is conservative or centrist: Political Correspondent Gloria Borger: "the people coming in are going to be these moderate conservatives"; New York Times columnist David Brooks: "For the most part they exchanged moderate Republicans for conservative Democrats."

But, as is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong.

House winners like Jerry McNerney from California, Ed Perlmutter from Colorado, Bruce Braley from Iowa, John Sarbanes from Maryland, Keith Ellison from Minnesota, Carol Shear-Porter and Paul Hodes from New Hampshire, John Hall from New York, stood for election on platforms that echoed the commitment of the CPC to bring the troops home from Iraq, promote economic fairness, make elections more honest and government more ethical, and promote energy independence. Many of the new members of the House, including New York's Yvette Clarke, won hotly-contested Democratic primaries by associating themselves with Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha's advocacy of rapid withdrawal from Iraq.

Do the math. While the Blue Dogs are predicting that the membership of their caucus may grow from 37 to 44 members, and the New Democrats hope their membership will edge up from the mid-forties to over the 50 mark, the Progressives are looking at the prospect that their caucus -- the most racially and regionally diverse ideological grouping in the Congress -- could number more than 70 members once the new House is seated.

Forget the spin. Listen to Barbara Lee, whose habit of deviating from the conventional wisdom in order get things right is now well established, when she says of Tuesday's election results, "It is important to recognize that this was not just a vote against George Bush and the Republican Congress, it was a vote for a Democratic agenda that is rooted in progressive values."


4. Progressive Caucus Rising
This election was no victory for centrists
By Nick Burt and Joel Bleifuss/In These Times

"We have a lot of work to do," says Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif), shown here at a Capitol Hill news conference on the Federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina in February. "Hurricane Katrina was a stark reminder of the failure of our government to address the challenges of inequality and poverty that still confront our nation."

Don’t buy all the crap coming from GOP talking-point memos or the blather from mainstream pundits. The midterm elections do not signal a move to the center. Yes, a few conservative Democrats were elected, but the big gainers were progressives. In particular, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is on the rise.

No longer will Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) be able to grab the gavel and run, as he did at a hearing last year when faced with pointed questions from Congressional Democrats about the PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo and the “war on terror.” During a hearing, Sensenbrenner, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, used his standing to abruptly declare the committee’s public hearing on the PATRIOT Act over. He cut off the microphones of the Democratic half of the panel and smugly shuffled out of the room, thereby avoiding any more frivolous questions about “civil rights.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich)—the new chair of the Judiciary Committee— will welcome such questions.

Democrats as a whole will benefit from controlling the House of Representatives, but yesterday’s victory bodes especially well for members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a coalition of 63 left-leaning Democrats that includes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Indeed the CPC is poised to increase its ranks. In an unprecedented move this fall, CPC members—coming together under the newly formed Progressive Majority Project—pooled their money, time and staff to lend support to progressives running in 12 House races. Eight of those CPC-backed candidates won, which makes all this talk about conservative Democrats in the ascendancy a bunch of bunk. (In addition, two CPC members, Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have moved on to the Senate.)

Though the CPC represents about a third of House Democrats, the caucus members hold ranking minority positions on half of the House’s 20 standing committees, including Conyers on the Judiciary Committee, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) on the Education and the Workforce Committee, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on the Government Reform Committee. As chairmen of those committees, CPC members will now be in a position to both promote progressive legislation and investigate administration wrongdoing. The assumption of committee chairmanships is one way the CPC is working to transform the group from the House’s largest caucus into its most powerful.

“It is important to recognize that this was not just a vote against George Bush and the Republican Congress, it was a vote for a Democratic agenda that is rooted in progressive values,” said Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). “In just the first 100 hours, we will be uniting behind Leader Pelosi to move a legislative agenda designed to address real issues that impact Americans.”

