Democrats Take Congress

[Tenniru]

Results from the Senate are still pending and we don't know how large a win it is yet.

It is, however, a win. The Bush Adimistration is now lame-duck. The Democrats can block anything the Republicans do and they can engage in extreme oversight of the government. The Supreme Court can no longer be stacked.

I'm happy.


EDIT:

Allen conceded. The Democrats now have the Senate.

[王泥喜]

I personally won't be happy until the two-party system is entirely disbanded, but it's nice to see that the President finlally has foils now. HOPEFULLY this means we WON'T have any rash decisions being done.

[ϟ¶∀☡ⓩ]

"America is over."

[CrazyMrLēo]

Well, the Senate is still too close to call.

"The Democrats have only been in power for a few minutes and they've already gotten us stuck in an unwinnable war."

[tssznews]

Not so fast.

It's a banner night for the Dems in the House...but they don't have the senate yet, and I don't think they will capture it. I'm pretty sure AZ, VA, and TN are safe bets to stay red states, and actually they're now projecting the Maryland senate race to be too close (I should know, I made the graphic for it tonight and then halfway through I was asked to take the checkmark off of Ben Cardin.)

Congress can only override a presidential veto if 2/3rds of *both* the House and Senate vote to do so. The Dems only have a slim majority in Congress to do much of anything, and if the Senate holds Republican control...even if it gets to the 2/3rds in the House...not to mention some of those Dems retain some very strange stances (IE Pro-gun, pro-life, etc.)...

I know Democrats are celebrating, and they should...but I fear once the whole "referendum on the Iraq war" stuff starts fading off, all we're gonna see in Congress is deadlock. I'd much rather have one party control both houses, one way or the other, just so I know something's happening there.

-T

[CrazyMrLēo]

Oh, and as a counterpoint to the Democrat victory: South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Virginia passed amendments banning same sex marriage tonight. Score one (three?) for the conservatives.

[NeroKid]

Well, I think this is a good thing.

And that's the word.

[Epon]

What Tristan said, this only will result in bickering and such. Can anyone say Budget-Caused Governmental Shutdown in the near future ala DirtyJerzy this year? I can see something in the near future. :E

[GeckoYamori]

This system doesn't make any sense to me. Whenever there's a democrat president there's republican representatives, and then it's easy pickings for them in the next presidential election for the democrats' "failure to do anything".

[Squiggles the Chao]

I've got to disagree there. I'd much rather have the government tripping over itself than running boldly in the wrong direction.

Even so, while deadlocks do happen, I don't think the government will be tripping over itself, just changing direction. The republic can deal with a bit of inefficiency. This government is set up to include a system of checks and balances, not one party in control all the time. We've had mixed parties in the past, and the government has continued to function (I would argue better than in the last six years with one-party rule). We're not all going to die, and the government is not going to be in permanent deadlock if, God forbid, one house of the Congress is run by a different party than the Executive.

[Nik Jam]

The Democrats only need two seats now... Virginia and Montana and they have the leads in both. Looks like there will be some crow eatin'

[tssznews]

Well...

A lot of the media and a lot of Democrats are saying this is a referendum on the Iraq war, and I do agree that the operation and execution needs to be looked at very *very* closely.

However, national politics is a lot more than that. It's budgets, it's legislation, it's local issues, it's all of that. If all of the Democrats make the next two years about Iraq and nothing else, eventually voters are going to get sick of it when they realize not much else is being done.

I may have to retract some statements I made earlier in this thread...something went nuts on my way home from work and I have no idea why they asked me to fix the Maryland senate graphic.

If the Dems get both Congressional houses, that is a significant progress...especially considering the president hasn't vetoed very much in the past six years...but if he suddenly chose to do that across the board, it's not nearly enough for an override.

Let's also consider Joe Lieberman who was re-elected today by quite a margin as an independent...formerly a Democrat...but he does not speak much for the Democrats in this country.

As much as I don't like what the Republicans have done the past few years our president has been in office...they at least did stuff relatively quickly. I'd just hate to see what deadlock's gonna do to Congress...I am old enough to remember the federal government shutting down in the 1995-96 though that was after the Republican Revolution in '94...that was solely because Clinton and Newt couldn't agree to crap. I would not like that to happen again.

[Jet the Hawk]

TOUCHDOWN FOR DEMOCRACY!

[Sz]

I don't know, the "stacking of the Supreme Court" is the one thing I didn't mind from the Republican side, since they've ended up with some fairly decent choices, and all the potentially catastrophic technology rulings in the next few years need to be in as libertarian colored hands as we can get them in.

[Sofox]

Donald Rumsfeld resigned.

[Redrapper]

Bush admitted responsibility for Iraq.

Dems need one more seet... in VA... and that's fuckin CLOSE

[Keith T. Hemari]

Democrat, Republican....

It's nice to know we live in a nation where we can pick exactly who we want to rip us off. We've had our fill of crooked Republican Politics, now we're ready for some crooked Democratic Politics! God bless America, land of the Special Interest and home of the Commercial Infrastructure, where every citizen, regardless of race, creed, color or gender, has the right to have more than a fourth of their income taken from them and put into the pockets of wealthy government officials!

I hope for deadlock, that way neither party can have their own way and we might just have progress.

[Tenniru]

Current status:

Virginia is counted except for the last 8% of the Isle of Wight and the absentee ballots. The Democrat, Webb, has a nearly 8,000 vote lead. There aren't enough people in the uncounted vote to change that, and if Allen demands a recount (he can) it likely won't shift it that much either (and his advisors are hoping he won't).
I can't believe the Senate is balanced on my home state.

[Sz]

Keith: A deadlock by definition means a lack of progress, which is probably what we'll get. Better that than more Neo-cons running amok, though.

I for one am sick of turd sandwitch, and will enjoy the giant douche.

[Zebrasputnik]

keithhemari said:

I hope for deadlock, that way neither party can have their own way and we might just have progress.

My opinion on this is that we (I say we because this is the same in Europe as well) have two choices:

a) Think that this is the fault of "center-of" parties and never vote for them. Don't vote for a party just "so the other party doesn't win". Vote for small parties, and convince any close people who "vote so the other party doesn't win, but is more left-wing as said party" that they should vote for radical options (of course, this only applies to left-wing people -- the right-wing is already pretty extreme. You could say the mainstream right-wing in the Spanish state is the same as late Francoism minus the killings.)

b) Think that this is the fault of parliamentarism itself, and never vote at all, in hopes that massive abstention will crush the political system someday.