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Democrats Take House, Senate Undecided
Every news publication on earth is saying mostly the same thing. The Democrats have taken the house picking up a sizable number of seats. But the Senate remains a tossup with a few undecided seats holding the balance. Concerns of voter fraud have been heard from around the nation as well.
Yes, it's good for everyone, even the citizens that call themselves Republican.
Let me explain what was happening before. The Republicans owned all three branches of the government--House, Senate & Presidential seat. They didn't have 2/3 majority in both the House & Senate but it put the rest of the country in a really bad spot. You see, the three branches were put in place so that no one party/person could go nuts and foul up the country.
What has been happening as of late, is that bills are flying through all three branches and being approved. Some of these are good for Republicans, some aren't. Some of the things George W. Bush has been doing are aligned with his party and some weren't. The problem is that since "his party" was the majority, they were expected to pass whatever he proposed.
Compounding on these problems, it seems the Democrats were resigned that this would happen after their defeat in a lot of prior elections.
The fact is, I don't want anything to fly through the process of passing bills. I want there to be a large discussion before it becomes law. Recently, I've seen headings that say, "Bill passed that allows president to do X" and my response was, "When the hell was that even proposed? Oh, six days ago? That's aweful fast!"
The Democrats have a majority in one branch now, I don't care who gets the Senate. Let's just keep a nice balanced government. I'm not naive enough to think that this process actually works but I do know that as of late it's been really crappy--probably for both parties. I'd like to see the Republicans take the Senate, the Democrats have the House & let whatever nut jobs we want to be president.
So if you call yourself Republican, just remember that the other half of the country is Democrat--and it benefits you to keep them happy. A balanced government is more important for my health than balanced meals.
My work here is dung.
Nothing will get done. Bush still has the VETO stamp. Its been sitting in his desk draw barely used for the last 6 years. I am sure it is going to get a major workout in the next two. This is not a bad thing, government is best when it does least.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
They're democrats, not magicians.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
you never want one party controlling congress and the office of the president. the less that gets passed, the better!
Gone!
It's more like: Lobbyists write new laws; congress votes for them in exchange for campaign donations.
As I'm from the UK, I can't claim to understand the ins and outs of your voting in the US, but from what I just read you're saying "I would never have aligned my vote with a politician who I wanted to win to help stabilize our political system, because he from that other party. Sounds like utterly stupid tribalist, partisan politics, which is responsible for most intelligent people in Western democracies being so utterly bored with politics as a whole...
As an ex-Republican (Bush created a lot of us) who still leans conservative at least on economic issues, this is no surprise to me. What is interesting to me is that a party that includes some pretty intelligent people seems to primarily target idiots in their rhetoric.
;)
For example, most conservatives I know could care less about gay marriage. It is not a huge issue for me, I find myself being for it. I have no reason to oppose it so it just seems fair. Yet Rove and co. keep making this a cornerstone of their "get out the vote" campaign. The Christian fundamentalists do not have enough numbers that you need only focus on them to win, especially when it comes out that your own party might be covering up for a gay (the horror!) teen-predator who inexplicably held a co-chairmanship in the "missing and exploited children caucus". That probably did not play well in the bible belt.
Corruption anyone? Of course this is a cyclical thing and I fully expect the Republicans will probably regain Congress in a few election cycles after the Democrats turn out to be just a corrupt. And the cycle will go on and on because corruption is not a party issue, it is a requirement for office in DC.
Then you have Iraq, the elephant in the room that none of the Republican commentators wanted to touch (no pun intended). Again, you would have to be a totally uninformed moron to think that everything is going great and we need to "stay the course", yet that has been the message for years, flying in the face of reality (with its well known liberal bias
But the most ridiculous thing to me has to be the "listen to mommy and daddy you stupid little children" approach the Republicans have taken in warning us what would happen if the Democrats win. Probably plays well to those who only get their information from Rush/Hannity/etc., but for those of us who are not spoon fed our beliefs by paid mouthpieces it is insulting. "The terrorists are cheering the Democrats on", "The Democrats want us to lose", "If the Democrats win, we will lose the war on terror", "The future of civilization rests in the balance of the election"
Give me a break, both parties are pro-America and want the best for us, they just differ on how to get there. To suggest otherwise is fear-mongering of the worst kind.
Then you have the issue of how far Republicans have come from the "94 take over" years. Go back and re-read the "Contract With America", it is chock full of some really good stuff that I could really get behind. However, it is as far from the Republican party as you can get.
A good number of us are not religious/social conservative fanatics (or as I like to say, Shiite Christians), but that seems to be all the Republicans are targeting. Many of us ARE fiscally conservative and you will not find a more fiscally irresponsible government that the Republican controlled federal government of yesterday. Almost none of us are willing to join Bush's delusion regarding Iraq anymore. The WMD scam, the clueless management on the part of Rumsfeld, and the "la la la, I can't hear you" approach Bush takes to any news that is not positive has clearly taken its toll.
