Arnold G. York
Which way is the country going?
We’ve just had a midterm election with some very surprising results, and the pundits are predicting the future and what it all means.
Is this the end of the conservative era?
Is America swinging back to the left?
Will these election results harbor 12 years of Democratic rule?
What’s real and what’s illusion?
Here’s my take.
To begin with, the Democratic Party pulled off an amazing upset. You can’t sell it short. They were focused, recruited good candidates, learned from past mistakes and set out to win (which, for the Democratic Party, was no small feat). It was predictable that the Dems would pick up some seats in the last two years of Bush’s presidency. However, few but the starriest-eyed partisans anticipated they would recapture both the House and Senate. But they didn’t do it alone. They had Republican help along the way.
Despite a good economy the president is leading a very unpopular, expensive and inconclusive war. More and more, Americans are questioning why we’re in Iraq. It’s become evident that there is a brutal civil war going on there and no one can figure out who are the good guys. The Iraqis are killing each other in a wave of brutality that makes no sense to most Americans, and the growing feeling is let’s get the hell out of there. The White House totally misread that feeling sweeping America.
The Republicans might have survived the antiwar feeling if they hadn’t gotten themselves enmeshed in a series of scandals and apparent inadequacies that made many Americans question their competence. They’ve been in power in the House and Senate for 12 years, long enough to be corrupted by power, and they proved to be no less apt at resisting temptation than any of their predecessors of either party. First it was disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the K Street graft scandals. And just about the time that scandal began to fade, along came Representative Mark Foley and his alleged affection for 16-year-old congressional pages. There were some people who were cynical about Abramoff, but were outraged about Foley and the way the Republican House leadership handled it or, more accurately, didn’t handle it. Then there were Congressmen Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, and indictments all over the place and a growing sense that these guys were knee-deep in some very unseemly stuff.
They all seemed to talk a good game but didn’t hesitate to dip into the honey pot at every opportunity. Also, their handling of the aftermath of Katrina sort of destroyed the old competency argument.
So America went to the polls and today the House has 230 Democrats and 195 Republicans, with 435 members in the House and a few races still up in the air. What does it mean? Do the arithmetic. If 18 votes, more or less, shift in the House, then the House is Republican again. In the Senate it would only take one, and Sen. Joe Lieberman is already making funny noises. We already know that a number of districts that now have new Democratic incumbents are typically Republican Districts, because they were gerrymandered that way, and some of them will probably go back into the Republican fold in the next election.
On the other hand, there are some changes going on in the country and the Republicans have been behind the wave. True, overall the economy is in good shape, but in some states, like Ohio, it’s a disaster. So every time the White House talks about the good economy, people in Ohio and other economically suffering states just burn. The Republicans may have the South and the dependable religious right, but that comes at a price. They have to start worrying when places like Indiana and Missouri, normally strong Republican areas, start moving toward the Dems. New England was a disaster area for them and there are signs that all the anti-immigration talk is moving the Hispanics, a large and growing minority, farther into the Democratic fold. So the Republicans have to begin to question whether the old strategy of playing principally to their base works anymore.
To put it all together, I would say that the Democratic edge is hair-thin, and if they get stupid and read this as a mandate they could very well end up back as the minority party. If they head toward the center and stay there that, to my mind, is the best place they can be. The next time out the Republicans have to broaden their base or they’re going to be a minority party. Karl Rove, Bush’s top strategist, is a numbers cruncher; I’m sure he’s already out recruiting some combat-experienced Iraq veterans to run for the Republicans next time, preferably in New England and swing states.
To all the questions the answer is the same: it’s too early to tell. One election is not a sign of a shift in the political Teutonic plates. However, it might be, and with a presidential election coming up in 2008, it appears to me that the country is moving. It’s just not clear yet in which direction.