To build unity among the growing caucus, the CPC in May of last year hired former AFL-CIO official Bill Goold, its first full-time employee, as a policy coordinator. Five months later, the caucus drafted a new four-point “Progressive Promise,” a kind of Ten Commandments for progressives; the points centered around economic justice, civil rights, global peace and energy independence. A framework of general policy initiatives, such as raising the minimum wage and opposing media consolidation, is included.

The Progressive Promise provides the CPC with a foundation from which to build their legislative efforts. Last year, Lee, the co-chair of the CPC, turned the Promise’s commitment to global peace into HR (House Resolution) 197, which would make it “the policy of the United States not to enter into any base agreement with the Government of Iraq that would lead to a permanent United Sates military presence in Iraq.” The bill, as she wrote in an 2005 In These Times “House Call” column, would force the hand of supporters of the president. “If they don’t support being in Iraq permanently, they should co-sponsor my bill, and put themselves on record. It is that simple.”

And HR 676, introduced by Conyers and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), has become a rallying point for the CPC, labor unions, nurses and other activists. The proposal, which would establish universal health care, drew co-sponsorship from more than 70 representatives, was endorsed by as many labor unions and was the subject of rallies in dozens of U.S. cities this year.

Both bills now have a chance to get a fuller hearing. And on a wide range of issues, real alternatives can now be put forward. “We must move to address our domestic priorities: creating good jobs, increasing access to healthcare and providing the best possible education for our children,” Pelosi wrote in In These Times , following the 2004 election. “We also must reform the tax code and stop rewarding outsourcing. As a matter of basic fairness, no taxpayer should have to subsidize the outsourcing of his or her own job.”

There is reason to celebrate. Before heading to bed at 5 a.m. today, Chris Bowers of MyDD.com, a blog that has been instrumental in supporting progressive campaigns and politicians, posted the following congratulatory message:

“Wave of new conservative Democrats, my ass. [S]omeone tell me again how the new wave of Democrats is overwhelmingly conservative. … Republicans beaten at the top of their game. Republicans broke all of their fundraising and voter contact records this year. They had better maps than ever before. They had a better opportunity to pass whatever legislation they liked than ever before. And they were still crushed,” wrote Bowers.

“This is no time to start being risk-averse,” Bowers added. “We must continue to pursue the strategies that brought us here: silent revolution, fifty-state strategy, small donor explosion, [and a] progressive movement. We are all in this together.”

(Nick Burt is a Chicago-based freelance writer, and Joel Bleifuss is the editor of In These Times)


5. How the Dems won.
Blue's Clues
By John B. Judis/The New Republic

It's about time. After a series of frustrating election nights for Democrats, dating back to the Florida boondoggle in 2000, this year's election is a clear triumph. But was it, like the Watergate election of 1974, simply the result of correctible mistakes by the opposition? Or have the Republican scandals and the Bush administration's misadventure in Iraq brought to the surface trends that will lead to a new political majority? It's too early to say for certain, but it seems this election has at least provided Democrats with an opportunity to build a lasting congressional majority. Whether they succeed in doing so will depend partly on whether they understand what made for their smashing success this November. Here's a hint: It had something to do with energizing their own base, but it had much more to do with winning over voters that historically have had a stormy relationship with the Democratic Party.

Some of the Democratic victories occurred in states or congressional districts carried by Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. These districts were going to turn Democratic when their Republican incumbents retired or when the voters in these districts, faced with Republican malfeasance, decided to vote on party lines. That accounts for Ed Perlmutter's victory in suburban Denver and the defeats of GOP moderates like Representative Jim Leach in Iowa and Senator Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island. These seats should remain Democratic.

But Democrats also won in a host of districts and states that George W. Bush carried in the last election. In some cases, Democrats won primarily because the seat had been held by a Republican implicated in a personal or political scandal. But, in many others, Democrats benefited from the reemergence of political trends that had been suppressed after September 11--or, even before that, by Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. The most important of these trends involves independents.

