Doom, gloom, the usual

If control of Congress changes hands in January, it will be because the Republicans lost, not because the Democrats won. The national Democratic Party is not trying to win elections this year. It is sitting back, playing it safe, and watching the Republican Party self-destruct. The Democrats have no message beyond tired old clichés they've been spouting for decades. The Republicans are reduced to a different set of clichés - about winning the war and keeping taxes low and standing up for traditional values - but to most Americans these words ring hollow. The Republican record speaks for itself and it contradicts the party's rhetoric.


The Bush administration has overreached. Years of incompetence, deceit, and hypocrisy have caught up with it, and the President's lackeys in Congress are going to pay a price on Election Day. If Democrats take over the House and/or Senate, it will be by default. It will be because Republicans deserve to lose, not because Democrats deserve to win. In fact, both parties deserve to lose, but at the moment Republicans more richly deserve to lose. Also, with a two-party system there is no easy way for Americans to register their displeasure with the tweedledee party in power other than voting for the tweedledum party out of power.

If Democrats unseat Republicans in Congress, the party should not interpret the result as a mandate for the Clintons, Rahm Emanuel, and the Democratic Leadership Council. It will be nothing of the sort. If Democratic leaders had populist principles and genuine guts, they would bury the Republican hacks in a landslide of 1932 or 1974 proportions. Instead, they will be lucky to eek out a narrow victory. They have pulled their punches and relied on mushy talking points with little popular appeal. They are complicit in the very policies most disliked by Americans: war in Iraq, plutocratic government, dogmatic materialism, runaway federal expenditures, outsourcing of jobs, illegal immigration for the sake of corporate exploitation, and civil liberties sacrificed in a climate of fear.

Democrats in Washington have nothing to offer populist, libertarian, or evangelical Americans, but it's become obvious to many Republicans of those varieties that they've been taken for a ride. So, on Election Day they will either stay home or vote (D) to teach (R) a lesson. But the 2006 results will not change the fact that the Democratic Party has serious ongoing problems.