With the Mark Foley Scandal firmly planting the Republican corruption seed within the minds of American voters, Democrats are more likely than ever to win this thing. I hate to get ahead of myself and assume that this will happen; we all know the heartbreak of the close elections during last three cycles, that broke the other way, but the momentum is enough on the Dem side that we can assume gains will be made. So therefore I find myself asking the very basic question of how will the Dems, if brought to power in this Mid-term election, will cement themselves in power at least 2016(ten years is ambitious enough)? I start with two very basic questions...
A Democratic Majority has much to learn from the last ten years. The saddest thing that so many of the chattering class and the leadership class in American politics kept saying what have the Democrats learned from 1994... from the Republicans?!! My Question is:
1. What have the Democrats learned, not from the Republicans in 1994, but from their own Party in 1994?
The Democrats went down in defeat on wave of public anger over corruption and disdain for public discontent. Granted the Dems had a few policy flounders during the first two years of the Clinton Administration, but the corruption in Congress and its lack of reform gave voters a seething anger because its elected leaders were simply not listening to those who represented. This obviously is a complicated election to completely dissect, but Democrats should not and never look at the 1994 Republican victory as a model to emulate based on this simple premise: If you copy your opponent you will copy the same mistakes. If we look to 1994 to win, then we will in 12 years again be looking towards slipping majority in Congress marred by corruption scandals. We cannot allow the cycle to continue.
That leads me to the second question that should be answered:
2. How do Democrats, if elected in 2006 to power in the House and Senate, then avoid a 12 year collapse and try to honestly end the corruption and make it a more honest and responsive governing body?
I think the Dems are in a especially unique position this election compared to 1994 because the Bush is leaving in two years unlike Clinton who hung on to get another term, albeit a term of half-meaures because of constant strife with an opposition Congress. Democrats elected this fall, if victorious will be setting an agenda for the Democratic presidential candidate for '08. If Democrats are to avoid a John McCain or Rudolph Guiliani based on National Security issues in '08 voters hearts will have to matched with a real reform agenda, one where voters will be happy to have rather than the unpopular measures proposed in the '90's, which were set more towards to hurting Clinton than reforming Congress and our country. The reform Agenda- too great to go into depth in this post, but we must ask ourselves: How do we avoid this meltdown the Republicans are experiencing right now, with coverups and backstabbing that in explicit detail demonstrates the dysfunction of our legislative bodies?