A New Beginning, or More of the Same?
I woke up this morning in an unusually good mood. For the first time in this century, I was satisfied with the results of a national election. the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, won a majority of governorships, and it looks like they will get a one-vote majority in the Senate. Listening to Bill Press and Stephanie Miller was really fun, and brought tears of joy to my eyes. It was a celebration of the win, and some gloating over the neo-cons who tried to take over the country and take it back to 1950′s Red-Scare America. Finally, the likes of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Coulter, and InGraham received their comeuppance.
Like I said, I was happy. I still am, but now reality has set in. Sure we won, but what does it mean? How much did we actually win? What can we do, and what will we do? How will we do it? these are questions that need to be answered. It’s a time for maturity, sobriety, thoughtfulness, and mending.
First of all, let’s look at the figures: in the House, we have won 229 seats, with 10 seats still contested. That’s barely a majority, just a little over 52 percent of the house. It’s surely not a supermajority. The Senate, as I said, is still up for grabs, with the Democrats having a 50-49 edge with one seat outstanding. If for some reason, the Virginia seat goes Republican, they will have a majority in name, because in the event of a tie, the Vice President has the tie-breaking vote, and we all know what that means in the case of Dick Cheney. Even if we win that seat, it’s a simple majority. What that means is that chances are, the President is going to be vetoing a bunch of legislation, and it will take some work to overturn the vetoes.
As far as the Governorships go, it’s nice to think that we have 28 out of 50 seats, but so what? It may help with organizing for the next Presidential campaign, but that’s going to come down to what’s going on at the state, county and municipal levels in two years. So really, the majority of governorships is pretty meaningless right now.
The thing that’s imprtant is that the progressives will have positions of power in the House and wil be able to move our agenda to the forefront. Pelosi, Miller, Conyers, and Waxman will all head committees of importance. Kucinich will no longer be a back-seater with weird, radical ideas. However nice that is, there is a lot of work to be done. The Democratic Centrism has to be unmade. The damage done by the neocons must be reversed. The country has to be set back on the course it was on when the Iron Curtain fell. It’s going to be a long road.
