Moderate Governance by the Next Congress? Fat Chance
AP
In 2006 and 2008 the Democratic Party expanded - not just in the number of seats it controlled in Congress, but in how it won those seats. The Democrats won the majority by expanding the ideological definition of the Democratic Party itself.
The move was the brainchild of then-House Democratic Campaign boss Rahm Emanuel -- he envisioned a" big tent" Democratic Party and brought in a group of legislators who would have never before considered themselves Democrats. Take Heath Shuler (pictured), the former NFL star, who is fiscally conservative and opposed to abortion rights. He was recruited by Emanuel to run in 2006. Now he's in a tough re-election battle.
This year, the GOP is threatening its own expansion -- but only in numbers. The Republican Party is on the verge of a huge gain in the House, but primarily in districts now held by conservative Democrats who occupy seats normally won by Republicans. In fact, 49 Democrats serving in the current Congress are in seats won by John McCain in 2008.
So what does this mean? The Democrats won by firmly taking over the middle and even the middle-right of the map. Now, the GOP is taking over only the right and far right. So who will be gone? The people who lose their seats in Congress will be the moderate or conservative Democrats. They are the ones who won conservative districts in the past two elections and now will lose to even more conservative Republicans.
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The electoral map after this election may be more representative of where the country truly is. But the GOP won't necessarily be controlling the middle because representation and true governance are different things. The liberal Democrats are safe and the conservative Republicans are safe. In the last few elections, the seats that changed control of the House were those in the middle, and now the GOP is moving the middle to the right.
After President Obama's 2008 election, most analysts saw a permanent sway in the electorate. But looking at the numbers, it wasn't a landslide at all. Mr. Obama won with nearly 67 million votes, some 53 percent of the electorate. That means that 58 million people, 46 percent of the voting population, voted for McCain and didn't want Mr. Obama to win.
Two years later, the independent voters who went to Obama have left the Democrats after the White House pursued an aggressive legislative agenda (much of achieved) but failed to quickly turn around the economy. So in this election, many of those middle ground voters will vote for the Republicans.
But this election has not been about the political middle -- it has been about the extremes. And with so many toss-up elections this year -- meaning many close races -- nearly half of the voters in many districts will have wanted the other guy.
So what does that mean after November 2? It means that neither party will be able to govern from the middle because there will be very few moderates left in the House, if any. Conservative candidates running against the Obama/Pelosi agenda are not promising to govern from the middle. The prognosis for moderate governing, after a year of such negativity and hyper-partisanship, is not promising.
Robert Hendin and Jill Jackson are CBS News Senior Political Producers. You can read more of Jill's posts in Hotsheet here or follow her on Twitter. More of Robert's posts in Hotsheet are here and you can follow him on Twitter here.
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Before Americans cast their vote, they should remember these words:
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
Those are the sacred words of Carly Fiorina, California's Republican candidate for the Senate
On October 28, CBS published an article by John Gapper titled,"Obama must Learn to Love Big Business." Gapper tells everyone what they can expect once the GOP gets control of Congress.
Gapper argues that the jobs Carly Fiorina and other Republican CEO's shipped to China will never come back. Gapper favors trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, notorious for its anti-union terrorism, so corporations can off shore more American jobs to countries with cheap labor, supposedly they can get tax cuts for doing so.
In addition Gapper want to " ease restrictions on visas and work permits for foreign students who will otherwise take their skills elsewhere." In more direct language, Gapper wants to expand the so-called "guest worker" program, so that imported workers, who will work for slave labor wages, will take American jobs.
While Gapper suggests that we need to invest in a better trained labor force and a better infrastructure to attract multi-national businesses, he also wants drastic budget cuts. In other words, businesses want the benefits of a 21st century infrastructure, but they don't want to pay for it. As far as more education, we have millions of young people deeply in debt with college degrees who can't get jobs- simply because their jobs have either been outsourced or given to an imported work force
The only things the GOP guarantees are pink slips as corporations give jobs to cheaper labor. In fact, when Carly Fiorina laid off thousands of Hewlitt Packard employees, these employees were forced to train their slave labor work force that took over their jobs.
So if you vote Republican next week and get a pink slip just before Christmas remember, I warned you this would happen. I urge every one to vote Democratic ticket because the job you save may be your own.
FAT CHANCE...
Congressional Republicans know that America can't compete with other nations if the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical costs. It's a no-brainer. Congressional Republicans also know that the 2008 financial meltdown cannot be repeated. Republicans will be in charge and any Tea Party member who really wants to cut spending and lower taxes will be disciplined harshly by fellow Republicans. Karl Rove knows that the economy is issue number one, and he will not look kindly at Republicans that make other Republicans look bad. If unemployment doesn't improve substantially, Republicans will be blamed in 2012. Cutting taxes and spending is asking for an economic disaster, and Republicans know it.
His co-conspirators were fully aware that our economy was already reeling from the cumulative impact of 30 years of "flood-up/trickle-down" economics, deregulation, and inequitable free trade - and the shock of 9/11 - and so tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible; economic suicide, even.
So what they did was launch the housing boom. I.e., the housing boom had TWO purposes: Drive the economy with housing and so conceal the fact that tax cuts only incentivize our wealthy to substitute cheaper offshore labor for American workers in all sectors where that is feasible, and the other, more obvious one of permitting the right people to make a whole lot of money playing both sides of the mortgage-backed securities pyramid.
What I'm trying to say is the Republicans either could run another equivalent scam to conceal the damage that yet another round of tax cuts for themselves would cause, or they could, perhaps, instead now rely upon the gift they received from their tools on the Supreme Court: The ability to inundate the American people with lies and so maintain power without going to the bother of concealing the ill-effects of their greed.
Or both.
Frankly, I hope that the Republicans do try to play nice with the Democrats, but with Senator Schumer in charge of the Senate and the President still rock solid set on the Agenda, I'm betting the other side is just not going to let that happen.