Democrats Win House, Lead Key Senate Races
We've got the House. Looks like we'll get the Senate. Santorum is out. Allen is losing.
The lunatics may still be running the asylum, but there's finally some sanity around to keep them in check.
No longer is my country represented solely by the representatives of Big Business and the Christian Right. No longer can our bumbling president ram through whatever idiotic measures he sees fit. We've got people in power who will fight for all people instead of the top 1 percent. We're going to be pushing things like health care, stem cell research, and the minimum wage instead of tax cuts for the rich, emasculating the Bill of Rights, and the gay marriage amendment. We've got subpoena power to fight the lying, secretive torturer-in-chief. We may force Bush to finally dump Rumsfeld. We're going to have less corruption.
Bush is still president, but with a sub-40% approval rating and a Democratic House and (hopefully!) Senate, his potential for damage may finally be limited.
To use a trite phrase, it's morning in America. Or at least dawn.
Edit: Now Rumsfeld is quitting! Can this day get better for America?
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26 comments:
Whoo-hoooo indeed! Maybe some sanity and reason ahead. Here's to the The Culture of Death! ;-)
..and we should manage to avoid war with Iran.... though that might make the Israelis to go it alone.....
I'm looking forward to committes and inquries investigating the last 6 years of Republican government... It should be entertaining if nothing else!
I like Rumsfeld. He understands the mission of the modern military better than most. That's why the pro-status quo people don't like him.
The war (which ended years ago) was a huge success, with a small number of troops we took over an entire country in two or three weeks.
JA, congrats, but let's not pretend the Democrats are G-d to the Republican Satan.
HS:
Depends what your objectives are. The first 3 weeks would have been a stunning success if their mission had been to temporarily take Baghdad. I don't think that's what their objectives were, though.
Nephtuli,
Of course not. The Dems are just people (worse, they're politicians.) And the Republicans aren't Satan. The current administration though (in my opinion) is one of the worst in modern history. And the Republican Congress was disgustingly corrupt.
I KNOW! Dems win the Senate! I couldn't be more excited.
Sanity and reason? JA you really have been taken in. Certainly you don't mean the sanity and reason that we see in Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers, Alcee Hastings, Chuck Shumer, Charlie Rangel etc.
Health care? You mean rationing like they have in England?
Stem cell research? We have stem cell research.
Tax cuts for the rich? You mean like anyone who makes over 30K a year?
Emasculating the bill of rights? It's the Dems who support speech codes and quotas and steal newspapers they don't like, not to mention that they try to disenfranchise the military.
Big business? Ever wonder how Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Daschle supplement the family income. They lobby for big business in case you don't know. Big business is the province of the Dems. Just look at all the billionaires, the media moguls, and the corporate CEO's who were for Kerry. The Republicans are for the middle class guy.
If you like more regulation, higher taxes, and the sight of Al Qaeda dancing in the streets when we withdraw to Okinawa then you can be happy with the results.
Oh and Bush isn't bumbling. Okay wait a second, I'll admit he messed up on campaign finance reform, Harriet Miers, and no child left behind, but the Dow Jones has been doing pretty weill, and unemployment is low. Wonder if the tax cuts had anything to do with that. And for all of the so-called cowboy diplomacy, Libya is out of the terrorism business. The Pakistan nuclear ring has been busted. The Taliban government in Afghanistan is gone. And Sadaam never did get a chance to build his bomb or wait out the sanctions.
Another anon
A friend of mine pointed out to me, and I have to look at it more closely, but it seems that the GOPers that lost were the more moderate, the crazies held on to their seats. Henry Hyde's old district went to another nutcase in Illinois who might even be scarier than Hyde - if that's possible. So don't count your chickens quite yet. Granted, the Dems have numerical majority, but the majority of the GOP left in congress seem to be the wingnuts - which will make compromise next to impossible.
