Myth-Busting the Democratic Revolution of 2006

UPDATE (A): Associated Press is reporting the Democrats have taken the Senate seat in Montana.

UPDATE (B): Associated Press is reporting that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will step down from office shortly.

PREDICTION: Sen. George Allen will concede either today or tomorrow morning, thereby giving the Senate to the Democrats.

"It was a thumpin'..."

-- George W. Bush

"It [was] a 'Texas whupping,' that's for sure...[t]he Republicans really took a bath last night."

-- Tom DeLay

First and foremost, it's important that we take a moment to appreciate the magnitude of what happened: the Democrats regained control of the House and will now hold a strong majority of seats (approximately a 30-seat advantage), gained their first gubernatorial majority in well over a decade (and decisively at that, with Democrats now holding 56% of all governorships nationwide), and not only won 24 of 33 Senate races but also look poised to actually retake the Senate from the G.O.P., just as soon as [southern racist] Senator George Allen concedes (which he'll likely do shortly, down by around 8,000 votes).

Educated persons the world over are celebrating the return of logic, reason, compassion, and wisdom to Washington. Sure, the Dems have a tall order to get this country back on the right track after it's been run, for six years, by war criminals, but all signs thus far (see below) point to them being eminently up to the challenge. But just to get out ahead of at least a few of the pundits, I'd like to bust a few myths we're already hearing about yesterday:

MYTH: Democrats won the House, and will likely retake the Senate, on the strength of conservative Democrats.

TRUTH: The Democrats who benefited from the Democratic Revolution of 2006 were of all stripes, and while the conservatives have gotten the most attention--representing, as they do, a sort of return to the "Old Alliance" Democratic Party of the 1950s (cf. progressive northeasterners and westerners, and conservative southerners)--you cannot understand the Revolution without understanding the breadth of Democrat candidates elected to the House and Senate yesterday. For instance, while it looks like the Democrats will pick up 33 seats in the House (12 seats are still too close to call, but 33 looks like what the final number will be), 8 of those seats were gained directly as a result of the Abramoff and Foley scandals (having, that is, nothing to do with liberalism and conservatism), and several were gained by noted progressive Democrats--New Hampshire, by way of example, voted out one moderate Republican and one staunch Republican in favor of two progressive Democrats. All told, probably half--or more--of the Democrats elected yesterday were either progressives or were elected not because of ideology but as punishment for Republican corruption. Likewise, on the Senate side of things, voters elected a liberal in Ohio (Sherrod Brown), anti-war Democrats in Virginia and Rhode Island (James Webb; Sheldon Whitehouse), and then moderate Democrats in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Missouri (Jon Tester; Bob Casey, Jr.; Claire McCaskill). Moreover, in states the Republicans thought they might take from Democratic incumbents--Maryland and New Jersey, most notably--middle-of-the-road (but not moderate) Democrats were elected. So there's simply no "conservative Democrat" trend in the Senate from yesterday's results, and in the House much the same can be said (with Democratic "Blue Dog" pick-ups in places like Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina--former University of Tennessee quarterback Heath Schuler comes to mind--balanced out by middle-of-the-road Democratic pick-ups in the northeast, such as New Hampshire and Connecticut and New York, and similar pick-ups in the southwest). So don't buy into this notion that Democrats only took over the House because of conservative Dems; the two New Hampshire pick-ups, and the eight Abramoff/Foley pick-ups alone would have accounted for all but five of the pick-ups the Democrats needed to take the House. This was an across-the-board sweep, and can't be accounted for simply by presuming that some so-called Reagan Democrats came back home.

MYTH: It wasn't a "revolution."

TRUTH: While it's true that the political revolutions which have occurred over the past 50 years (cf. 1958, 1966, 1974, 1994) frequently involved one party or another gaining forty-something seats in the House, whereas last night the Democrats gained thirty-something seats, it's important to remember that 12 years of Republican gerrymandering have left the fewest number of competitive House seats in the U.S. in the nation's history. Thirty-something seats gained in 2006 is no different than forty-something seats gained in 1958, or 1966, or 1974, or even 1994. Moreover, look at the history which was made yesterday:

* The first socialist ever elected to the U.S. Senate (Vermont).

* The first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history (California).

* The first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress (Minnesota).

* The first female congressperson ever from the State of New Hampshire.

* The second black Governor ever elected in the United States (Massachusetts).

* A dead Democrat, Marie Steichen of Woonsocket (SD) defeated an incumbent Republican in a race for County Commissioner. Election officials claim it was widely known by the voting population in Woonsocket that Ms. Steichen was deceased.

* The district of the former Republican Majority Leader of the House (DeLay) went Democratic.

* Patricia Todd, who will represent District 54 in the Alabama State House, is the first openly gay person ever elected to any office in that state.

* Kathy Webb, who will represent District 37 in the Arkansas State House, is the first openly gay person ever elected to any office in that state.

* Henry Fernandez won a seat on the Lawrence (IN) Township School Board, making him the first openly gay person ever elected to any office in Indiana.

