It’s all over. The violent Republican Revolution has been put down. Democrats control both houses of Congress. Here are some of my thoughts on the race, the outcome, and the coverage. In no certain order:
1. The New Center Democrats came a long way this year in establishing themselves as the party of the center. Republicans have said that they see the results as a sign that they didn’t stay true to their conservative core values. This is code for, “Screw you guys. We’re running to the right.” This leaves a huge hole in the center that Democrats can fill.
2. Bush is Our Bitch Now It’s like we elected a new president as well. He no longer has the power to run around and act crazy and do whatever he wants. He now has to be responsible for his actions, because we can haul him and his whole team in front of painful oversight committees if we want to. Did you see him at that press conference yesterday? Now all of a sudden he wants to be friends. He threw us Donald Rumsfeld and a promise to approve a higher minimum wage as an olive branch. Good start. We’ll see.
3. Karl Rove Not such a genius after all. The pander-to-the-base-and-screw-everybody-else Karl Rove strategy has had its weakness exposed. It works, until it doesn’t. It works as long as the voters are more scared than angry. Get that formula just a little bit wrong, and Nyquil turns into Napalm.
4. The Government Works Our electoral system works. Crooked despicable people, drunk on power and corrupt to the core, can redraw districts, mudsling, lie, cheat, and do whatever they can think of to suppress and disenfranchise voters everywhere, but at the end of the day, the American People still have all the power. That was a nice surprise.
5. Special Mention Goes Out to MSNBC MSNBC streamed their election coverage live on their website. Totally free. I don’t have cable, and so it was a nice surprise to be able to watch it all night long. It saved me from having to spend an hour of prime time with an in over his head Charlie Gibson. It was a really forward thinking approach to event journalism that I think all the news channels could take an example from. That plus a couple really nice interactive election maps made them the site to beat for coverage this year. I also want to credit thinkprogress.org, and Talking Points Memo, who both updated all night with loads of great stuff. Both are sites to rely on year round, not just during the high profile events. Between those sites I stayed well informed all night long.
Also, it was fun watching Chris Mathews visibly freak out every time some six term Republican Congressman he’s known since forever lost their seat. “These are people I know!†He said at one point.
6. The Donald Rumsfeld Quickie Divorce Bush, in an effort to stem the inevitable tide of oversight, canned Rumsfeld. Good riddance. I get the impression that Bush thinks that he can pin some of his gross incompetence on Rumsfeld, and that the people will give Bush a pass, but I think he is underestimating the people’s anger on the war. That might have worked two years ago, but not now. He is in legacy saving mode now.
This really awkward ceremony took place at the White House yesterday. Bush was standing up behind this hastily erected podium with Rumsfeld on one side of him, and Robert Gates, Rumsfeld’s replacement on the other. Everybody gave short little speeches, then it was over. WEIRD. Check this out: In his little goodbye speech Rumsfeld managed to call everybody in the country stupid. From his remarks:
The great respect that I have for your leadership, Mr. President, in this little-understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century — it is not well-known, it was not well-understood; it is complex for people to comprehend.
An asshole to the end. I won’t miss that sack of shit one bit.
7. The New Scene We now control the entire legislative branch. We are in a great position to really change the debate and establish some accountability. Bush must be crapping his pants. I think he will be one uneasy lame duck. Lots of angry quacking.
8. A Clean Sweep Not only did we administer a first class ass whipping on a national level, we took the battle to the states. The Democratic Party now has a majority of Governorships, and made substantial inroads into State Legislatures. Nice. A few years down the road we can straighten out some of these gerrymandered districts.
9. An Ugly Fight Another thing not to forget is that we not only won, but we did it against the nastiest, best funded, best organized political spin machine in the world. Even all their sneaky little back handed dirty tricks didn’t work this time. We should be proud of that.
10. Not So Fast We need to be careful. The Republicans lost more than we won. The nation rejected the right wing conservative theory of legislative managment, and so they fired them. They see us as a party with a lot of potential, but are a little uneasy about our intentions. We need to make sure that once we assume power we show voters why our way of governing is better. We need to show them what a well run congress looks like. People have forgotten, and its time they were shown. That’s the job we were hired for last Tuesday, so we have to take special care to prove to them that they made the right decision. It’s essential that we compromise, which means actual compromise and not the Republican style “compromise means we do what I want and you don’t bitch about it†crap, but actual give and take. That is going to mean working with the President, even though we despise every molecule in his hate soaked body. We have important work to do, and it’s important that we get it done. We also have to watch Republicans carefully. They are sneaky, and though they will walk with a limp for a while, they will be back, angrier than ever, and will constantly be trying to undermine our efforts. They don’t want progress. That’s why WE are the ones called Progressives. If we can do that, if we can be the better party, if we can lead by good example, if we manage the congress with intelligence and honesty and with a minimum of pointless partisan bitterness, if we can achieve progress for the people of the country, if we actually DO something for someone other than ourselves and our rich political backers, then we can hold onto this majority for years and years to come.
This, by the way is the weirdest picture of the day:
Doesn’t it sort of look like Nancy Pelosi and George Bush want to work off some of that post election stress with a little hole punching of their own? Disturbing. At least they are making an effort to be friendly.