This is one of those fairly rare elections where I wish both sides could have lost, frankly. The Republicans for a whole host of reasons deserved to lose, but the Democrats certainly didn't deserve to win.
On the positive side, it looks as if the Democrats who did best in this election were blue dogs (people like Harold Ford Jr, who printed the ten commandments on the big of his business cards - imagine the outcry if a *Republican* did that - or James Webb, who has unflattering opinions on women in the military and actually served in the Reagan administration) rather than the hard left. And of course, Lieberman routed Lamont in Connecticut.
The US public has certainly rejected the Republican party in it's current incarnation, but there's far less evidence that it seems to have endorsed an extreme left (in US terms) agenda. If the hard left of the party starts acting as though it has a mandate for things like impeachment, etc. then it could be in for an ugly shock in 2008. The cynic inside me suspects that the odds of the Republicans retaining the White House in 2008 have just improved substantially...
Laura,
Fractionally perhaps, but hardly so you'd notice. I've just done a comparison on the rankings available at the American Conservative Union's website - the outgoing Republican delegation had an average ranking of 87.36 and the survivors of them have an average ranking of 88.66, which indicates that very slightly more liberals than conservatives lost their seats. This difference can be explained entirely by the fact that the Republicans lost four of their five most liberal representatives however, either to retirement or to the fact that they were defending seats in places like Connecticut where no Republican was likely to hold on. Nationwide it seems to have made no significant difference.
PS Harold Ford had the 10 commandments on the back of his business cards, of course. Preview is your friend...
Harold Ford had the 10 commandments on the back of his business cards
That's disturbing.
Give the media about a week to tout how well the economy is doing, how well we are doing in Iraq and how low the unemployment rate is. And all do to these wonderful Democrats getting hold of the House and Senate.
Still waiting to hear the losing Republicans challenging the voting results, voter fraud, voters being prevented to vote at the polls, and hanging chads and pregnant chads. Let the lawsuits begin; the supreme court is waiting.
It was the best day of my week!
Have you read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins? Fabulous.
It is kinda nice not being surounded by angry democrats. They finally stopped pouting after 6 years.
The economy is supposed to plunge in 6 months from what I've heard. Then it can all be blamed on the new congress.
Anon -- If the economy is doing so well, why do 54 percent of Americans feel the economy is getting worse. Record Dow's don't mean crap to Joe Blow on the street. What matters to him is that he is paying more for gas and health care and housing than he did 6 years ago. To borrow a phrase from one of your probable heroes, Reagan, "Are we better off ... " than we were 6 years ago? Wages have stagnated, cost of living is higher ... we are worse off. The median family income has fallen from $47,599 in 2000 to $46,6326 in 2005.
So anon, you "really have been taken in". Quit watching FOX News and reading the Drudge Report and wake up to the real world.
Dbackdad, are your figures for income real or nominal? The average American feels a lot of things that ain't necessarily so.
Real - Bush Economy.
Though I don't need a graph to tell me that middle America is struggling. I just need to look every one of my friends and family in the face and ask them.
You said, " ... average American feels a lot of things that ain't necessarily so" -- What the hell does than mean?
dback is right...damn the statistics, damn the logic. He knows certain people are suffering and that has to be the truth.
Asher,
Anon is abandoning logic. I am not. The statistics support my case. I am not saying to ignore stats. I am saying that the plight of the middle class is obvious whether you look at stats or not.
dbacjdad,
I agree. The term is "anecdotal evidence". I knew someone, who knew someone who said something to someone and it was later sold on ebay.
Well, you feel the pain. That's more important that actually doing something about it.
Asher,
You have no idea what I do "about it". You speak of logic yet speak in hyperbole and think you are clever. You "know" the Democrats are going to take credit for the economy. You "know" the Republicans are going to contest the election. Ah, if we were all so all-knowing as you, the world would be a perfect place. lol
dbackdad,
Abandoning logic? I'm abadoning logic because you want me to answer questions you arbitrarily chose. What does that have to do with my logic?