* Al McAffrey, who will represent District 88 in the Oklahoma State House, is the first openly gay person ever elected to the Oklahoma state legislature.

* Jolie Justus, who will represent District 10 in the Missouri State Senate, is the first openly gay state senator in Missouri history.

* Ed Murray, who will represent District 43 in the Washington State Senate, is the first openly gay state senator in Washington history.

* Matt McCoy becomes the first openly gay candidate ever elected to the Iowa legislature.

* Jamie Pedersen became the third consecutive openly gay person to be elected to represent District 43 in the Washington State House.

* Judge Virginia Linder will join Rives Kistler on the Oregon Supreme Court, making it the first state ever to have two openly gay Supreme Court Justices.

* The longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House ever, Dennis Hastert (Illinois), was so ashamed by the defeat of the G.O.P. in the House he immediately announced he would step down from his leadership post.

And all that's just for starters. The point is, voters made clear yesterday that they were ready for a change in Washington, and a radical change at that, and the gains by the Democrats were indeed historic. And that's not to mention the 20 to 30 seats--in Republican districts--where the Democratic challenger came within two points or so of unseating a G.O.P. incumbent (think of the Ohio 2nd, with that jerk Jean Schmidt squeaking back into the House--she of the infamous mocking of heroic Democratic Representative and former Marine John Murtha--or of Howard Ford, Jr., who came within two to three percentage points of becoming the first black Senator in the Confederate South since Reconstruction). Not a Revolution? My ass.

[P.S. Harold Ford, Jr. will be back, and may one day be our President. You heard it here first].

MYTH: Americans didn't vote for Democrats, they voted against Republicans, and on a single issue: Iraq.

TRUTH: Exit polls show the Republicans got creamed on three separate fronts: corruption, Iraq, and the economy. Yes, the economy. So Americans preferred Democrats on all three issues. This wasn't a one-issue election. Moreover, the Democrats only lost by a hair on the one issue the Republicans always crow about: terrorism. That Democrats polled (down) only 55% to 45% on that issue was a victory in itself. Call this, then, a three-and-a-half issue election, not a one-issue election.

MYTH: Democrats will be wackjob liberals now that they're in power.

TRUTH: New Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says that impeachment is off the table and that Democrats will not only form the most ethical Congress in U.S. history but also one of the most bi-partisan. That is the unambiguous and unanimous message coming from the Democratic camp right now. And don't forget, it was "San Francisco liberal" Pelosi who, behind the scenes, orchestrated the election of the fifteen or so conservative Democrats who were elected yesterday, and who has already said that conservative Democrats will have a prominent place in a Democratic House. Republicans hoping to demonize Pelosi are going to soil themselves in frustration; this Democratic Party long ago planned on governing moderately if ever they came into power. Increasingly, it seems that hot-headed anti-Bush rhetoric was red meat for the Democratic base (and a false flag for the Republicans) and not any reflection of what the Dems would do if in power (i.e., the new House Judiciary Committee Chairman, John Conyers [D-MI], God love him, will be reined in). Indeed, Pelosi has a "100-hour" plan for next January which explicitly and in detailed terms lays out exactly what Dems plan to do now: and all of their agenda involves mainstream/progressive issues such as health care, education, environmental issues, and labor issues (e.g., raising the minimum wage, which the Republicans have been suppressing artificially for years, with the result of keeping people on the welfare rolls who would have gotten off under the Democratic plan). On Iraq? The Democrats have an ingenious plan called "redeployment to Afghanistan." We'll draw the terrorists Bush drew into Iraq into Afghanistan, where we can fight them more easily because of a smaller domestic population and less Sunni/Shiite sectarian violence. That will help Iraq, continue to protect the U.S., and allow us to stabilize Afghanistan through an appropriate and necessary troop presence there, which Bush has completely failed to/refused to accomplish, despite claims to the contrary.

MYTH: The nation voted in a Democratic House and Senate despite a robust economy.

TRUTH: The nation voted in a Democratic House and Senate because of an economy which is robust only for the highest 2% of wage-earners. One reason this was a Revolution, and not merely a "correction," is because, for the first time, Americans flatly rejected the neo-conservative notion that you can measure the economy by how the richest Americans are doing in the stock market. Consider: the Nasdaq and the NYSE and doing fantastically well--the one thing Bush wasn't lying to the nation about--and yet a clear majority of Americans voted against Republicans and for Democrats because they finally decided that Bush's trickle-down tax cuts weren't worth it, that they didn't work as promised, that they destroyed the economy for the middle class (housing costs, real wages) and the working class (outsourcing, no change in minimum wage to reflect inflation). So again, this wasn't a one-issue election, and it wasn't simply an election in which "conservative Democrat" values prevailed; the sort of economic vision which informed yesterday's voters is the sort of economic vision no less a liberal than Ted Kennedy has been pushing for decades. [This paragraph courtesy of observations made by Ginger and related to me].