With all the activity going on in my life lately, I haven't had the chance to sit down and express my thoughts about the November 7 election that resulted in the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate.
I can sum it up in one word: Hallelujah!
The most delicious part of the entire night was not only watching Fox anchors having to choke on the steady drumbeat of bad news but watching Anne Northup finally go down to defeat. For the first time since I moved here in 2001 I will be represented in Congress by a Democrat once again in John Yarmuth. The icing on the cake was watching Rick Santorum go down in PA, George Allen in VA and Conrad Burns in MT.
I was also pleased to see the delicious irony of having Tom DeLay's former House seat in Sugar Land go to Nick Lampson. He was one of the six white Democrats Delaymandered out of their congressional seats over the objection of their constituents in 2003. It would have been nice to see Chris Bell, the man who filed the ethics charges that got DeLay censured take over the Governor's Mansion in Texas, but with four candidates in the race that was not to be.
The GOP and the right wing noise machine can spin it all they want, but this was a massive rebuke of their Christofascist conservatism. Not a single Congressional Democratic legislator who was up for reelection lost their seats. They picked up six Senate seats and 29 House seats to grab the majority. If it weren't for the racist 'Call me' commercial they ran in Tennessee I'd be talking about Senator-elect Harold Ford.
A word of advice to incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: Consolidate your gains by passing legislation.
As much as I would like to see Bushie boy be impeached for failing to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution, lying to get us in the Iraq quagmire and totally jacking up the country, I'm not eager to see President Cheney in the Oval Office. I'm also concerned that Senator Joe Lieberman will break his word, switch parties and cause a 50-50 Senate tie that will give the deciding vote on many issues to Dick Cheney.
So in the meantime, do something different. Govern pragmatically. Go back to old-school Democratic principles. Enact legislation that expands the middle class. Raise the minimum wage. Toughen the ethics rules. Cut middle and lower class taxes while rolling back those sweetheart tax cuts that Bush gave the Paris Hilton's of the world. Make college affordable again. And finally, let us join the rest of the industrialized world and offer universal health care to our citizens.
Most of that wish list I just expounded on probably won't get past Junior's lame duck veto pen, but the momentum and demographics are on the Democrats side.
The GOP has pissed off African-Americans over the bungled 2005 handling of Hurricane Katrina and Latinos over the immigration issue. The Iraq war has cost us over 2000 lives and counting with no end in sight. The erosion of civil liberties in the name of fighting 'terriss' has alarmed many people, including conservatives such as Bob Barr.
The GOP has been reduced to clutching the South and their fundie base tightly to its bosom. Their long time advantage in the Rocky Mountain states is being eroded.
Even in my birth state of Texas they lost six seats in the Texas House and it’s just a matter of time before the Lone Star State returns to its progressive roots.
So come on 2008. It's gonna be a heck of a party on January 20, 2009 if we can get the White House and expanded majorities in the House and Senate.
I couldn't think of a better birthday present for my niece.