Record Dows don't mean anything to Joe Blow on the street? Surely you jest. Here the Dems were arguing that Clinton was a freakin' economic genius because of what the Dow was doing when he was president, and now you tell me that no that was all wrong, the Dow doesn't mean anything.
Anyway, the Dow does mean something if Joe Blow has an IRA or a 401k, or a pension plan. It also means that's he 's more likely to have a job than if the Dow was scraping the bottom.
And where did you get your 54 per cent figure? Don't know about you, but if I'm looking at the economy I'd want something more than a poll that's been commissioned by some biased news source.
You might also be happy to know that gas prices have been dropping. If we're paying more for housing, maybe part of the problem is rent control, and governmental regulation. After all, how much does the federal government have to do with local housing prices?
If we're paying more for health care, maybe that's because we're paying for better health care. Maybe it's because of plaintiff's medical malpractice awards. The feds don't tell your health plan what to charge, at least as long as we don't have single payer health care.
Oh btw if you want some good conservative news sources there's better places than Fox news and Drudge. Fox gets much of it's news from Al AP. Try Malkin, Debbie Schlussel, Power Line, Captain Ed,. Riehl World., just to name a few.
You 'd be amazed at what you never hear of if you just read the NYT and listen to NPR and Air America, and watch Katie Couric. You might even want to consider listening to Limbaugh once in a while. You don't have to agree with him. You can just listen for the jokes. His sense of humor is a lot better than Al Franken's.
Another anon
IT WAS A GREAT DAY!!!!
Anon,
USA Today/Gallup - source of the 54% figure. But you probably consider anything not commissioned by FOX News biased.
And don't lump me in with generic "Dems" and claim that I gave credit to Clinton for the upturn in the Dow during his term, which I did not.
And I stand by my statement that the average American gets very little advantage from an upturn in the Dow. Our personal savings rates have plummetted. Since June of last year, we actually have a negative savings rate -- spending more than we take in: I've Got It, Spend It
Government deregulation, tort reform, better health care -- yawn. I've heard and I'm not buying it. How'd that energy deregulation in California work out? Pretty damn good for Enron -- pretty bad for everyone else. And who benefits from tort reform -- corporations, not the average person. The average person is screwed when he's hurt and can't get compensation for it.
And you don't need to tell me all of your news sources -- I already read all of them. I do read and listen to Limbaugh. Maybe you should listed to him occassionally. Even he said that he was "carrying water" prior to the election for a bunch of losers he didn't believe deserved his support -- Carrying Water.
Dbackdad,
Oh a USA today poll. Well why didn't you say so in the first place? Of course USA Today doesn't bias their poll by oversampling Dems. How could I have thought otherwise?
A far better poll is the stock market. It tells you what people really think.
Limbaugh was referring to RINO's (Republicans in name only) His complaint was with the way Republicans were trying to appeal to the left.
As for the yawn, well sorry for boring you with logic. But you haven't really addressed my points except for the one about looking at other news sources, which btw I'm glad to hear about, although you can certainly understand why I might have thought that you get your news from the NYT, CNN, Air America, etc.
Instead you cite arbitrarily selected facts to show, well, actually I'm not quite sure what you're trying to show, other than that you can make ad hominem attacks. If that makes you feel better, well okay, I understand that's how leftists argue. But if you are trying to persuade someone that the Dems are interested in something more than power, then these attacks are not all that effective.
Another anon
You win Anon. Every popular national news source is liberal-biased. Corporations always have the best interests of you and me in mind. We should demolish government and get rid of all regulations.
If you were comfortable in your logic, you wouldn't be anonymous. You say you are logical yet you make broad generalizations and speak in laughable hyberbole ("Al Qaeda dancing in the streets", "retreating to Okinawa). That's not logic. If the only ground in which you'll allow me to argue with you is if I use sources only you deem worthy, then we're done.
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