While I agree that November’s election is far from the electoral whooping that it is often made out to be, I cannot stand back and say everything is hunky-dory. No, the Democrats didn’t get destroyed, but they got beat. They got beat everywhere they went.

At this point, the Democrats are minorities just about everywhere. Looking ahead to 2006 and 2008, it is hard to come up with any electoral math that puts the Dems back in power in either the House or Senate and so far there isn’t a shining star candidate waiting in the wings to take over the Executive Branch. No, it looks like the Democrats may be relegated to being the opposition party for quite a while. The role of the opposition, however, is not an impotent one. It can, in fact, be the catalyst for real change if it is used properly.

In the coming months, it is likely that President Bush will begin rolling out his plans for major overhauls of Social Security and our tax system. He will attempt to paint these plans as “reforms” and will publicly appeal to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to support him for the sake of all Americans. He is notorious for parsing the words of his heroes, so expect something along the lines of Lincoln’s first inaugural speech:

“We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

But Democrats need to be unified in their resistance. Even a single defector to the Republican side will offer the Administration the guise of bipartisanship. If Bush’s “reforms” are seen as purely Republican programs, then in the next round of elections people will have a much more defined choice to make. It will actually come down to which side articulates its arguments better, not who can claim the ambiguous gray victories.

“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” Jefferson once wrote. Now is the time for Democrats in Congress to pick fights and stand united in opposition. The Democratic message is not dead. The Republicans are just better at, well, lying about their intentions. If the Democrats act as a true opposition party, then the Republicans will have a difficult time hiding their true intentions.

[Feel free to take a stab at the question in Post #1]

~The Stuffed Tiger