What Was Really Behind The Dems Landslide?

[Jcrowley]

The election was a repudiation of the Bush presidency, a revolt powered by voters' opposition to policies they associate with Bush and his allies: open-ended occupation of Iraq, free-trade pacts that favor corporations rather than workers, disdain for the rule of law and ethical standards. The dozens of new Democratic members of Congress--some the conservatives and centrists that pundits so enjoy celebrating but many of them committed progressives--prevailed not because they offered themselves up as kinder and gentler versions of their GOP predecessors but because they understood the public mood. Pennsylvania Senator-elect Bob Casey may be a social conservative, but his campaign highlighted his economic populism and his condemnation of Bush as having "lied to the American people about how we got into Iraq."

Democrats with a strong antiwar message scored many of the breakthrough wins. They included New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter, who last May declared, "Let us honor our veterans this Memorial Day by saying, 'Well done, soldier, and welcome home. America needs you here.'" She'll be joined in the new House by Iowans Bruce Braley and David Loebsack, Minnesotan Keith Ellison and Californian Jerry McNerney, who also won with "Bring the troops home now" messages. Many winners paired opposition to the war with defenses of civil liberties. Montana Senator-elect Jon Tester, chastised by Republicans for criticizing the Patriot Act, took the microphone in a debate and declared, "Let me be clear: I don't want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to repeal it."

Along with antiwar messages, many winners ran as economic populists willing to break with their own party. Ohio's Senator-elect Sherrod Brown was attacked as being "on the fringe" of the Democratic Party. Brown embraced the criticism, saying, yes, he had broken with the Democratic Congressional leadership to oppose the war, and before that with President Bill Clinton on trade and economic issues. The economic populism that Brown champions--defined largely by smart fair-trade politics--will be amplified by the election to the Senate of Tester, Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/nichols2

The Dems did not win because some push towards the undefinable "Center" no matter how many times the MSM regurgitates this.

[sweetheart]

1. Lady Luck

honestly, humility is becoming

[Jcrowley]

4. Back in '72

255 house seats and

56 seats in the Senate

obtained by being

in the whacky left.

[dysfunctional press]

2. george bush

plain and simple

[Robbien]

3. Its Corruption. Why is everyone ignoring that the voters said Corruption.

Corruption was big in my state, and my state is blue for goshsakes.

Corruption hit so many of us in so many ways this voting season.

[demgurl]

5. I am getting so tired of hearing the media wonder what happened.

I am not sure what happened except that the truth came out. What I mean by this we know positively that Gore won when he ran. There are enough abnormalities to fill even the staunchest HONEST Republican with doubts over the Kerry race. If you truly believe that this is what has happened in the past then this reflects what you believe the make-up of our government should have been the last few years. The nation has been Democratic for a number of years and the only question, in my mind, is why did the truth come out now?

[XOKCowboy]

6. Howard Dean deserves a lot of credit

His 50 State Strategy really came through.

[rocktivity]

13. I've been trying write something meaningful about what this week means

but it turns out that I wrote it last summer:

It's our mandate to win. Hackett has handed us our political capital.

Keep in mind that Hackett came within 3.5% of winning a district that is 70% Repub. Do you honestly think he would have fared just as badly if the district had been 60 or 50 percent Repub? Helloooooo---SOME OF THOSE REPUBS VOTED FOR HIM!!!

It's not a pipe dream or a theory anymore. We now know what it takes to win--a no-holds-barred candidate and agile grass roots support. If we get together and make the effort to multiply what Hackett did by fifty states, we'll win a LOT more often than we'll lose.

I pray that Howard Dean offers Hackett a job before he decides to re-enlist. If he really wants to do what's best for his country, he'll stay here, energize the base and run for something in 2006.

Hackett has just dropped a sack of political captial into our laps. Do we invest it in 2006, or do we wander away?

:headbang:
rocknation

[shance]

7. Major voter problems/fraud occurred. The landslide was probably huge.

Much much larger than we were told, but so large it virtually could not be ignored.

So again, we had "close races". More importantly, with the fraudulent machines, we will never know.

BAN THE MACHINES NOW.

[MichiganVote]

8. Howard Dean and a whole lot of fed up voters

[Cha]

9. Dean said on Jon Stewart that we

got 1/3 of the Evangelical vote, too. And I read that the voters weren't succumbing to the "wedge issues" this time.

And Dean said that bush helped with the Dems win.

[Mike Nelson]

10. Rage Against The Machine

and, Answered Prayers

[kenny blankenship]

11. After 12 yrs. GOP cong. 6 yrs of Bush the voters HAVE SEEN what GOPism leads to

it's really a case of total exhaustion and desperation. For 12 years the electorate was in the "voter vault" of GOP strategists like Rove and before him Gingrich. They didn't vote for Democrats because GOP polarization techniques had them convinced the Democrats were "disqualified" from office--you just couldn't vote for them. The GOP succeeded brilliantly and achieved a near total monopoly on power at the national level. They had the power to do ALL THE STUFF they always wanted, all the stuff they said we kept them from doing, all the stuff that they claimed would transform America into paradise. They had several years BASICALLY ALONE & UNINTERRUPTED to work their magic. The voters have seen now in vivid detail what the so-called "party of ideas" creates when it is given free rein. There's nothing left of the promises and there's no more mystery left either. The bag has been turned inside out: the rube now understands perfectly that there's nothing down in there for him.

