After wandering in the political wilderness for over a decade, the Democrats have regained a taste of power. However, since the only way they regained a semblance of relevance was to run on a middle-of-the-road Republican platform, Nancy Pelosi has her work cut out for her. The only way she is going to be able to influence any significant legislation with her razor thin majority is to move towards the right herself.
Her new Democrat colleagues will immediately swell the ranks of the “Blue Dog” Democrats, not the Progressives.
Why would she move to the right, instead of the new Democrat congressmen moving left? Simple. Those new congressmen have to stand for reelection in just two years, and most were elected from districts where Republicans still retain a strong share of the electorate and will be resurgent with a presidential election on the line.
An analysis of voting records shows predominantly that the newly elected support President Bush more on the issue of Iraq than they do Nancy Pelosi. If the vote was a referendum on President Bush’s Iraq policy, President Bush won.
In fact, the howling left liberalism of Nancy Pelosi went into hiding in the campaigns of the new Democrat congressmen. Like Sherlock Holmes’ dog that didn’t bark, the new Democrats didn’t call for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. All Democrat bluster about impeaching President Bush went silent, even in rabid leftist strongholds like the San Francisco Bay Area. No National Health Plan proposals were dusted off.
In fact, the only thing new was how much Democrats other than incumbents sounded like Republicans.
Republicans will learn a valuable lesson from this mild spanking. They can get elected again if they start sounding like Republicans too.
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