Cohen: How to Turn This Election Into a Progressive Mandate...

[marmar]

Published on Friday, October 27, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
How to Turn This Election Into a Progressive Mandate
By Jeff Cohen

Many pundits are comparing the expected Democratic victory in the upcoming election to the Newt Gingrich-led Republican triumph of 1994, an election in which the GOP gained 52 House seats and ended 40 years of Democratic majority in that chamber.

Unfortunately, the comparison may be overstated. Even if Democrats take control of the House, this will hardly be a triumph like 1994. The Gingrich-led GOP ran on a coherent, detailed, principled – albeit wrong-headed – platform called the “Contract with America.” (One delightful promise: “cuts in social spending. . .to fund prison construction.”)

If Democrats win control of Congress in November, they can hardly claim a mandate for a coherent program. Because Democratic leaders have avoided a comprehensive program, while ducking big issues like Iraq.

So if Democrats win on Nov. 7, don’t think 1994. Think 1998. That was the stunning Congressional election in the sixth year of Bill Clinton, when he was about to be impeached – ridiculously – over deceptions about consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky. Voters went to the polls and shocked the Beltway (with pundits predicting GOP House gains of up to 15 or 20 seats) by giving Democrats a pickup of five seats.

1998 was nothing more – and nothing less – than a rejection of rightwing extremism run amuck. A rebuke to ideologues pursuing an agenda so zealously that they lost touch with public sentiment and with reality. It was also the beginning of a grassroots group called MoveOn.org – as in “simply censure Clinton and move on to more important issues.”

A Democratic win in 2006 would be similar to 1998: a rejection of rightwing extremism and hypocrisy – from the Iraq disaster to fiscal abandon to preachers of morality and war lining their own pockets.

So how do we make 2006 more than just a rejection of the other side? And with a wide-open presidential campaign approaching, how do we move a majority of the country to embrace a positive agenda for reform? .....

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1027-20.htm

[Mojambo]

1. Good piece. n/t