Congress, In Spite of Ourselves

Even the conspicuously timed Saddam Hussein verdict couldn't prevent it. The Democrats have won big.

This week, as predicted by conservative pundits, liberals across America will throw mandatory gay sex orgies, send victory cakes to al-Qaida, replace hunting with abortion as a national pastime, and increase taxes 200 percent to fund the building of Stalin statues in every town square, whereupon Bible-burning will commence.

Well, maybe not yet. After all, Pelosi is only speaker-elect.

But truly, if this campaign and its aftermath caused me to feel anything about Democrats, it was still the familiar emotion of disappointment, not the collective euphoria sweeping our campus.

I have grown estranged from the party in recent years. But, even in my disenchantment, I must accept that the Dems are still the closest America will come to swallowing my Marxist dreams of 200 percent... never mind. Thus, with hopes for future victories, I will venture to point out all the flaws of 2006 with the pronoun "we."

The Democrats didn't make moves to win-the Republicans did everything to lose. Instead of congratulating ourselves, we should slam our heads into the wall that it took this much flagrant corruption and idiocy to bring us back to office. While President George W. Bush was clearly steering us in a radically conservative direction, for which he had a questionable mandate (as in none), we were trounced in 2002. Then, after supporting the greatest foreign policy disaster since Napoleon invaded Russia, and with the Republican Congress tossing civil liberties, middle-class tax cuts, and prescription drug plans to the wind, we blew it again in 2004.

Think of the failures it took to claim seats in 2006: two more years of a war liberals knew was immoral and disastrous from the beginning, former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's corruption implicating a self-righteous majority leader, Homeland Security contracts that protect Wyoming more than New York, Foley and under-age liaisons, and John Sweeney beating his wife during campaign season. And while our media let Rush Limbaugh sound off against someone suffering from Parkinson's disease, we barely even heard a peep about the Bush team's most epic domestic failure: Hurricane Katrina.

But this is not surprising. Six years of impotence for the Dems mirrored the ass-kicking we consistently received in the political discourse. That is, a discourse controlled by conservative ideologues warning of the specter of "liberal media."

What does it take to discredit these people? For all his pontificating about values wars, did Bill O'Reilly not settle out of court for millions of dollars in a twisted sexual harassment case? When Limbaugh flays about with abhorrent accusations, does no one recall that he was indicted last year over schemes to pursue his prescription drug addiction? Sean Hannity titles his book Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, and it tramples over the best-selling lists?

It isn't surprising that it took us six years to reclaim Congress. We have let the situation degenerate to the point where the word "liberal" is effective in attack ads. The sad truth is that we have no one but ourselves to blame for this.

Especially in the absence of Republican mismanagement to criticize, we must begin to address the ways we have contributed to our near irrelevancy. Unless liberals can make substantive changes to the way we are perceived, the Democrats will lose again in 2008.

The first step is to offer a decisive agenda of our own. Currently, we are trapped between "they don't have a plan" and "their plan is liberal, thus unacceptable." Instead of paralysis, we should have the confidence to say, "We do have a plan, it is liberal, and we truly believe it will improve the country."

Chief of Staff Karl Rove was confident enough to promote policies so outrageous they made Nixon look like a pinko-lefty. But he didn't apologize, nor should we. FDR, Truman, and Kennedy pushed programs that were far more progressive in their day than anything we are proposing now-and the country benefited.

We also need to change the language of the debate. It is ridiculous to blather about "the threat of San Francisco values," especially when neither the media nor politicians mention the threat of corporate values infiltrating our government.

For too long, Democrats were on the take just as much as Republicans. So we failed to call out abuses in the spheres of medicine, insurance, the environment, food and agricultural subsidies, and a justice system that is toothless against big business. But these are the types of fights that appeal to the majority of voters, regardless of how deep in the Bible Belt they live.

The biggest conservative attack point is that Democrats are weak on defense. There are two ways to respond to this. One is to run to the right, conflate Iraq with terror threats at home, and spend billions on no-bid contracts to fire truck manufacturers in the heartland.

Another is to admit there is a terror threat, explain how flawed responses in the Middle East-the Iraq War-are the most harmful, and work to a more responsible foreign policy. During the Cold War, we invested all of our resources into the space program (of all things). Could we now marshal similar efforts into getting us off oil?

We must be clever enough to talk about the real issues and offer real solutions. Anything less, and we'll be irrelevant before you can say "Hillary."