Thinking About It
November 8, 2006
The first major casualty of the Democratic takeover of the House and most likely the Senate is the resignation today of the controversial Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The overriding issue in the midterm elections was the American voters anger at what appears to be a failed policy in Iraq with no end in sight to our involvement and the mounting daily death toll of American soldiers.
This is an indication that the message got through to the president that a majority of the American public want to move in a new direction in Iraq. Getting rid of Rumsfeld - which should have happened long before this-is a positive sign that the president knows how to read the election results.
Hopefully, former CIA Director Robert Gates, who the president is nominating to take Rumsfeld’s place and the upcoming Baker-Hamilton report will help change our current failing policy in Iraq.
The election results were close to what had been predicted. As of now, it seems the Democrats picked up around 30 seats in the House to gain control. Montana has now been called for the Democratic senate candidate Jon Tester. And Virginia will likely go Democratic if Jim Webb’s vote count holds up over Senator George Allen.
Let us hope that a time of civility between the president and the new Congress will actually take place. Voters are tired of the division and polarization and lack of accomplishment of the previous Congress.
When he was governor of Texas Bush worked well with the Democrats. Maybe he can salvage the final two years of his presidency by turning down the volume and working with the new members of Congress. Let’s see Congress and the Administration rise above politics now that the elections are over and find a way to scale down our involvement in Iraq without losing face.
Every election has winners and losers and the winners and losers may be obvious but here are my comments:
Winners
Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut: He stayed true to his beliefs and ran as an Independent candidate and won. While many of his so-called friends and colleagues deserted him in his lonely campaign he hung on and will now be courted by all sides in the new Senate. When his erstwhile friends come up and slap him on the back and ask for his support on legislation he can gently remind them that they were nowhere to be found when he was running for re-election. But he will be one of the key power brokers in the new Senate.
Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the DCCC, outperformed Karl Rove by being the new architect who got out the voters to the polls giving the Democrats control of the House of Representative. The former Clinton aide has worked tirelessly to return his party to power and he did just that in this election.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California won re-election big time. His sequel, as he calls it, was a terrific turn around from last year. The former movie star showed what can be gained by working with the other party and trying to get results for constituents rather than being polarizing.
Eliot Spitzer, who won the race to become the new governor of New York, by an impressive 69% margin becomes an instant national figure. He becomes a talked about possibility for president in 2008. The Democrats would not have to worry about any scandals with “Mr. Clean” in 2008.
Claire McCaskill, the new senator from Missouri, becomes a new force in national politics. She ran an excellent campaign.
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson coasted to a 68% victory in his state with several clever ads. Now, he will begin concentrating on his run for the presidency in 2008.
Representative Nancy Pelosi is a winner who will now lead the new Democratic House as the country’s first woman speaker.
And, my favorite is a person who lost his race for governor of Texas but I still see as a winner who greatly enlivened the political process by his wit and humor, the Kinkster -Kinky Friedman.
The losers in the 2006 midterm elections
The war in Iraq: Voters want a serious change and the message has been sent.
Negative advertising: They became sillier and sillier and worse and worse the closer we got to the election.
Cable television: They repeated the same old stories. Everything was discussed by poll results and very little was discussed about the candidates’ views on issues. The rhetoric of the commentators was loud, useless and polarizing.
The Republican Party: They lost – it appears – both Houses of Congress.
The Republican candidate for governor Dick DeVos in Michigan lost by a wide margin and it is reported that he spent well over $10 million of his own fortune in his losing bid in the Wolverine state.
And finally, the Vice-President of the United States who publicly declared that he was going hunting on Election Day as if the elections were of such little importance to him. His rhetoric on the Iraq War never changed an inch during the campaign.
Robert J. Guttman
Founder and Director, CPFR Click here to return to the Thinking About It archive.
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