Personally, I hope the Democrats take the Senate for a clean Congressional sweep. I still disagree with many of their positions, but more important that that is my belief that checks and balances between the two branches of government is preferable to a mono-culture.
I am Finkployd, and I approve this message
The US government of today dwarfs the US government of only 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people. In fact, the US government is now the most powerful government and world empire that has ever existed in the history of organized coercion.
Over the last 100 years, US political power has been domainated by the republicans and the democrats together. Neither party dominated by itself; they shared in the power over this period. This trend continues today in full force, as does the trend for expansion of power. Every year there are thousands more laws on the books than the year before, thousands more ways for a peaceful individual to become a criminal.
Given this near-exponential growth of the US government, it is clear that both parties are primarily driven by power -- otherwise, why would they have fought so hard to expand their powers over the past century? If they valued the freedom of the individual more than their own power, then logically, the incredible growth of the US government over the past century wouldn't have been possible. If even one of the two dominant parties actually worked to reduce, rather than expand government power over the individual, then wouldn't they have cancelled each other out?
Of course that's not the case. So let's answer your question: Will the democrats be able to make things better, or will they only be able to keep things from getting worse?
You're going to have to deny history to come up with a positive answer on either count. I'll bet my life that when the democrats are finished, the US government will be (drum roll please) bigger, more powerful (measured in both revenue and power over the people), and last but not least, there will be yet even more ways for peaceful individuals to become criminals.
That ain't gonna help you. It just means that you didn't get to vote.
You may welcome your new overlords again now.
But even assuming the Democrats pull together and show brilliant leadership and vision (and I'm not holding my breath), it would take years to undo Bush's damage. I think a key issue to watch is going to be Rumsfeld. It's clear his strategies have failed, repeatedly; he needs to be held accountable. And it's clear he can't fix things in Iraq. He has to go. Bush's instincts will be to protect him, because Bush rewards loyalty (a good character, to a point) and because Bush thinks that firing him would be an admission of failure, and Bush does not admit failure (but admitting failure is a technicality at this point, Rumsfeld and Bush's efforts in Iraq so far have failed utterly).
Once upon a time, war was the (almost) exclusive purview of uniformed armies fighting other uniformed armies.
Later on, as victory became less about the actions of groups of determined men carrying sharp and pointy things, and more about the ability to mobilize and deploy highly mechanized forces (the three best American generals of WW2: General Foods, General Motors, General Electric) it was almost as important to deny an enemy the use of his industrial production base as it was to defeat his armies in the field. This ushered in an era where targeting essentially civilian enterprises was militarily acceptable if it resulted in damage to military production. Merge this with the concept that the state had the right and ability to conscript every male between 16 and 55(ish) into military service, and you have 20th century Total War.
Total War is, indeed, brutal and ruthless, as you are effectively pitting the entire population, technical, agricultural, and industrial capabilities of states against each other.
But more recent actions are not about all-out state-vs-state contests. Instead, you are looking at state-vs-uninstitutionalized factions, where victory is not measured by reducing an opposing state's armies and industrial centres to ash, but rather, in converting an undecided third party (the "normal" citizens of the host state) into seeing things your way and conducting themselves accordingly.
This is "hearts and minds" stuff. You aren't in the game of killing everything in sight. Instead, you are in the game of reducing the freedom of your enemies to act and denying them support, while simultaneously trying to improve the quality of life of the citizens of the host nation.
It is in the conversion of the host people that the game is won or lost. If everybody wants the insurgents to win, then they will - you are an army of occupation and they will eventually bleed you dry. If everybody wants the insurgents to lose, then they will - insurgents rely on the support of locals to survive. And when you have an undecided populace, where some support you and some support the insurgents... well, then you have Iraq and Afghanistan today.
And experience has shown that heavy-handedness - "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out"; "those that run are VC, those that stand their ground are well-disciplined VC" - plays into the hands of the insurgents, as every injustice done to an innocent creates support for the insurgents.
A man who supports you and who wants to see the insurgents stopped will change his tune when a 1000lb bomb dropped on the "insurgent stronghold" across the street flattens his home and kills his family - even if there really WERE insurgents across the street that were legitimate targets.
Tactics that were entirely acceptable in the Total War days are now not only unacceptable in the Three Block War days, but are actually counterproductive.
The main goals in Iraq have to be the restoration of basic infrastructure, the training and fielding of an effective, corruption-free Iraqi police force, the cleanup and rebuilding of damaged and destroyed buildings, and the establishment of effective government. Until those are done, you cannot win.
Is there still a need for troops? Hell yes - all those infrastructure and reconstruction efforts will be actively opposed by insurgents, and there is a dire need for security and protection for those actors. But that's a different role than a massed armoured spearhead charging into the Fulda Gap.
DG
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