There is no dependable measure of independents. Some states don't even allow voters to register as independents. But, when exit polls and the University of Michigan's American National Election Studies have asked voters whether they consider themselves independents, the percentage has grown from roughly one-fifth of the electorate after World War II to over one-third today, making them a larger group nationally than self-identified Democrats or Republicans.

In the South, independents tend to be former Democrats who have begun to vote Republican but are unwilling to describe themselves as Republicans. In the North and West, however, they occupy a much more distinct political niche. They include libertarian-minded professionals and small-business owners--especially in the West--and white working-class voters in the Northeast and Midwest. They are equally uncomfortable with the feminist left and the religious right. What they dislike most is government interference in their personal lives. They see Washington as corrupt and want it reformed. They favor balanced budgets but also Social Security and Medicare. They worry about U.S. companies moving their plants to Mexico and about China exporting underpriced goods to the United States. They favor a strong military, but they want it used strictly against foreign aggression.

In the 1980s, these voters generally supported Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; but, in 1992, many of them abandoned Bush for Ross Perot, who received 18.9 percent of the national vote. Perot did well in the West, Midwest, and Northeast, but not in the Deep South. In 1994, two-thirds of Perot voters, disgusted with what they saw as continuing corruption in Washington, backed the Gingrich revolution, accounting for much of the GOP's success outside the Deep South.

Perot, of course, vanished from the scene after attempting a repeat performance in 1996. But the constituency he had spoken for remained and even grew. In 1996, Clinton and the Democrats won back many of these voters, but, after September 11, they gravitated toward the Republican Party, helping to account for Republican success in 2002 and 2004. In this election, however, independents flocked back to the Democrats. Nationally, the Democrats won independents by 57 percent to 39 percent. In the East, the margin was 63 to 33 percent; in the Midwest, 56 to 41 percent; and, in the West, 58 to 35 percent. Democrats also did well in many of those Western and Midwestern states where Perot had won over 20 percent of the vote in 1992: Arizona, Colorado, Kansas (where the Democrats won two of four House seats and the top state offices), Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The Democrats also made gains among a critical subgroup of independents--the white working-class voters known as Reagan Democrats. In the Midwest, Democrats won these voters (most clearly identifiable in the polls as voters with "some college") by 50 to 49 percent. White working-class support accounted, among other things, for Democratic victories over Republican incumbents in three predominately white downscale Indiana congressional districts that had backed Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Prior to the election, much was made of how conservative some of the Democratic candidates were, but the focus on candidates like North Carolina's Heath Shuler (who won) or Kentucky's Ken Lucas (who lost) misses what helped many Democrats in the Midwest and West unseat Republicans. These candidates were not neoconservatives nor liberals, but the heirs to Perot's peculiar centrism. They advocated fair trade, not free trade, and promised to reform the North American Free Trade Agreement ( nafta ). They denounced illegal immigration but didn't endorse the punitive House Republican measures. Rather than advocate new spending measures, they called for balanced budgets and reform of Washington politics.

This description fits the rural New York, Colorado, Montana, and Indiana congressional candidates. It even fits Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, who was sometimes considered a darling of the Democratic left. In his economic appeals, Brown echoed Perot rather than Ted Kennedy. In one typical commercial, he declared, "Before I ask for your vote, I owe it to you to tell you where I stand. I'm for an increase in the minimum wage and against trade agreements that cost Ohio jobs. I support stem-cell research, tighter borders, and a balanced-budget amendment."

Much was also made of how some successful Democrats, such as Pennsylvania Senator-elect Bob Casey and Colorado Governor-elect Bill Ritter, opposed abortion or gun control. They certainly did, and, by doing so, neutralized some of the opposition from the religious right and the National Rifle Association. But, in general, these centrist Democrats kept the focus on the economy and the war in Iraq and away from social issues, except for stem-cell research, which is universally popular outside the Deep South. Without saying it, they managed to convey that they had no intention of pressing their convictions on guns or abortion.

