david's doodles

Are Happy Days here yet?

I predicted that the US election results would be inconclusive. Happily I was wrong.

Ever since last week’s upset of the Republican majority, gallons of ink and a blather of blogs have been trying to explain why it happened. Me, I don’t think there’s an easy explanation. Nor do I think that it has the great significance that those wishing for change would like it to have.

That is not to deny that it will have an impact. The effects are already evident. Just a week before the election, Bush the Lesser had sworn undying confidence in his Secretary of Defense, vowing to keep Rumsfeld in office until the end of his own term in office. Yet just a day after the election, Bush announced Donald Rumsfeld’s departure. It would take a real cynic to suggest that the announcement was timed to draw attention away from the dubious results of Virginia’s Senate race!

What I have in mind are several things. First, more voters turned out than is usual for a mid-term election. This validates Greg Palast’s assertion that, despite the continued stealing of votes, “they can’t steal all of them”.

The second thought concerns the generally held notion that the results are a rejection of the administration’s policy on Iraq. Somehow I just don’t think so. Mid-term elections are generally more about local issues than administration policies, and there’s nothing to suggest this changed. With so many Republican incumbents supporting local issues that benefited only corporations and the powerful, people likely just voted in their own interests. Polls show that the increase in turnout was primarily among the young, who normally stay away in droves. The profile of those who supported Republicans in those few districts that remain vulnerable, most are older or earn more than $100,000 a year. Those who voted for Democrats and made the difference were the younger voters and the financially less well off.

Thirdly, despite the increased turnout, only about 40% of those eligible actually voted. So the views of 60% of the electorate are not known -- and that ignores the estimated three million disenfranchised. So I think that any attempt to interpret the election results as reflective of the mood of Americans generally is an exercise in futility.

So, what deductions can we make about the election results? What will it mean to have both chambers in Congress controlled by Democrats (with the aid of Independents)?

To begin with, we are already witnessing some changes, even before the new Congress is seated in January. The mood of Republicans has altered appreciably. Ever since the 1994 “Contract with America”, the Republicans have been acting in an arrogant and hostile manner toward anyone who opposes their views. Just look at what happened to Bill Clinton. Now, in total contrast, there is talk of bipartisanship from both sides. We shall see what that means, although Bush’s nomination of Robert Gates as successor to Donald Rumsfeld gives me pause. Gates was a co-conspirator with Rumsfeld during the Iran-Iraq war, secretly arming Saddam against Iran. (Yes, that Saddam.) He was also deeply involved in the Iran-Contra conspiracy of 1986.

There is an irony here. Gates’s nomination took place on Wednesday, just a couple of days after Daniel Ortega was elected as president of Nicaragua. For it was Ortega’s Sandinista government that the CIA brought down by secretly supplying arms and money to the Nicaraguan Contras.

There is good reason for hope, though. Democrats are already indicating that they intend to raise the minimum wage (presently $5.15 an hour), cut interest rates on student loans, revoke subsidies to oil companies, promote renewable energy, and revoke tax breaks for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.

It would be well to realize that politicians are not leaders. It is only pressure from below that prompts them to move. This is true in any nation, but is especially true in an electorally based system. Politicians here rarely look beyond the next election, regularly holding a finger to the political winds and acting accordingly.

This is a great opportunity for progressives and advocates for peace to mobilize, with a real possibility for positive results. I hope these allies do not just heave a sigh of relief and go back to their pastimes, but, as Bobby Seale put it, “Seize the Time.”

Peace activists will, so to speak, stay the course. If enough people mobilize behind them, we may yet find ourselves singing “Happy Days are here again.”