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Category:
Published: December 2006
The meaning behind the 2006 Midterm elections.
On Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 Americans voiced their opinion at the ballot box. The result of, as we all know, is that Democrats won the majority in both the House and the Senate, with six seats in the Senate, thirty seats in the House and six in state governorships. The question is: what made the people vote Democrat? Did they vote Democrat because they believed in what the Democrat's were saying? Or did they vote Democrat because they did not believe in what the Republicans were saying?
To answer this question, we need to look at what each side was saying. Elections are often won and lost on issues. This one was obviously decided on Iraq. No other issue dominated the political debate on the same level as the war. Others may mention the economy or scandal and corruption, but most pundits and laymen would agree that the issue that carried the Democrats into the majority was the Iraq. Yet, curiously, a common belief prevails among a significant amount of the electorate that the Democrats do not have a strategy for the war in Iraq. In fact, if you asked a group of Americans what the Democrats platform is on Iraq you would probably hear over a half dozen answers, from increasing troop levels to abandoning the Middle East as a whole. The Republicans, on the other hand, do not have this problem-everyone has heard the phrase "stay the course" so many times that it has been drilled into our collective heads. However, while the American people may know the Republican party line, it does not mean they agree with the at best willfully ignorant plan. Questions such as, "How long shall we stay the course?" And, "What should we define as victory?" have for the first time become key campaign issues.
It would seem, then, that the Democrats swept into the majority not from a cohesive vision of foreign and domestic policy, but simply by not being Republican. Voters clearly wanted change and a vote for the Democrats was the best option to make that happen. So by voting in the Democrats things are being mixed up; Americans are giving the Democrats a shot at the Iraq puzzle. However, this isn't a clear acceptance of all the Democratic issues. And the election results may benefit either party within the next two years, depending on how the two parties treat their respective roles.
Both parties must attempt to come up with clear strategies for winning the war in Iraq, and in the process must determine what "winning" in Iraq exactly means. Whichever party fails to do that will fail in the next election. The new Democratic majority in the House and Senate could be very temporary if they spend their time in anti-Bush rhetoric instead of working with the Presidency to fix the Iraqi situation. The result of this election might be that it forces both parties to come up with a clear and compelling strategy for winning the war in Iraq.
Sometimes things get stagnant and need to be shaken up a bit. This election will shake Washington up. The Democrats need to realize that while they were voted in, it was not because of a supreme confidence in their vision they haven't developed that vision and earned that confidence yet. And the Republicans need to realize that they were voted out because they have been poor stewards of our foreign affairs. The two parties need to discover what it is that they believe in, they must turn those ideals into goals and then develop real strategies for realizing those goals. Until now, neither party has done any of these things effectively and their haphazard attempts of appearing to do so has only put soldiers in danger. Now that the monotony of the past few years are finally over and the two parties are on a somewhat equal footing, we may finally get the promised goal of Federalist 10 and see a real political discussion that will lead to the answers our country needs.
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