NYT: Incoming Democrats Put Populism Before Ideology [View All]

[Pirate Smile]

Incoming Democrats Put Populism Before Ideology

By ROBIN TONER and KATE ZERNIKE
Published: November 12, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — The newly elected Democratic class of 2006, which is set to descend on the Capitol next week, will hardly be the first freshmen to arrive in Washington promising to make a difference.

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CLAIRE McCASKILL, MISSOURI “I’m from a state that’s really like America — it’s divided.”

Many in the class of 2006, especially those who delivered the new Democratic majorities by winning Republican seats, show little appetite for that kind of ideological crusade. But in interviews with nearly half of them this week, the freshmen — 41 in the House and 9 in the Senate, including one independent — conveyed a keen sense of their own moment in history, and a distinct world view: they say they were given a rare opportunity by voters, many of them independents and Republicans, who were tired of the partisanship and gridlock in Washington.

Now, they say, they have to produce — to deal with long-festering problems like access to affordable health care and the loss of manufacturing jobs, and to find a bipartisan consensus for an exit strategy in Iraq, a source of continuing division not only between but also within the parties.

Many of them say they must also, somehow, find a way to address the growing anxiety among voters about a global economy that no longer seems to work for them. There is a strong populist tinge to this class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/us/politics/12class.html?hp&ex=1163307600&en=c28b82096a3935d5&ei=5094&partner=homepage