More tough love for the Democrats.

The NY Times has an editorial that sums up what I was trying to say last night when I said I wasn’t very excited even though theoretically my side won. Basically, this is just a lesser-of-two-evils vote.

The Republicans created their defeat by focusing obsessively on the right-wing “base,” ostracizing not only the Democrats but their own party’s more moderate legislators. The conflict between the extremist House and the conservative Senate created a phony center, far to the right of the general public’s idea of where the middle ought to be. Yesterday, moderate Republicans in heavily Democratic states were done in by their party’s excesses. In Rhode Island, more than 60 percent of the voters told pollsters that they liked their Republican senator, Lincoln Chafee. But he was soundly defeated anyway.

That’s moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee who voted against the war (unlike our own Democratic junior senator John Kerry), but got the boot anyway because 72% of his constituency was opposed to the war in Iraq (which says that either people didn’t check his actual record, or the opinion that his loss was a referendum on Iraq that news outlets keep putting forth is wrong).

The Democrats won a negative victory, riding on the wave of public anger about Republicans. The new House majority will certainly call the administration to account on any number of issues, but it will have to do far more than run investigations if it is to build on its victory.

For years now, the Democrats have been not only the minority party, but a particularly powerless minority, elbowed out of virtually any role other than that of critic. The House Democrats will have to shift from the role of tactical opposition to shadow government. They will have to pass bills — bills that might not make it into law, but that would provide a clear idea of what their party would do if it were really in control.

Saying they were “elbowed out” gives them too little blame; curling up and dying is more like it. And.. er… why do they have to be a “shadow” government? Last time I checked, congress was part of the actual government. I think that wording is a subtle example of progressives being timid about leading and being in power; sometimes I think they prefer being the opposition with their babble about “speaking truth to power”. Time to be the power, folks.

Anyway. Last night I also mentioned the Republican “revolution” of 1994, which I think, as a temperature check of the voting public, was fantastically overstated both then and now. But they did have a well-spoken leadership who had a came at things with a coherent set of principles, and it made the election seem like a referendum. What do the Democrats stand for these days? Beats me.

As far as I’m concerned, the Democrats didn’t win this because they’ve found their way, they just got lucky. Let’s hope that another way this is not like 1994 is that this momentum keeps up for the next presidential election (but I’m not too optimistic there either, to be honest).

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