Democrats also won many of the other constituencies that had begun moving their way two decades ago, but whose movement had halted after September 11. For instance, professionals--best identified in exit polls as voters with postgraduate education--backed Democrats by 58 percent to 41 percent in congressional races. (In the East, the margin was a whopping 67 to 32 percent.) These voters played an important role in the defeat of Arizona Republican J.D. Hayworth and in Democratic victories in suburban Connecticut and high-tech Nashua, New Hampshire. The gender gap, which had closed in 2002, opened wide again, accounting for Senate victories by Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island, James Webb in Virginia, and Jon Tester in Montana. Latinos, who had been wooed successfully by the Bush administration but were alienated by the House Republicans, backed Democrats in overwhelming numbers. In the West, Latinos, who had supported Democratic candidates by only 59 to 40 percent in 2004, backed them this year by a landslide of 72 to 27 percent.

One other constituency deserves mention: younger voters. In 2002, voters aged 18 to 29 split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. This year, they backed Democrats by 63 to 33 percent. These voters won't necessarily provide the numbers to win elections for the Democrats, but they can provide energy to revitalize the party. They write blogs, knock on doors, and encourage candidates, such as Montana's Jon Tester or Northern California's Jerry McNerny, neither of whom were initially taken seriously by party officials. They don't necessarily provide solutions to great policy questions; but they can force attention to problems that require solutions, as they did with the Vietnam war in the 1960s and the Iraq war today. As the unions have lost members and clout, their campaign work has been increasingly supplemented by young recruits from organizations like MoveOn.org.

After the 2000 election, it became fashionable to picture Republican and Democratic gains in red and blue on the national maps. Republicans invariably got the better of this visual display because they enjoyed support among the great empty spaces of the West. This election not only altered the lineup of constituent groups, but also the map of American politics. The Republicans now increasingly appear to be a regional party confined to the Deep South. While Republican support collapsed in the Northeast and eroded in the West, it remained steady in the South, where a majority of voters approved of the way George W. Bush has handled his presidency and the war in Iraq. In the new national political map--most clearly seen when states are colored according to their governors--the Northeast, Midwest, and Southern border states of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas are overwhelmingly blue. The Plains and Rocky Mountain states are a mixed palette, but more blue than red, with Democratic governors in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Montana. Alone among these regions, the Deep South from South Carolina to Georgia and across to Mississippi is dark red.

Republican support in the South is due to the high percentage of white evangelicals, the virtual absence of unions, the widespread dependence (in states like Georgia) on military spending, and the lingering legacy of civil rights strife, which divides the parties along racial lines. But, as Thomas Schaller suggests in Whistling Past Dixie , the Republicans' success in the South can prove their undoing elsewhere, as voters in the West recoil from the GOP's close identification with the religious right and voters in the Northeast look askance at governors who owe their elections to support for the Confederate flag. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was able to establish the Republicans as America's party. But Reagan's party was of the Sun Belt, not of the South. The new party of Bush and Karl Rove is increasingly that of the Southern Bible Belt.

For the Democrats to succeed Republicans as America's party, its leaders must recognize what it took to build this majority. A Democratic majority in this country must include Massachusetts and Colorado, Ohio and Oregon; fervid Democratic partisans, youthful activists who despise Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, and political independents alienated from government; suburban professionals who give money to the National Organization for Women and naral ; and white workers who worry that politicians will take their guns away. In this election, the Bush administration's failure in Iraq and the corruption of the Republican Congress allowed this heterogeneous group to find a temporary home in the Democratic Party. But it will take all the ingenuity and craft that Democrats can muster to turn this halfway house into a permanent residence for a long-term Democratic majority.

(John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.)


6. No to Bushworld
A Thumpin' or a Whippin'?
By ROBERT RODRIGUEZ/Counterpunch

The people have spoken. They have voted a resounding no to Bushworld. Translated, this means: No to the Iraq war. No to a United States of Fear. No to corruption, and, Yes to the U.S. Constitution.

