Democrats have the mandate

Hannah Selinger - Raw Story Columnist
Published: Thursday November 9, 2006

Six years ago, when the current president was elected by a slim-but-adequate margin, he declared his victory a Republican mandate.

That was in 2000, before September 11, before the invasion of Iraq, before the crumbled economy. Since then, the president has, indeed, enforced his mandate. Politics have grown more conservative than hard-working '90s boom Democrats ever would have expected.

The invasion of Iraq, once seen by politicians and constituents alike as the obvious answer to one of the world's worst acts of terrorism, has only inflicted more terror on the American consciousness. When will we get out? When will our boys stop getting those phone calls: Your time has come, son. Pack your bags. It's back to the Middle East.

Karl Rove and the Republican noise machine would have had Americans believe that what we were searching for was a change of ethos. The 'moral majority,' they called themselves. Pundit Bill O'Reilly defined the separation between forward-thinking liberals and confused conservatives as 'traditionalists' versus 'secular progressives,' crazy left-wingers who sought only to divide a perfectly functional country.

The president pushed his agenda to the right. Christian fundamentalism became more recognizable in everyday American life. In a stunning plea to a now-right-leaning Supreme Court, the governor of South Dakota signed a law banning abortion in his state.

And the war went on.

If the president could call his narrow victory a mandate all those years ago, then Democrats should be swinging from the chandeliers this week. The blues now enjoy a majority in the house, with Nancy Pelosi, every conservative's most-hated representative, to be the Speaker. Although it is too close to call as this is written, it is possible that the Democrats will reclaim the Senate as well. That pesky abortion law, enacted this summer, was voted down by South Dakota constituents. For the first time in 12 years, a Democrat – the notoriously anti-corporation Eliot Spitzer – was elected governor of New York. For the first time ever, a black man was elected governor of Massachusetts, winning over Kerry Healy, the Lieutenant Governor to Mitt Romney. Seventy percent of Americans polled said that the war in Iraq was "very important" to them when they turned out to vote on November 7.

As a recovering pessimist (it's hard to see life as a bowl of cherries after six years in the minority), I started thinking about all of the practical implications of this month's election. In a rare coincidence, I found myself agreeing with the president, who, in his post-election press conference, remarked that, "with victory comes responsibility." Even if the November 7 election was a referendum on the current administration, or a mandate for blue rule for at least two years, it is now the Democrats' responsibility not to act as our president did six years ago. This was not an election rooted in social progressivism; this was not an election about tax cuts or affirmative action or Supreme Court appointments. This was, simply put, an election about war, and with the new term, dealing with the mess that is Iraq will lie squarely on Democrats' shoulders. Donald Rumsfeld has stepped down. The term Exit Strategy started to ring hollow three years ago. Yes, we won the election. So where do we go from here?

For one, we might consider shaking off the shock. The change of tide is hard to believe. Maybe we were too accustomed to Congressional warfare. In six years, we have witnessed two conservative Supreme Court appointments, a host of bad legislation, and an administration unwilling to compromise with the other side of the aisle. Watching the president after the election was like watching a dream sequence in a Fellini film: It was beautiful and pleasing, but it didn't quite make sense. The president admitted to lying to the press. (A few days before the election, he swore to the American people that he had the utmost faith in Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – days later, he had replaced Rumsfeld with Gates as Secretary of Defense.) The president also employed the same language of fear that he has been employing since September 11, 2001. He warned the troops abroad not to be concerned, because the Democrats would offer the same support as Republicans, a sly, backhanded remark that hinted that the Dems don't care about the welfare of the troops. He directed similar comments to the Iraqis and the terrorists (who were clearly watching American network television at one o'clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday).

Ultimately, the rhetoric didn't matter. The results were in, and, as it turned out, language was what had turned the election to the left in the first place. When the president stressed the importance of finishing the job in Iraq, Democrats invoked Vietnam. When George Allen, the Republican incumbent from Virginia who was widely favored to win this year's election, referred to an Indian man as "macaca," his rhetoric swung the swing-state in the opposite direction. For years, it has been the left making the mistakes. We were the ones incapable of fending off negative campaigning. We were the ones incapable of capitalizing on the war. But what is true about American politics is that frustration often leads to change. This year was a landmark year, but there have been other landmark years, reflecting deep-seated dissatisfaction among the American people. The possibility for change reflects the best parts of our governmental system, a system where actual people, concerned with the actual issues that affect their daily lives, can provoke national change.

And still we must consider the future. The system works; we know that now. People have turned out to the polls to express very concrete opinions about the direction of the country. In the first weeks of the new term, the Democrats must develop functional ideas about the future of Iraq. We must find a way to bring our troops home. We must live up to the expectations of the American people, who put the faith of change in us. So much responsibility lies in the outcome of this election, and squandering our newfound political capital will only mean a return to the status quo.