Texas Debate

Last night I watched the entire debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both of them trotted out the names of great, late Texas Democrats with Barbara Jordan getting due respect from both candidates. But other than that, neither showed much more than some basic statistical knowledge of Texas and our challenges. This is a national-level debate and the senators wrapped our state’s struggles tidily into their national plans.

As such, neither won. Their national plans are so incredibly similar that even the candidates had trouble drawing distinctions. Where they do differ, on healthcare or foreign policy, it’s a matter of degree not type. These guys are not apples and oranges. They’re Mandarins and Clementines.

The Texas primary is going to be like all the other primaries. Voters will be choosing the candidates based on personal preference, not policy ideas. Now we just have to wait to see who the state likes more.

Democrats Headed for the Rocks

Now that the Super Tuesday delegate count is known, we can see how incredibly close the Democratic race actually is. Among pledged delegates, Obama leads Clinton 635 to 630. Among committed super-delegates, Clinton leads Obama 193 to 106, meaning Clinton has just 82 more delegates than Obama.

Let’s run some numbers. There are 4,049 total delegates, pledged and super, making the magic number 2,025. In the remaining primaries, there are 1,942 delegates still up for grabs. There are also another 543 super-delegates who have not stated a preference (a list of committed super-delegates is here).

Clinton needs 1,202 more delegates. Obama needs 1,283 more. For one of these candidates to secure the nomination without the super-delegates coming into play, one of them would need to win all the remaining primary delegates by a 2 to 1 margin. That’s 66%. Unless one of them is caught on a boat with Gary Hart, it’s just not going to happen.

This nomination will be decided by super-delegates who are free to change their votes however they please and are bound to no election results. You think the Republicans are at each other’s throats? Wait until every significant (and nearly every minor) Democratic official is forced to pick a side. The only hope that this will be worked out amicably is if one of these candidates manages to win something near 60% of the remaining primary delegates and the other concedes for the good of the party.

But if they keep splitting elections 50/50, neither is going to step aside for the other. That will not be pretty and the Democrats will be unable to avoid the perception that the nomination was decided in some smoke-filled back room. With all the favors the Clintons could call in, you have to like Hillary’s chances. Of course, Obama has the Kennedys behind him and that family could call in a few favors (and wring a few arms) as well.

Super-delegates were created to avoid the turmoil of a brokered convention. Instead, they could very well cause a broken convention. Democratic leaders need to figure out a plan right now to avoid the potential disaster ahead.

55,000 Votes Separate Clinton from Obama

That's out of 14.6 million votes cast nationally yesterday. A 0.4% advantage for Clinton.

Wow. Heading into the fourth quarter, it's a tie game. Will the Big Mo keep swinging Obama's way or, now that he's so close, will the Clinton supporters rally? Only time will tell.

The Future of Both Parties Rides on This Election

Anyone else excited about watching the election returns tonight? This has been the best primary season in a generation, offering some very interesting candidates and two parties in complete flux. The Republicans thought they knew who they were but after the very curious presidency of George W. Bush, their coalition has shattered. The Democrats, meanwhile, have been in the weeds since Bill Clinton left office. Their recent takeover of Congress was as much due to Republican forfeiture as Democratic strength, so they too are struggling to define themselves.

On both sides we have candidates who are desperately trying to cling onto the old coalitions, hoping they can scotch tape their parties together just long enough for another spin in the Oval Office. Both sides also have transcendent candidates who are explicitly (McCain) or implicitly (Obama) rejecting their party’s status quo. In appropriate fashion, the conservative is trying to pull his party back to the traditional values of pre movement conservativism – it’s the restoration of the Eisenhower/Nixon wing. The liberal is trying to catapult his party forward into a new era, attempting to give modern liberalism the champion it’s never had.

How this election turns out will dramatically affect each party. Here’s how I see how these four potential presidencies would impact their respective parties.

If Hillary Clinton wins, the Democrats will stay on their current course, not a movement of ideas but a force of institutional might. The diverse special interests which make up the Democratic party will each continue to get their piece of the federal pie and voters will continue to see Democrats as a party that talks big but acts small, more concerned with appeasement than action.

If Barack Obama wins, the Democrats will evolve into a movement party with the tenants of contemporary liberalism eagerly pursued much in the way Reagan pursued his vision of conservativism. This is actually the worst-case-scenario for movement conservatives as Obama will not just win votes but will change minds. It’s not that he’s a centrist, it’s that he could pull the entire center of American politics leftward. That is the potential power of his personality.