In Bushworld, however, the president's faith and delusion have not been shaken: His take on the election is that now that Democrats are in control of Congress, their primary responsibility is to say yes to his thoroughly discredited agenda. This means yes to his Iraq war, yes to his war on terror, yes to his fear-mongering and yes to allow him to continue his policy of disregarding the law.

It comes as no surprise that many equally deluded conservative talking heads and Republican operatives not only agree with the president's interpretation, but all of a sudden find themselves empowered to lecture majority Democrats as to how they must govern They must avoid hearings and investigations of the administration, steer to the middle, which in conservative lingo means moving toward Bushworld and on some issues, such as immigration, move to the fanatical right of the president.

What's mind-boggling, is that some Democrats (New House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi & Rahm Emmanuel of the Democratic National Campaign Committee) actually are signaling agreement with this advice. Most amazingly, they have already stated that impeachment hearings are "off the table." (Perhaps they have not read John Nichol's book: The Genius of Impeachment).

Maybe this is what is meant when analysts say that politicians are out of touch with the people. The thumpin' the president and the Republican Party suffered means a total rejection of Bushworld. Perhaps an interpretation of this whippin' requires elaboration.

A no to Bushwold also means no to:

o the Bush war doctrine: This 2002 illegal and dangerous doctrine calls for preemptive and permanent worldwide "w on terror" that ensures U.S. world domination.

o unilateralism. This means rejecting the Bush policy of ignoring international treaties & obligations and ignoring the rest of the world in making decisions that affect the entire world. This includes a no to the president's desire to employ smaller tactical nuclear weapons. o

an imperial presidency. This has led to the illegal usurpation of power and excessive secrecy.

o one party rule. This is what has led to both to a rubber-stamp Congress, but also to unbridled corruption. o tax breaks and the subsidizing of the military-industrial complex and global corporations.

o the exemption of global corporations from health, labor, environmental and safety regulations

o the blurring of church & state.

o the rejection of science, particularly in matters relating to our fragile environment.

o scapegoat politics. Blaming illegal aliens became the failed Republican strategy of "energizing" the base.

o the demonization of one's opponents. The president created the discredited "Either you're with us or against us" politics which he has used both at home and abroad.

It also means yes to:

o adhering to the International War Crimes Tribunal, ensuring that no one is above the law and that there is no refuge for war criminals.

o governmental checks and balances. This is what a rubber-stamp Congress has failed to provide the past 6 years.

o tax relief for those that actually need it (as opposed to tax breaks for the super-rich). Incidentally, the Iraq war is proving to be the "Mother of all taxes" upon the people, with some analysts estimating a cost of 2 trillion dollars.

o fair-minded justices.

o a raise in the minimum wage (and hopefully leading to a living wage).

o affordable universal health care.

o a genuine solution to the issue of immigration _ without the demonization of the hardest working sector of society.

All this is a complete rejection of Bushworld. It's true that Donald Rumsfeld as head of the Defense Department has already been given the boot, but former CIA director, Robert Gates, of Iran-Contra notoriety, will be charged with continuing the president's failed war policies.

It bears repeating. The will of the people, via this election, is a clamor not simply for heads to roll (such as UN ambassador, John Bolton), but more importantly, for policies to change. Indeed, Congress must focus on finding solutions _ on undoing all the damage this administration has wrought upon the world. Yet, to preemptively take hearings and investigations off the table is to essentially abscond from one of its primary responsibilities and to essentially get free Congressional passes back into Bushworld.

(Roberto Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com)


7. Rejoice -- by the New Republic Editors

“We now clearly are not the country that was 49-49. We're now at 51-48 and may be trending to 51-47. It is incremental but small, persistent change. We saw it in 2002, and we saw it again this year. ... It tells me we may be seeing part of a rolling realignment." -- Karl Rove, November 7, 2004

Two years ago, Republicans managed to spin a 51 percent victory over a weak opponent into something very big--not quite a landslide, but a mandate, a "rolling realignment," perhaps even (as Newsweek breathlessly speculated) "a political dominance that could last for decades."

