The struggle to restore our democracy and our liberties must continue unabated, whatever the outcome of next week's election. If, should the Democrats reclaim the House or the Senate, the opponents to the Bush regime then quit the fight, they will have lost by winning.
Following that hypothetical victory, the remaining Bushevik resources will be formidable, as will be their determination to recover from a loss of congressional control.
Even with the best scenario – Democratic control of both houses of Congress – on Wednesday morning, November 8, we will find that:
* The Patriot Act will be intact, with its unprecedented intrusions upon our privacy and its shift of power from the courts and the Congress to the "unitary Presidency."
* Also the Military Commissions Act, with its effective repeal of Habeas Corpus and at least five articles of the Bill of Rights, and its implied power of the President to summarily arrest and "disappear" any American citizen.
* Absent a veto-proof majority, these legislative atrocities can not be rescinded.
* Bush will continue to issue signing statements through which, in effect, he claims the privilege to disregard acts of Congress at will.
* Not many acts of a Democratic Congress are likely to get past Bush's veto pen.
* Challenges in court to Bushevik attacks on the Constitution will become more uncertain as more and more "loyal" regressive judges are appointed to the federal courts.
In sum, the Democrats would take control of a Congress that Bush and the GOP have almost made irrelevant. That Congress would be dealing with a "unitary President" who has been given, for all practical purposes, dictatorial power, including the power to declare martial law on his own.
However, both Houses of the Congress have the function of "oversight," which includes the authority to subpoena evidence and to compel testimony under oath, with the threat of criminal prosecution for perjury and contempt of Congress. This is the role of the Congress that the Bush regime has the greatest reason to fear. We can be confident that the GOP will take extraordinary measures to escape the oversight of a Democratic Congress. Foremost among these measures, of course, is the proven ability to steal elections, and to do so without fear of investigation and disclosure by the mainstream media.
However, the costs and the risks of stealing one more election could be exorbitant or even fatal to the Republicans. Thus the Bush regime and the Republicans face a daunting, no-win dilemma next Tuesday. On the one hand, they can allow the election to proceed with minimal "finagling," in which case they are almost certain to lose the House and possibly the Senate as well, with the dire consequences noted above.
On the other hand, they might "put the fix in" one more time. But if so, they will do so at enormous risk. In none of the previous stolen elections – 2000, 2002 and 2004 – have the Republicans faced such dismal polling results or an angrier public. If, by both hook and crook, they squeak by this time, the Republicans will have a lot of "splainin'" to do, and they will have to do that splainin' to a much more aroused and skeptical public. Despite a determined effort by the GOP and the mainstream media to ignore the issue of election fraud or, when pressed, to debunk it, fully half of the public has at least some doubt that the 2004 election was fairly won by Bush and the Republicans. And in another poll, just released by the Gallup organization only one fourth of the public is "very confident" that the votes will be accurately counted. With another statistically impossible Republican "miracle," that public disbelief may grow to explosive proportions.
Given their thumb on the election scales, the Republicans apparently have a lock on the Senate. There are enough close contests that a plausible 4 point boost above the polls can save their seats in Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri and turn the D's to R's in New Jersey and Maryland. Two or three such "victories" will keep the GOP in control of the Senate.
The House of Representatives, however, is a different story. There the tide is decisively toward the Democrats, and the public dissatisfaction that drives it is huge and so conspicuous that even the mainstream media is reporting it, along with the expectation that this time the Democrats will surely take the House. The concocted "miracle upset" that would stem this tide would be so implausible that it would severely erode what's left of the public confidence in the elections and public trust of the Republicans. In addition, the credibility of the mainstream media would be severely compromised. Accordingly, with continued control of the Congress, the GOP would have a very angry public on its hands.
Even so, my guess is that loss of the House, and the consequent oversight investigations, are the greater danger to the Busheviks, and that they will opt for the lesser evil – another electoral robbery, then hope that a cooperative mainstream media and perchance another "national emergency" (possibly an attack on Iran) will defuse the national outrage.
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. Partridge has taught philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm .
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