Step One: Assessing the Damage
The mainstream media would have us believe that George W. Bush took a huge political risk and expended great political capital in campaigning for a number of candidates and that that risk payed off with a decisive victory. The net gain in the Senate was important, but hardly what I would call decisive. And the risk can be assessed by answering the following question: if the Republicans had lost Senate seats, would Bush have suffered any damage? Or would the conventional wisdom have been that he had no hope of reversing traditional mid-term election trends? Would he have been chastized for taking off a full month (didn't he know there was a war on?) to campaign, or would the pundits have said, "Nice try, George, but no cigar"? If you don't know the immediate and obvious answer to that, you haven't been paying attention for the last three years.
Elections are won by accomplishing two things: energizing your base and persuading the mushy middle to come over to your side. Too many elections in this country are decided by those indecisive middle-of-the-roaders who think putting blinders on to the differences in the parties is a virtue.
As for energizing their base, the Democrats should have had it easy. This was the first election since the theft of the White House in 2000. Bush has betrayed his centrist campaign with hard-right policies that would have made Reagan blush. His economic policies are a disaster and easily discredited. His heavy-handed foreign policy has squandered the world's good will after 9/11. Instead, the Democrats decided to piss off their base starting immediately after inauguration. They refused to acknowledge the theft, they gave tacit support to the indefensible tax cuts for the wealthy, they refused to raise the question of repealing them after the economy tanked as a result, and they ignored the overwhelming consensus of their constituents to oppose giving Bush war powers regarding Iraq. In short, they made us wonder why we support tham rather than energizing us.
As for persuading the mushy middle, assuming the Dems had tried, what would they convince them of? They bent over backwards to minimize any opposition to to Republican policies. What was the message? Vote for us, were not as bad as the Republicans say? In fairness, the media was much more interested in broadcasting baseless speculation about the DC Sniper than covering Democratic campaign issues. And Democrats have a decided disadvantage in terms of think-tanks and political message control. And that's got to be fixed.
The scariest thing I heard on election night was that there was some arguing within Democratic leadership ranks that the Democrats should have caved on the Homeland Security bill and allowed the unions to be busted, thus depriving Bush of an item in his stump speech. That is exactly the wrong kind of thinking. It was one of the few instances the Democrats could show of standing up to Bush. It was the right thing to do, and Bush was more responsible for holding up the bill than the Democrats. They could have used the issue to energize their base and persuade the mushy middle. But didn't.
I don't know much about Nancy Pelosi, recently elected to be the new Minority Leader in the House. She is described as an outspoken liberal, which is exactly what the Democrats need. I don't care if she is to the left of "average Americans". Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey prove that you can be out of touch with the American public and still be an effective Congressional leader. We need someone who will continually attack W, day in and day out, so that the message has some chance of sinking in. No president has ever deserved it more or received it less.
9:00:16 PM 
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