By that standard, what would you call what the Democrats accomplished Tuesday? They won the aggregate House vote by a margin of some ten percentage points, nearly four times the margin Bush ran up against the hapless Kerry in 2004. Their gain of more than two dozen House seats may be modest by historical comparison, but that is only because demography and gerrymandering have compressed the field of contestable seats to a bare minimum.

The same holds true of the Senate. Yes, the Democrats will likely have just a bare two-seat majority. But this is only because the overrepresented low-population states tilt so heavily Republican. If you assume each senator represents half his state's population, the 51 senators caucusing with the Democrats will represent some 58 percent of the United States.

A lot of things have come crashing down with this election. One of them is the absurd cultural prestige enjoyed by President Bush and his supporters. Since 2000, they have continuously bludgeoned their critics with the notion that the only authentic Americans are those living in the red states. Democratic voters have been endlessly told that they are nothing more than a tiny, alien coastal remnant, and many of them started to believe it.

Well, it's hokum. Bush and his vision for the country have been before the voters four times now. Twice (in 2002 and 2004) a narrow majority of voters supported him; once (in 2000) a narrow majority rejected him; and now a substantial majority has rejected him. Bush is not the incarnation of the popular will, and his critics are not anti-American freaks.

Another casualty of the election, we hope, should be the pathological insularity of the administration's foreign policy-making. It has long been obvious to every sentient being, along with many members of the Bush inner circle, that Donald Rumsfeld was an epic disaster as defense secretary. That Bush could not take even the minimal step of acknowledging this glaringly obvious fact made it difficult to believe he could take the immensely more difficult step of coming to grips with Iraq. A global strategic disaster was not enough to shake Bush into action. It took a Republican political disaster as well.

Finally, and most proximately, the election should bury the peculiar form of one-party rule that has so corrupted American politics. Until the present administration, the modern American state had no true experience with one-party rule. Even during those times when Democrats controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, they were a fractious assortment of Northern progressives and Southern conservatives, more coalition than true party. President Clinton's toughest battles during his first two years came with the Democrats running Congress. When Bush won the presidency, there was at last a single party with total control of the levers of power and a relatively coherent vision of government's role. They kept inventing new ways to turn their power into a self-perpetuating machine. It was a frightening thing to behold.

From the moment they took control of Congress in 1994, Republicans handed over astonishing power to the business lobby to rewrite regulations and the tax code to its liking. Republicans held votes in the dead of night, let lobbyists author legislation, and elevated the pork barrel to the central operating principle of government. Their entire legislative program was a massive payoff.

The Republican-K Street nexus, along with the slanted districting of the House, made the ruling claque appear almost unbeatable. And, indeed, it took a staggering combination of factors--a failing war, stagnant wages, endless scandals, the near-loss of a major U.S. city--to finally pry the levers of power out of Republican fingers.

When they won Congress in 1994, Republicans hubristically called it a "revolution." November 7, 2006, was not a revolution, and nobody should expect unbroken sunny days to follow. But it did end a dismal period in American political life, and for that we can only rejoice.


8. The Rich Aren't Republican Anymore
How Democrats won the election by stealing wealthy voters from the GOP.
By Daniel Gross/Slate.com

On the campaign trail, President Bush and Vice President Cheney argued that voting for Democratic candidates would be bad for people with high incomes. Returning Democrats to control of the House, Cheney said, would mean installing tax-raising Rep. Charles Rangel at the helm of the House ways and means committee and making Rep. Barney Frank chairman of the House financial services committee. The not-so-subtle implications: Elect these guys and they'll raise taxes, regulate the investment world, and funnel the proceeds to undeserving black people and gay Jews.

