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Election 2006 Aftermath, Deconstructing the Results and Perspectives on the Democratic and Republican Parties and more
By Steven Leser (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Steven Leser - Writer
Democratic Leaders Who Know What They Are Doing
For the first time in many years, we have National and Congressional Democratic Party leaders who know how to lead and know how to win elections. Yes, the voters were angry at Republican hubris and corruption, yes, they were very angry about the Republicans conduct of war in Iraq, but that does not automatically translate into an election plan to defeat them. Somehow, five Democratic Leaders with dissimilar ideas of how to run a campaign came together at least enough to secure victory. Howard Dean, Chuck Schumer, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid deserve a tremendous amount of credit for running great campaigns. The results are a vindication of the leadership of all five of them.
In particular, Nancy Pelosi faced a lot of national attention and criticism from the Republican Party and dozens of Republican candidates. She faced that head on and with dignity and confidence and instead of being the bogeyman the GOP portrayed her to be, most Americans decided they genuinely liked and admired her.
I think Pelosi is the new Iron Lady of American Politics and like the British woman who held that title in the UK and ruled for 11 years, Margaret Thatcher; Pelosi is going to be a powerful and nearly irresistible force on the American political scene for a long time.
I and many other people owe an apology to Howard Dean. Many of us thought he did not know what he was doing. We thought his 50 state program was too ambitious and costly. Dean was instrumental in making the party competitive everywhere and thus he also deserves a lot of credit for making the right choices from the very beginning. Howard, I apologize, you were right!
Republicans Showed who they really are in attempting to stave off Defeat
When you see likely defeat coming around the corner in politics, you can go one of three ways, you can give up, which I don't recommend, you can fight harder using the best of what you have, or you can fight harder using the worst you have to offer. With the impending blue tsunami that was election 2006, too many Republicans chose to fight with the worst they had to offer.
Race baiting, general bigotry, attacking spouses, lying about opponents records, robo-calling, denigrating someone with a debilitating illness all of these and much more was employed by one or more Republicans in an all out effort to eke out a victory. If your party was going to surrender control after 11 years in the majority, is this the last thing you would want people to remember about your party's days in power?
When you talk about character, one of the things that stands out about a person's character is how they behave when things are not going there way. Anyone can be a great guy when success is around every corner. But when you are facing defeat right in the eye, that is the test of character. In Election 2006, Republicans failed this test badly.
Progressive Democratic Organizations Options Limited after Nov 7th
A group I have been following for some time, Progressive Democrats of America or PDA needs to reassess their strategy after this last election. The one thing I would change right away is the ability of regional and local factions of PDA to determine their own policies and strategies.
The New York branch of PDA in particular has started to run amok. NY PDA's running of Jonathan Tasini against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Senatorial Nomination is one of several costly progressive Democratic mistakes of this campaign. NY PDA recently held a progressive conference attended by various area progressive groups where the main consensus reached was that America was largely progressive and the Democratic Party is not serving these needs because they are not running Progressive candidates and pursuing Progressive programs. We can see through the results of this last election what kind of Democrats appeal to most Americans right now. The inability of Progressive groups to see reality reminds me of their ideological opposites the Freepers as we see below.
Recommendation #2 to Progressive Democrats of America and similar groups (i.e. The Greens, etc.) is, if you want to make a difference, find the best speakers and debaters and send them on a continuous tour of the country to change the minds of Americans so they want progressive policies. Just to be clear, when I say Americans, I mean all regions, not just the northeast and west. This isn't as easy or as fun as spewing typical Progressive demagoguery du jour like "Democrats are the same as Republicans", etc., but the difference is, this strategy will work and actually means something. If such groups do not do this, they will be condemned to standing on the sidelines, holding 2% to 6% max of support nationwide and will continue to have no credibility and no influence over the political process and this makes total sense. If the people of this country are not demanding progressive policies, neither party will make it their business to deliver them. It is that simple.
The Freepers over at Free Republic made for interesting theatre on Election night and beyond
The evening began at Free Republic, http://www.freerepublic.com with Freepers predicting that Republicans would not only keep the house and senate, but that they would WIN ADDITIONAL SEATS! If you do not follow the Freepers as I do, I know this probably seems insane (and in a way, of course, it is) but to Freeper logic it makes perfect sense. In the Freeper mindset, the Main Stream Media as they call it, or MSM for short, is this organized and unified entity out to get conservatives and Republicans. As such, no information coming out of the MSM can be trusted, certainly not polls that show the Republican party trailing.
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