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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (8581)	11/12/2006 1:30:48 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224745

Exactly...we can sit back and watch as the current high-fivers unravel. This is their high-water mark for the next 2yrs.

To: tonto who wrote (8581)	11/12/2006 1:43:59 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Respond to of 224745

Interesting analysis of the DINO winners (Democrat in Name Only), CQ.com, 11/11/06 Democrats Owe Win to Moderates, Independents: Democrats succeeded this year in what’s better described as the Push-back of the Pragmatists. They won their majorities by proving they can play in the middle of the political spectrum and the middle of the country. If nothing else, they have successfully — if perhaps only temporarily — re-engineered the nation’s electoral paradigm by laying bare the tired and trite distinctions between Republican “red” and Democratic “blue.” This election turned, as will the next one in 2008, on self-described independent voters who predominate in “swing” districts and states. Last week, they turned away from President Bush and his GOP allies in Congress, in search of something else. The beneficiaries of that turn this year are the Democrats. The question for both parties now is, what do these independent and generally moderate voters want from their government in Washington? The party that answers that question best will have a leg up on the 2008 election for president and future control of Congress. Shades of Purple Of the six states in which the Democrats unseated Republican Senate incumbents, four were carried by President Bush at the top of the GOP ticket just two years ago with margins ranging from 2 percentage points in Ohio to 20 points in Montana. Although two of those states are traditional Midwestern partisan battlegrounds — Ohio and Missouri — both had been trending Republican in recent years. The other two, Virginia and Montana, could only be described as bedrock Republican territory. On the House side, voters in 19 of the 28 districts where the Democrats had confirmed takeaways at the end of Election Week had, just two years ago, favored Bush over Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry. Those districts — many of them regarded as securely Republican entering this midterm campaign year — were strung from eastern New Hampshire to the Central Valley of California, and included seats in upstate New York, the South, the interior Midwest and the fast-growing Mountain West state of Arizona. Most of those districts have substantial rural territory. Others are mainly in suburbs and exurbs. What both groupings have in common is that Democrats had been lagging behind Republicans. The numbers do not include a number of near-misses for Democrats in districts that are usually strongly Republican turf. Among these are the nine seats for which the vote count was too close to call at week’s end, plus one in Texas for which a December runoff between a Republican and a Democrat will decide the result. The Democrats scored most of their victories by pursuing centrist postures and successfully dodging the “liberal label” applied by Republicans that so often has been fatal to Democratic aspirations. Republicans faced a challenging political environment caused by dissent over the war in Iraq and plummeted approval ratings for Bush and the Congress they controlled. Many of their candidates danced awkwardly between distancing themselves from Bush and the party leadership and staying loyal enough to avoid alienating their conservative Republican base voters. About three dozen of them stumbled in that dance. The new “bluer” political map provides both parties with their directions for the 2008 campaign. Republicans must ponder whether this year’s election was a blip or one that would force them to rethink the strategy developed by Bush adviser Karl Rove of focusing primarily on turnout among the Republican base. It was a plan that worked in 2002 and 2004 but failed to meet the party’s needs in the chaotic election of 2006. Democrats, who showed this year that many places thought to be deeply Republican red are really “purple,” will be probing to see how many of these and other previously hostile regions their party can put in play in 2008. But they will do so with the knowledge that many districts the Democrats won are already at the top of the Republicans’ target list for the next round. The Democrats during the midterm campaign did not hesitate to pummel Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress, whom they blamed for the intractable U.S. military commitment to Iraq, a “middle-class squeeze” in the economy, and failures of management epitomized by the Bush administration’s response to the calamity that Hurricane Katrina wreaked in August 2005. But the Democrats did not have to tone down this critique this year because it appealed not only to their base of liberal activists but also to politically unaffiliated swing voters. According to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for a combine of broadcast and cable television networks, Democratic candidates were favored by 57 percent of respondents who said they were not affiliated with either major party and who made up 26 percent of voters. The Republicans were favored by 39 percent of independents, which pollsters said was a 9 percentage-point drop for the Republicans from the 2002 elections. The Democrats dominated among self-described moderates, who made up just less than half of the respondents. The 60 percent to 38 percent Democratic edge among those voters amounted to a 7 percentage-point drop-off for the GOP from 2002. Many of these voters found the Republican message more compelling in 2002 and 2004, especially its emphasis on national security and fighting terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11. The Democrats’ gains this year open a window of opportunity for the party to broaden its national political base. The agendas that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada pursue — and whether their approach is one of conciliation or retaliation — will go a long way toward determining if 2008 is another Democratic success or a comeback by Republicans chanting “we told you so.”