It didn't work. One of the many dynamics in play this fall was the phenomenon of Bushenfreude , angry, well-off, well-educated yuppies, generally clustered on the coasts, who were funneling windfalls from Bush tax cuts into the campaigns of Democrats and preparing to vote for those who would raise taxes on their capital gains, their incomes, and their estates.

Was Bushenfreude a decisive factor in the Democratic victory? Perhaps not. In Bushenfreude's ground zero, Connecticut's 4 th Congressional district, Republican Chris Shays hung on by his fingernails and beat back well-funded challenger Diane Farrell for the second election in a row. Ned Lamont, another pissed-off Connecticut yuppie, likewise failed.

But a look at the rather crude exit polls show that the House Republicans didn't get much of a return on all the pandering they've done to the wealthy. And it's quite possible that the defection of angry rich folks might have helped tipped the balance in places like the Rhode Island and Virginia Senate races, and Republican house losses in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Arizona. Back in 2000, Bush referred to "the haves, and the have mores," as "my base." Today? Not so much.

Because we're in an age of mass affluence, and because wealthier people tend to vote more frequently than poorer people do, the voting behavior of the rich can be almost as significant as the political donations they make. In 2006, on a nationwide basis, those making more than $100,000 constituted 23 percent of voters, up from 19 percent in 2004. And far more of them suffer from Bushenfreude now than did in 2004. The outbreak, an epidemic on the coasts, is spreading slowly to the Midwest and the South.

The exit polls aggregate votes for the House on a broad geographic basis: East, West, Midwest, and South. Yesterday, the poll for the House vote in the East showed that the 25 percent of the electorate making over $100,000 went big for Democrats overall, 57-42, compared with a 49-48 margin in 2004. In 2006, those making between $150,000 and $200,000 voted for Democratic candidates by a whopping 63-37 majority, and those making more than $200,000 went Democratic by a slim 50-48 margin. That's a huge shift from 2004, when Republicans took the $150,000 to $200,000 demographic 50-48 and rang up a huge victory among the over $200,000 set: 56-40. In 2006, Democratic candidates racked up big wins among college graduates—63-35, compared with 55-42 in 2004—and among those with postgraduate degrees—68-31, compared with 58-38 in 2004.

A similar dynamic could be seen in the House vote in the West , where Democrats won the high-income demographics by smaller majorities: 53-45 in the $100,000 to $150,000 slice; 50-46 in the $150,000 to $200,000 segment, and 52-48 in the over $200,000 category. Again, that represents a big shift from 2004 , when Republicans won the $100,000 to $150,000 group 51-48 and took the over $200,000 group 54-46. In 2006, Democratic candidates increased their margins in the West among college graduates and those with post-graduate degrees—anthropologists at Berkeley, yes, but also MBAs, lawyers, and doctors.

In the South, where households with more than $100,000 in annual income were 23 percent of the voters, Republicans also saw significant erosion . The $100,000 to $150,000 group went Republican 59-39, the $150,000 to $200,000 crowd went Republican 67-33, and the over $200,000 set voted Republican 58-38. But that's a big comedown from 2004 , when the $100,000 to $150,000 group went Republican 71-29, and those making more than $200,000 voted Republican by nearly 3-to-1.

In the Midwest in 2006 , where the affluent are a less-significant voting bloc (households with more than $100,000 were only 18 percent of the voters), things held to typical form. Those making more than $100,000 voted Republican 56-44, down only slightly from the 58-41 in the same income group Republicans received in 2004.

On a nationwide basis, the wealthy still vote Republican. But not by much. According to the 2006 exit poll , on a nationwide basis, of all homes making more than $100,000, Republican House candidates received a 51-47 majority, and among those making more than $200,000, Republicans racked up a 53-46 majority. Here's the irony: As the number and relative weight of the wealthy grow, their incomes rising in part because Republicans have cut taxes on their incomes and capital gains, they're proving themselves less likely to vote their economic interests. Somewhere in Manhattan today, the agent for a National Review writer is surely circulating a book proposal: What's the Matter With Greenwich?