If Mitt Romney wins, the Republicans would stagger on as is, gasping out the last breaths of movement conservativism. Unfortunately for Republicans, a Romney presidency would give the party a false sense of security much like the Democrats had under Bill Clinton. They will not reinvigorate, will not reclaim Congress and they will not be in the majority again for quite awhile. Romney may say all the right things, but he is not a child of the conservative movement. He’s just one of its last followers. His presidency would delay the necessary reckoning.

If John McCain wins, the Republican party is done as we know it. The old guard will have a small resurgence but traditional conservativism was never a majority belief system and the Republicans will not want to become the permanent and loyal opposition once again. Instead, I see them reaching either towards a revived small government libertarianism (the Ron Paul direction) or a big government social conservativism (the Mike Huckabee direction). President McCain would be like Senator McCain, a maverick unattached to a movement, leaving his party to figure out for itself which direction it wants to go next.

Interestingly, I think if the Republicans lose this election (no matter who is the nominee), they will have their much-needed reckoning and come out stronger for it, perhaps even shedding the baggage that has ruined movement conservativism as exemplified by Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. If the Democrats lose, it really matters who the nominee is. If it’s Clinton, her loss would just guarantee Obama as the nominee in 2012. If Obama loses, the Democrats are screwed. They have no one even close to Obama in likability or ability to articulate the liberal agenda.

Today is big. Super big. The futures of two parties are riding on the outcomes.

A Little Political Truth

“Of all the strategic errors that all of the campaigns have made this cycle, Romney's effort to appeal to all the individual factions of the GOP may have been the biggest.”

That’s from a great article from Dean Barnett of The Weekly Standard. The truth is fun. Read these other quotes:

On Republicans…

[T]he link between all the current Republican party-approved issues is tenuous if indeed it exists at all. If you favor a muscular approach in the war against Radical Islam, do you necessarily contradict your support for the war if you favor gay marriage? The same question holds for lower taxes and environmentalism. While many of these issues have become part of the tribal warfare that separates the two parties, it's impossible to identify a coherent philosophy that demands a voter adopt all the Republican orthodoxies.

On John McCain…

Right now, it looks like we have a party composed of members who pick and choose from a menu of Republican positions that have no logical reason for co-existing with one another. How else do we explain John McCain's success?

And on the Democrats…

The Democratic party has long been a multi-member marriage of convenience. The only thing that truly unites its disparate members is their disdain for the Republican party. The preceding, by the way, is one of the reasons Barack Obama has a chance to be such a transformative figure--he's the first Democratic politician in well over a generation to offer a sweeping (though vague) vision that offers anything more than a bunch of little schemes to rip off a piece of the federal government's carcass to give to each member of the coalition.

We don’t have parties anymore. We have two political buffets and we get to choose at which we’d rather eat.

Obama Clobbers Clinton

Barack Obama didn't just win South Carolina, he dominated the election, pulling in twice the votes of Hillary Clinton. The Clintons will not be able to spin this easily. Hillary lost hard and Obama did more than enough to prove his continued viability.

Now we head into Super Tuesday. Expect things to get even nastier -- but don't expect anything to be settled February 5th. This one is going to drag on for awhile yet.

Gloves Come Off in Democratic Debate

Did you see tonight's Democratic debate or at least catch the video clips (coverage here)? Obama changed the whining tone I noted earlier today into a very combative tone. Clinton responded with her own ferocity.

The result? It's all in the eye of the beholder. If you think Hillary is a lie-a-minute dirty politician, then Obama gave her a well-deserved lashing. If you think Obama is a snake oil salesman, then Clinton undressed him. For voters who are undecided, I guess John Edwards came out looking best as he stayed above the fray.

From my vantage point, Obama helped himself. I thought he appeared tough without seeming petty. But, then again, I'm no Hillary fan. What I do know is Democrats are going to have a lot of patching up to do at the convention.

Too Much Symbolism, Not Enough Statesmanship

The Democrats have passed their Iraq withdrawal bill. Next step: a presidential veto.

Symbolically, the bill achieves the important goal of proving the Democrats are serious about ending our military involvement in Iraq. But symbolism is just a political tool. Real change requires statesmanship and there’s far too little of that quality in either Congress or the White House.

