Tuesday night was a resounding rebuke for the Bush administration, the former Republican majority in Congress and their disastrous policies at home and abroad. Democrats should remember, though, that their victory was both a delicate and negative one.
They did not dazzle the American people with an array of programs and initiatives (and frankly they never do) to the point that it caused this overwhelming shift in power. They did not even offer a promising, progressive alternative to the Republicans' policies in Iraq and at home. They simply stood as the only alternative to the rampant corruption, tax-cut-our-economy-away, stay the course blather offered by the conservatives.
The bright spots from Tuesday night were clear and decisive. Democrats have more than solid control of the House and can begin to pass the legislation and initiate the investigations that they promised prior to their big win. Best-case scenario is that Democrats will run the Senate with a 51-49 majority, but that remains to be seen.
It looks as if we will be seeing the first female and Italian-American Speaker of the House in Nancy Pelosi as well. Whether or not she is an effective and responsible voice for the new Democratic majority also remains to be seen. Another milestone for underrepresented groups occurred in the election of the nation's second African-American governor in Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Our nation also elected its first Muslim to Congress on Tuesday in the form of Keith Ellison from Minnesota.
Voters in Missouri supported stem cell research and citizens in Arizona voted down yet another homophobic same-sex marriage ban amendment for the first time in our country's history. Six states passed significant increases to their minimum wage as well, leading the charge that the congressional Democrats will hopefully soon take up.
And finally, coming to grips with reality, Donald Rumsfeld will be stepping down as defense secretary, an indication that the administration is finally admitting that serious changes need to be made and that the course cannot be "stayed," if you will. Tuesday night was a shining example of voters holding their elected officials accountable and asking (rather blindly) for change. The decidedly cyclical nature of our political processes was reaffirmed Tuesday after the long, dark night of Republican control from 1994-2006. Oh happy day.
There were dark spots as well. The racist ads aired by the RNC against Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee worked as planned, as he was forced to play defense the last few weeks of the campaign and ended up losing by a slim margin to Bob Corker. Voters in a number of states approved bans on same-sex marriage. Voters in Michigan approved a ballot proposition to restrict affirmative action at state universities in response to the Supreme Court upholding the policy at the University of Michigan in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. Republicans still may end up with control of the Senate (with the recount in Virginia and Cheney's potential tiebreak if it's 50-50), which they could then use to obstruct progress as has been classically done in this most disproportionately representative body.
That said, the Democrats have a great deal of work to do. Pelosi has already committed the first 100 hours of her speakership to pushing for the implementation of all the 9/11 Commission recommendations on national security, something so critical to protecting Americans that the hawks have conspicuously failed to do despite all of their chatter about which party is better suited to do so. The Dems will also push to raise the minimum wage to $7.25, eliminate corporate subsidies for oil companies, allow the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices for ailing seniors, impose stiffer restrictions on lobbyists, cut interest rates on college loans (THANK YOU!) and support embryonic stem-cell research.
In term of the tax cuts, Pelosi has said that the House will "revisit the tax cuts at the high end in order to give tax cuts to the middle class." Awesome. Nothing tastes better than a little redistributive economic justice in this bright new morning for progressives. And who says the Democrats don't have ideas? As for Iraq, they have yet to produce a united front on this "new direction" in which they will supposedly be taking America. More on that soon we hope.
The Democrats, now, more than ever, must be so much more than the party that the Republicans are not. Though important, they must be more than just investigations into what the Bush administration and 109th Congress lied about and did wrong. They must actually deliver on this "new direction" catchphrase that we all heard bandied about like a shuttlecock on CNN Tuesday night. Now they can, and must, craft a different narrative for this thing we call the American dream that has more recently resembled a nightmare for our troops and our struggling middle class.
Paul Perry is a senior in the School of International Service and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
