Needless to say, Democrats are pleased by the outcome of the midterm elections. With their new-found majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, some feel the time is right to take a hard-line stance and spend the political capital the Democrats worked so hard to earn.
At every opportunity they get, leaders of the Democratic party and news media are eager to claim a new political climate. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who will most likely become the first female speaker of the House, said Americans “voted for Democrats to take our country in a new direction.” Time Magazine called the election results a “robust whupping on the Republicans” in its Nov. 20 issue. Even President Bush called it “a thumping.”
Rather than what nearly every news source has called a “mandate,” the midterm elections should serve as a wake up call to Democrats. They did win a significant portion of the House of Representatives, but will have only a very slim majority in the Senate, and both of these victories came only after a series of politically disastrous Republican missteps. Democrats need to look at their platform with a critical eye to determine why, if the Republicans are as inept and misguided as they contend, it took voters six years, an unpopular war and myriad ethics scandals to choose an alternative.
Additionally, Democrats should remember the 2004 election, after which President Bush, who had won a mere 51 percent majority of the vote, asserted that voters had given him a “mandate” to continue with more of the same. They should look at the two years that followed, which saw Bush discover he had considerably less political capital in the minds of the American public than he had thought, and inevitably they should come to the same conclusion about their own victory that they readily jumped to about his: A slim margin of victory is not a mandate.
All that can be gleaned from a 51 percent majority is that the country is divided. Rather than taking it as a green light to go for a platform that strictly follows the party line, they should take it as a warning to go slowly and to not expend what limited political capital they have on divisive issues.
Although the thought of revenge against Republicans for “No Child Left Behind” and “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” may indeed be tempting, the Democrats must resist the siren song of vengeance in order to have any chance of effecting change in the upcoming legislative session.
The war in Iraq is, perhaps after abortion, the most divisive issue facing the United States today. As the Iraqi death toll hits a record high the American public’s discontent grows with a war that has now lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II.
Those calling for change are justified in their plea. With the coalition death toll approaching 3,000 and everpresent news of turmoil and violence, the climate among Americans is tired.
Pelosi rightly expressed this in her speech just after the election, saying “nowhere did the American people make it more clear that we need a new direction than in the war in Iraq.”
The party does seem to be moving forward in a moderate direction. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer was chosen over the more liberal Rep. John Murtha, who has called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. “The American people voted for change,” as Pelosi said, but they are hoping for change that is quite a bit less drastic than that.
Although it may not be the sweeping change that some have hoped for, the best course for the nation as a whole is to avoid polarizing, hard-line stances and to instead make an earnest attempt to draft legislation that serves the interests of more than 51 percent of Americans. This, we hope, will be the Democrats’ goal.
In the wake of the election, Pelosi said “today we have made history, now let us make progress.” We wish her and the Democrats the best luck in that endeavor. We urge the new majority party to take the political high road and in the spirit of cooperation to treat the Republicans better than it has been treated for the past six years.
Democrats should not overstate ‘mandate’
Daily Emerald
November 26, 2006
0
More to Discover