While governing may be a delicate art of negotiation and compromise, the elections that invariably must come before are a set of cold, zero-sum contests with clear winners and losers. An abridged scorecard from last Tuesday:
Winner: The regular folk. Americans working minimum wage jobs, students paying college tuition, seniors struggling with prescription payments - all of these now have an advocate in the legislative branch.
Loser: The corrupt. Bribe-takers, child-lovers, cover-uppers, women-beaters, racists, nativists, liars, assaulters, slanderers, cheaters - all put in their place by voters who have simply had enough of criminals making a mockery of our government.
Winner: The Netroots. Liberals have finally found their answer to right-wing media like talk radio and Fox News. Blogs such as Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo were crucial team members in the Democrats' victory, providing the three M's of politics: money, message and mobilization. These online activists deserve special credit for pushing long-shot candidates early, including now Senators-elect Jon Tester and Jim Webb.
Loser: Mainstream pundits and establishment Democrats. Their biggest fear has been realized: people like David Brooks and James Carville have become irrelevant. These are the bigwigs who predicted Ned Lamont's primary victory would spell doom for Democrats in the general election, demonstrating just how out of touch they were with a citizenry eager for a party bold enough to stand up to George Bush.
Nancy Pelosi will be the next Speaker in part because she convinced her caucus to stop cowering on the war and national security issues. Harold Ford will not be the next Senator from Tennessee in part because he tried to out-Republican the Republicans on issues like gay marriage and immigration.
Winner: Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy. By methodically expanding the national playing field, Republicans were forced to go on defense, losing in crimson states like Kansas, Indiana and Texas. This is what a national party looks like. The northeast is virtually all blue, and even the most hostile areas in the country are trending purple.
Loser: Karl Rove's Smear and Fear Strategy. Americans proved they can only be fooled so many times. Voters grew tired of cheap political stunts like timing Hussein's sentencing just before the election, or railing against something as irrelevant as Kerry's botched joke or Jim Webb's fiction writing.
The Democratic Party has never been short on ideas, and I am confident this new class of legislators will prove particularly capable at harnessing this nation's many strengths for broad and tangible progress. After six years in the wilderness of war and cronyism, America is back. And that, in this season of Thanksgiving, is something to be grateful for.
Jacob Shelly is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
