Ellington

The battle for the 110th Congress is looking more promising for Democrats this year. National polls, like a Reuters/Zogby poll released last week, show that voters will favor Democratic candidates over Republicans in the upcoming Nov. 7 elections. Democrats have an 11-point edge in that poll, with voters favoring Democrats 44 percent to 33 percent—up from a 9-point lead two weeks earlier.

The same poll found Republicans having a hard time shoring up their base, with only 68 percent of Republicans saying they will vote for a GOP candidate. Meanwhile, Democrats seem generally happy with Democrats, with 81 percent of Democrats planning to support their party's candidates. When pollsters asked "self-identified conservatives" who they're voting for, only a little more than half—56 percent—said they'd be going Republican this year.

The verdict is still out, though, about how things will turn out on election day. Recently, Newsweek had a break-down showing a myriad of ways the Tom Foley scandal did hurt Republican elections, while others show the scandal having little or no impact.

The poll found that only 22 percent said it was likely their vote would be affected by the scandal, however congressional job approval is hitting new lows, with only 23 percent rating Congress' work as good or excellent. Fifty-seven percent believe that the war in Iraq is not worth the loss of lives and that the nation is on the wrong track.

Democrats like Mississippi Young Democrats Chairman Kenneth Grigsby say they are cautiously optimistic.

"I am extremely excited but extremely nervous about it, because in 2004 all the polls seemed to indicate that John Kerry was going to win, and yet he didn't," Grigsby said. "I think this year we'll certainly win the House, and the Senate will be close."

Grigsby says he hungers for an America that feels better about its future, with a more wholesome outlook on the preservation of its middle class. He's quick to make predictions expecting a turn in that direction if the Dems prevail in November.

"Democrats will be very concerned about fully funding (the) No Child Left Behind (Act) and things like that. Expect to see more people go to college and that college loans will be more accessible to students or adults looking to pursue higher education," Grigsby said. "Those are the kinds of issues that Democrats have been favoring from the onset, and I think the rest of America has been wanting that kind of focus for years now."

Keelan Sanders, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Party, says Americans can certainly expect a renewed focus on education and the protection of the elderly, but he said Americans could also expect an immediate raise in the minimum wage.

"The way the minimum wage is set now, you can't provide a standard of living for a family, or even for an individual. A person working 40 hours a week at minimum wage in this state will only make $10,000 a year. If you raise it now to $7.25, you still will be below the national average per capita income, but at least it's a start."

Sen. Trent Lott told the JFP last week that a willy-nilly hike in the minimum wage without attached tax cuts would endanger small businesses that then could not afford their employees. But the 1990s, which saw the last minimum-wage hike under President Bill Clinton, was a time of a strong economy, strong job growth and a budget surplus.

Not everybody says a Democrat-controlled Congress is a worthy goal, though. Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Jim Herring has his own views on where such a Congress would lead us.

"You can expect them to talk about repealing tax cuts, which are driving the economy right now. We're having unprecedented job creation. The stock market is at the highest level it's been, and the deficit is being reduced. The economy's in great shape, but they are talking about repealing the tax cuts, so we're talking about higher taxes and more government," Herring said, adding that the Democrats have no coherent plan for Iraq other than to bring the troops home.

"I think most Americans understand that we're in a difficult situation, but they also understand that pulling the troops out would have a devastating effect on our future in this country and the war against terrorism," Herring said.

Herring was quick to mention one of the other things America could immediately expect from a Democratic Congress.

"One of the first things they'd try to do is impeach the president. I think that would be one of the priorities, quite possibly. I think you could surely look forward to that," Herring said, predicting that Washington government would grind to a crawl under a mass of investigations. Herring used the impeachment of Clinton in the 1990s as an example.

"Well, as I recall, they had an opportunity to get Osama Bin Laden, and the president was pretty well distracted at the time," Herring said. Herring took no responsibility on Republicans' behalf when reminded that it was the Republicans who had pushed for Clinton's impeachment, which distracted the administration at a time it was actively pursuing the terrorist leader who later took out New York's World Trade Center and a section of the Pentagon.

"Well, I mean, (the Republicans) are not the ones that committed the unprecedented act in the Oval Office," Herring said.

Grigsby dismissed Herring's statement as a scare tactic.

"I don't know that any House or Senate member has stated that they will immediately begin impeachment hearings if Democrats take Congress. I think we can expect more oversight, but that won't take much because Republicans haven't offered any in the last six years."

In truth, Congress has practiced no real oversight since Bush's election in 2000. Congress refused to allow a vote on a 2003 bill that would have established an independent commission to investigate the lies the administration told to push the $340 billion war in Iraq. The House also refused to hold hearings on whether the White House rigged evidence of the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis.—nervous that his buddy Bush was about to look like an idiot or a liar—refused to allow 50 Democrats to hold hearings on the infamous Downing Street Memo that suggested that Washington had "fixed" intelligence leading up to the Iraq war.

Not that Republicans are incapable of scrutinizing, of course. During the Clinton years, the Republican Congress issued more than 1,000 subpoenas against then-President Bill Clinton, on everything from campaign favors to party invitations, but during the golden age of the Bush administration, the Republican Congress issued absolutely no subpoenas at all.

Not one.

"You might expect investigations into the intelligence leading up to Iraq, and our plan once we got to Iraq," Grigsby said. "Obviously, there will be some investigations that the Democrats may want to look at, but I think what we'll really be looking for is oversight. After all, that's the responsibility of Congress. They'll only be doing their job, something the Republicans should've been doing for six years."

Previous Comments

ID

66983

Comment

Without reading the article yet, it would mean pulling off and burning a pair of old, ugly, dirty, and funky pair of shoes with too many holes in them, and replacing them with a new pair that fitted and worked properly. Then we could get some serious work done for the people of this country. And in the process we just might make the Capital once again a safe place where boy pages could work in peace without having representative Foley trying to feel on their behinds and set up dates while the speaker turns a blind eye and death ear. Then maybe we could reinstitute the draft just to send Bush, Cheney, the speake of the house, and little-boy-loving Foley to Iraq to help us out over there.

Author

Ray Carter

Date

2006-11-01T18:27:56-06:00

ID

66984

Comment

Good article Adam. I finally read it. What lucid individual could still vote republican? "Ladies and gentlemen it's not what your country can do for you. It's whether you have the balls and boobs to throw or shelve this trash back into the abyss it came from." Jimmy Eastland.

Author

Ray Carter

Date

2006-11-02T14:25:44-06:00