And the voters are sick of it. They're sick of their jobs being shipped overseas by "Free" trade agreements. They're sick of the economic elitism that underlies such anti-American trade deals, and underlies ever decreasing taxation on the rich, and they're sick of the rampant corruption in Washington that accompanies all of that. They're sick of the ever tighter concentration of power and the erosion of Constitutional government and Constitutionally protected liberties. They're sick of government by privileged people who think they can make the rules up as they go along. They're sick of their interests as citizens coming a distant last every fucking time, while corporations and the rich come first. They're sick of wars that have no justification beyond "Good Business for Halliburton and Exxon!"

So they are in a state of revolt. And in their desperation they have turned to us--suddenly and massively--since the Republicans have led them so far down the wrong track. We're IT now. There's no other place left for them to push back against what's been done to them. We have to direct this rebellion. At the moment it is in a state of negation. It only knows what it's sick of. Ideologically it doesn't have a character. That character is our task to mold. It is our job now to LISTEN to the patient's symptoms and make the most strenuous good faith effort to bring relief. When we've shown that we can listen and bring improvement to their lives--like the GOP was unwilling to do, since it serves only its corporate masters. Then, later, they may might become interested in the "inside baseball" stuff --the throwaway pamphlet literature flyers about "what's liberalism?" or what's centrism, etc. Right now that's just irrelevant noise at best--the voters COULD NOT CARE LESS. They have issues they want addressed (which happen to be the province of liberal programs & reforms) Right now, we're hearing about that liberalism/centrism stuff because it's serves a reactionary purpose. It's all just corporate media gibberish intended to deny the openness of this moment of revolt, to preempt the political life of the people, and to deviously guide our next movements as a party and as an electorate back into well-worn channels that will lead straight back to the situation where all that happens or can happen is dictated in advance by corporate planners and their twin subsidiaries, the mass media and the Republican Party.

The pundits and the corporate newsspewers didn't see this one coming! So who the fuck cares what THEY have to say about the Big Blue Wave, now that it's kicking their ass! They have ONE PURPOSE ONLY and that's to lead things back to the way they were on Nov. 6th. Let's not go there with them.

[omega minimo]

12. 26 years of braindead complacency!

:hi:

This "correction" is actually a move away from the Muddled Middle, the Complacent Center, the Pacified Public.

ABOUT DAMNED TIME.

[mtnsnake]

14. We finally did the right thing. We hacked the machines ourselves!

:evilgrin:

[Ksec]

15. IMO

I think the real reason was people were tired of being forgotten by the GOP.
Wages stagnant while corporate profits were through the roof and then you had the CEOs rolling in money as they destroyed the places they worked at...
I have a feeling it was the populous problem we now see. The middle class and the poor are all but ignored as their jobs go overseas , their quality of life plummets and health care becomes a luzury only for the wealthy... Thats what really bothered the voters imo.

[MGD]

16. Because smears, fears, and queers didn't work this time.

edit: No offense intended to anyone.

[SammyWinstonJack]

17. Pissed off Americans?

Is my guess. :shrug:

[Berserker]

18. Easy

People wanted change and got off their ass and voted. Look at the turn out it explains it all. Some of us vote every election most don't vote they just sit and bitch.

[Atman]

19. Me

Yup. I was trying to keep it quiet, didn't want to brag or steal all the limelight, but I'm behind it. So now you know. It wasn't Rahm or Schumer or Dean. Moi.


Okay, maybe not all me, but I helped!

;)

.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

22. Thank you!

Whatever you did, it was brilliant. :)

Please do it again in 2008.

[Skittles]

20. it was Iraq

people became sickened by the lack of leadership and acountablility for this quagmire and saw our troops paying the ultimate price...I am just sorry it tooks so long for America to pull its head out of its collective ass.

[USA_1]

21. How Do You Count The Ways ...

1) Republican corruption

2) decadence

3) corporate welfare

4) imperialistic terrorism

5) hypocrisy

6) stupidity

7) vote stealing

8) Katrina + administrative incompetence

9) interminable lies



etc ...

[rocktivity]

23. DING DING DING! USA_1, you're our grand prize winner!

...(8) Katrina + administrative incompetence...

If I had to pick just one item on your list as an answer the OP's question, Katrina would be it.

I wasn't offended when Wolf Blizter described the people at the Superdome as being "so poor and so black"--he was just trying to articulate the fact that SO MANY of them were poor and black, it was bound to become an issue. But the REAL tragedy of Katrina was that it left the impression (on the entire world) that frankly, George Bush just didn't give a damn. And when Fox News appears to agree with that, you KNOW you're in trouble!

:headbang:
rocknation

[casus belli]

24. All your Diebolds are belong to us.

I kid.

[opihimoimoi]

25. Skill, Truth, Observation, Comprehension, Problem Solving, Implementation, Courage. etc.

[earth mom]

26. To put it simply it was A Series of Unfortunate Events-that annihilated the reThugs.

Events such as:

Cindy Sheehan & Camp Casey
Katrina and * Cos horrible treatment of the victims
Massive Corruption: Abramoff & DeLay
Foley Scandal
Torture Bill
Gutting of Habeas Corpus
* admitting that Iraq was about Oil
Trashing of Michael J. Fox by the thugs

(And that's just SOME of it in the past Year and a Half!)

Without the truth of the internet and the power of forums like DU and other blogs, beating the reThugs at their game would not have been possible.