The
Democrats were ROUTED on Election Night.
They DESERVED it and they NEEDED it. Progressives everywhere – myself included –
got the government we DESERVE. Mitch McConnell will be the Senate Majority Leader beginning in January
2015. The guy who has been Obstructionist-In-Chief
since the beginning of the Obama Administration will now control the strings in
the Upper Chamber of the United States
Congress. The guy who shut down any
governing at all in Washington for the last 6 years and THEN blamed President
Obama for not getting things done was rewarded for those efforts. Kudos to Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party. They were focused, stayed on
message and were able to nationalize these midterm elections. It was a text book successful political
strategy. Progressives should be
outraged over the fact that concerted obstruction was rewarded in these midterm
elections. They only have THEMSELVES
to blame. In what was a signature
election of this young century, progressives FUMBLED the
football. Progressives got what they
deserved: Republican control of the Senate.
I
am a DEDICATED
progressive. I believe in income
equality, a single payer national healthcare plan, equal opportunity for ALL
Americans, a woman’s right to choose and make her own reproductive decisions,
organized labor and quality public education.
I also believe that corporations, millionaires and billionaires should
pay their fair share of taxes and that corporations should be regulated and not
have free reign to do whatever they choose to do in order to drive profits. I am outraged by rampant voter suppression
legislation that has swept throughout the country in recent years and will only
worsen due to the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Speaking of
the SCOTUS,
I am repulsed by an activist Supreme Court as well as the unlimited money
corporations and the wealthy can contribute to political campaigns without
having to disclose their identities. All
of the things I and MILLIONS of other dedicated progressives support and believe in
were on the ballot in some form or another this Election Day. So WHY did the Republicans win? Because Democrats and progressives were too AFRAID
to win. From top to bottom – INCLUDING
President Obama – Democrats and progressives played not to LOSE instead of playing
to WIN. Too many Democrats avoided the president as
if he had contracted Ebola. Democrats basically DEMORALIZED their
base. By disowning the president, they
sent the signal to their base they no longer believed in and/or supported
President Obama. The progressive voting
bloc is just as complicit, if not more so.
For some inexplicable reason, progressives have the self-destructive
habit of acute voter apathy in not only midterm elections, but in local and
state elections, too. The message has
not been received that ALL elections count. This election should prove to hammer that
point home.
Question
to progressives: How did it feel to see those Republican victory speeches? How did it make you feel to hear all those
people celebrate the fact they now have the opportunity to enact a REGRESSIVE
agenda? Did it make you sick to your
stomach? Republicans certainly didn’t
win because of their mass appeal or because of new ideas. They won because all of their candidates ran against
President Obama – from local races on up.
Midterm elections are base elections and the Republicans campaigned to
their base. They obviously were
successful. The Democrat’s base stayed HOME. With so much at stake, a significant number
of progressives threw up their hands and sat this one out. It makes you wonder.
 |
| President Barack Obama |
Despite
overt obstruction, President Obama has racked up some legislative and policy
victories in the six years he’s been in office.
In the first months of his administration the workforce was losing
800,000 jobs a month and unemployment was above 10%. Since then, there has been FIFTY
FIVE straight months of positive job growth and the unemployment rate
is currently 5.9%. The Dow Jones was
listing in 2008 and now is at record levels.
The automobile industry, on the brink of distinction in 2008, is now
thriving. Homeowners all over America
were losing their homes to foreclosure in record numbers with no end in sight.
Today the housing market is in the middle of a renaissance. Last but certainly not least, 40 million
Americans who once didn’t have access to affordable healthcare now do as a
result of the Affordable Care Act. The country was engaged in two wars in the Middle East -
Iraq and Afghanistan
– and those military campaigns have either come to an end (Iraq) or scaled back
considerably (Afghanistan). The most
wanted man in the world since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden, was tracked down and killed
in a raid by Navy Seal Team 6 on his compound in Pakistan. President Obama ordered the CIA and the Secretary of Defense to find Bin Laden
and develop a plan to capture or kill him.
They delivered. Despite all that
success, Democrat candidates distanced themselves from the president. It was the political equivalent of pulling
the pin on a hand grenade and instead of throwing it, placing it squarely in
your front pocket. Not only did a couple
of the Democrats who ran for the Senate refused to say they even voted for the
president, they failed to realize their opponents were going to attach them to
President Obama at every turn ANYWAY. It was abhorrent political naiveté. The president doesn’t have clean hands,
either. His decision to delay using an Executive Action
on immigration reform until AFTER these midterm elections
backfired. It alienated the Latino
community. Now as a result of Republican
gains in the Senate and the House on Election Day, that option may not be politically
available. President Obama left bullets
in the gun. In an election so critical
to the final two years of his administration, the president was passive in this
election. In speaking with some pundits immediately
after the Republicans won enough seats to control the Senate, more than one
inferred that President Obama WANTED the Republicans to control
the Senate in his final two years. I can
see where that can be an advantage for the president (GOP control of the Senate would be great for President Obama) but I don’t buy it at
all that he wanted his party to lose control of the Senate.
 |
| Mitch McConnell delivering victory speech on Election Night |
Fret
none not, progressives. It is not all
gloom and doom. History was not on the side
of the Democrats, either. Midterm
elections historically are not favorable to the party who controls the White
House. The Republicans may have won the
battle, but they have a long way to go to win the war – the WAR
being winning the White House in 2016. In
his victory speech, Mitch McConnell took the position of a statesman. He indicated that he was willing to and wants
to work with the president and Democrats in order to get things done in
Washington. Considering he has spent the
last six years halting legislation, cabinet appointments and judicial
appointments by obstruction, it would be hard to blame President Obama and the
Democrats if they’re just a tad suspect of McConnell. We’ll see.
Mitch McConnell’s REAL battle will be within his own
chamber of Congress. There will be at
least three Republican Senators who will immediately start running for
president (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and
Marco Rubio) and one (Rob Portman) who is rumored to be considering a run. They will all have their personal agendas and
McConnell will be tasked with both trying to appease those agendas and at the
same time corralling those agendas. Ted
Cruz is absolutely toxic and he will be the biggest challenge. McConnell obstructed everything in sight in
order to become the majority leader and it will be more than ironic if his OWN
agenda is obstructed by someone of his own party who also happens to be in the
Senate. For the next two years
the Senate will be Must See TV.
Mitch
McConnell knows if he can’t control the Senate for the next two years, his
tenure as Senate Majority Leader will be short lived. He also knows that if he can’t control the
Senate, his party has NO chance of winning the White House
in 2016. This outreach the Republicans
are now espousing – reaching across the aisle, making an effort to appeal to
African-Americans, Latinos and women … “expanding their tent” – is BALDERDASH. They have no intention at all of doing those
things. They couldn’t do those things if
they WANTED
to because their base won’t let them.
Their base is angry, aggrieved and scared at the sight of the browning
of America. Their base is not about
inclusion and diversity. They want THEIR
country BACK. The country
belongs to THEM and the rest of us are INTERLOPERS.
Democrats
and progressives were AFRAID to win. Their actions – in this case, their INACTION
– demonstrated as much. They rolled
over. Whatever harsh legislation the
Republicans enact will strictly be on progressives.
Progressives
got what they deserved: Republican control of the Senate.
Peace,
peace.
Craig
Riggins
Email:
therigginsreport517@gmail.com
Facebook:
The Riggins Report
Twitter:
@CraigRiggins
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