Finally, Comeuppance
Comment Finally, Comeuppance November 7 gave President Bush a meal of comeuppance. Finally! After six years of ruling with Tory arrogance and terminal recklessness, Bush got the rebuke he so...
...Bernie Sanders...
...Arizona became the first state to turn down the gay marriage ban...
...Cowardly Democrats fear that if they act in what is perceived as a partisan manner, they will lose in 2008...
...Take "genius" off his business card...
...Then Bush and Cheney took the 2004 election not only as an endorsement of their decision to go to war but the final word on it...
...Asked about the Iraq War, Cheney said: "It may not be popular with the public-it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right...
...November 7 was a victory for progressives all the way around...
...They can exercise the power they've attained, orthey can sitonit...
...We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush told The Washington Post in January 2005...
...Though he has finally cashiered Donald Rumsfeld, chances are that Bush will follow Dick Cheney's lead again, and disregard the wishes of the people...
...Even before the votes were cast on Election Day, leading figures in the party urged caution...
...Progressives won on many statewide r?f?rendums, which should embolden the ranks...
...But did Republican partisanship, which reached its nadir with the Clinton impeachment, prevent a Republican from winning the Presidency two years later...
...South Dakotans defeated a crude abortion ban...
...Bush and Rove went to that putrid well once too often...
...Bush and Cheney view Presidential power as almost unchecked except by a quadrennial plebiscite...
...A whopping 74 percent said that a concern about corruption was either extremely important or very important to them...
...This is about exposing wrongdoing, pursuing corruption, restraining a runaway executive, resetting the balance of power, and restoring democracy...
...Almost the same amount disapproved of the Iraq War, with 41 percent strongly disapproving...
...Paul Begala and Rahm Emanuel-the smart money guys, who are always playing the angles-talked about the need to move to the center...
...Senate, affirmed the Wellstone style of grassroots organizing...
...The Democrats haveachoice, too...
...Especially in foreign and national security policy, Bush and Cheney are likely to charge along their path...
...And in the six states-Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio-where raising the minimum wage was on the ballot, it passed in every one...
...Most notably, Sherrod Brown's defeat of Mike DeWine in Ohio demonstrated the power of the fair trade issue, and Bernie Sanders's triumph in Vermont, making him the first avowed socialist in the U.S...
...Harry Reid, before getting a night's sleep on November 7, announced, "We must work from the middle...
...They are too invested in the Iraq War to pull out...
...The day after the election, Bush again vowed to stay there until victory, as unachievable as that now is...
...The voters also went after any Republicans tainted by the myriad scandals that attach themselves to those who consume too much power too quickly...
...The people of Missouri approved embryonic stem-cell research, an issue that was a winner elsewhere across the country for progressives...
...Cheney revealed the full length of his arrogance in his interview with George Stephanopoulos the weekend before the election...
...They have an obligationtoact.Theymust pushaminimum wage increase and better prescription drug coverage...
...And that's what we're doing...
...He can continue in his heedless ways, or he can make good on his long-ago promise to be a uniter, not a divider...
...They must bring the Bush Administration to account...
...It is he who must own responsibility for the monumental changes in the Capitol, because when voters went to the polls, they did so with a purpose: to slap him in the face...
...No, and he achieved a lot for his party and his ideological agenda...
...As hard as Bush and Karl Rove tried to make the issue about how untrustworthy the Democrats are, the voters were willing to take a chance in hopes for a change...
...Sherrod Brown Right after the Supreme Court gave Bush the White House in 2000, he and Cheney disregarded the wishes of the public at large that they should repair the rift in the nation and govern from the middle...
...Says who...
...To do so, they will have to buck the timid in their own party...
...Not to act on that mandate-not to investigate Katrina, not to investigate Iraq and Halliburton, not to investigate the Abramoff scandal, not to investigate the illegal NSA spying, not to demand impeachment hearings-would be an abdication of responsibility and a betrayal of their base...
...Don't hold you breath on that one...
...And they must beabackstop against further reactionary movesbythe Bush Administration, including drillinginthe Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, giving more tax breakstothe top1percent, and imposing another rightwing Supreme Court nominee on us...
...Instead, they set out to ram their agenda down our throats...
...It's not just the rightwing that knows how to use r?f?rendums anymore...
...But they can't stop there...
...Matthew Rothschild "Together, we are going to turn this nation around...
...This time, as opposed to 2004, the dirty depiction of Democrats as coddlers of terrorists did not sell...
...Bush echoed that comment as recently as his October 25 press conference...
...The Rove style (sleaze) and the Rove strategy (get out the far right) failed...
...After six years of ruling with Tory arrogance and terminal recklessness, Bush got the rebuke he so sorely deserved...
...Now they've got the power...
...Such utter disdain for the democratic process is not new for this power couple...
...For six years, Democrats suffered from a severe case of subpoena envy...
...Did Newt Gingrich work from the middle...
...They should use it...
...Exit polls showed that 60 percent of the voters were angry or dissatisfied with his Administration...
...Fundamentally, this is not about inflicting partisan pain...
...November 7 was the nearest thing to a mandate that the Democrats have had in a long time...
...Their rhetoric and their actions flow from this profoundly anti-democratic belief...
...Now Bush has a choice...
...Because of progressive principles, mainstream progressive values, as Ohio goes in ?6, so goes the nation in '08...
...Nancy Pelosi pledged that if she became Speaker of the House, she would take impeachment off the table...
...High on that agenda was the Iraq War...
Vol. 70 • December 2006 • No. 12