Neither side seems willing to admit the other side has truth to speak. The White House seems incapable of advancing anything other than militaristic solutions and the Democrats seem incapable of recognizing that quick withdrawal is a reckless gambit that would very likely end in horrible Iraqi bloodshed and the need for a future intervention.

Just once I would love to hear a leading Democrat say “Bush is right that Iraq’s stability is essential to our national security. But his solutions are misguided and have served to exacerbate the problems we face. We must demand a change of course.” Someone eloquent like Barack Obama could even point out that we have a moral responsibility to not abandon the Iraqis to the blood-thirst of terrorist outsiders and vengeful sectarians.

Yet the Democrats choose the easy path of “withdrawal, withdrawal, withdrawal.” That may play well amongst the rabid base and vapid press, but it makes for poor statesmanship.

Democrat's Plan Won't Bring Stability to Iraq

Senate Democrats are looking for citizens to sign a petition in support of their Iraq plan. The petition says this:

Become a Citizen Copsonsor of the Joint Resolution introduced by Senators Reid, Durbin, Schumer, Murray, Levin, Bayh and Feingold calling for the President to bring stability to Iraq by beginning a phased redeployment of U.S. forces in 120 days with the goal of redeploying most combat forces by the end of March 2008.

I can understand those who believe our presence will never stabilize Iraq so it is better to remove our armed forces from harm’s way. I can even understand the morally vacant argument that the Iraqis are not worth any more of our time, money or blood. But I simply cannot understand how anyone of intelligence can believe the rationale put forth in this Democratic petition.

We are going to withdrawal to bring stability to Iraq? As if the only thing causing the bloodshed is our presence? Democrats, who embrace the notion that Iraq is in a civil war, know damn well that the sectarian conflicts engulfing that nation will not stop the moment American troops leave. In fact, those conflicts will most likely escalate into a true civil war.

Stability might occur after our withdrawal – but only when one side has brutalized the other sides into submission. By positioning support for redeployment as an attempt to stabilize Iraq, Senate Democrats are being patently dishonest. If these Democrats are truly interested in Iraq’s stability, they should propose a plan that might have a chance of achieving such a goal.

Cries of Hypocrisy

I’ve noticed an interesting new line of attack against Democrats. Populist hypocrisy – the idea that it is disingenuous for politicians like Al Gore, John Edwards and Nancy Pelosi to ask for sacrifices from the rest of us while respectively running up huge electric bills, building massive mansions and requesting private jets. It doesn’t matter that all three cases are not nearly as cut-and-dry as the headlines make them seem. What matters is the perception of hypocrisy.

This is an interesting line of attack. After all, two of the Democrats greatest and most effective champions of the poor, Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy, were filthy rich. Were they hypocrites because they feasted while worrying about those going hungry?

Here’s where rightwing critics miss the point: Democrats hardly ever ask us to personally sacrifice. What they ask us to do is support government-based solutions. Yes, personal initiative is welcome (particularly in Gore’s cures for climate crisis) but, ultimately, all they’re asking is that we elect leaders who will marshal the power of government to address liberal concerns. Eventually we’ll have to pay higher taxes (particularly if we’re wealthy) but that’s a down-the-road matter.

The Republicans are the ones that generally demand personal initiative – whether it’s staying chaste before marriage or pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps without government assistance. A Republican politician who, for unfathomable reasons, was on welfare while cutting funds to that program would be a hypocrite. But a Democrat who lives in a mansion while increasing welfare spending is not.

The Democrats err not in failing to abandon privilege but in failing to look outside government power for solutions. John Edwards supports more government programs for the poor. But what if he instead supported living humbly and giving excess wealth to charity? Does not earnest sacrifice trump a willingness to pay higher taxes?

Morally, yes. But practically? Could we really be economically successful if we gave up the very-American desire to accumulate and then spend wealth? It’s vastly more realistic to just tax the hell out of ourselves than it is to expect each individual to willingly surrender wealth, however noble the cause. Unfortunately, most Democrats don’t even try to develop solutions based on individual initiative. They go right for the Big Government Spending Program.

But that’s another topic. In the case of Republicans labeling Democrats hypocrites, the tactic will fail simply because Republican politicians are just as ungodly rich and privileged as Democratic ones. As far as I’m concerned, what policies our leaders support matters much more than how they choose to live.

Even After Win, Purge Attempts Continue

The Washington Post has a very interesting article on how the leftwing of the Democrats are continuing to attack moderate party members in an effort to purify the party. The article focuses on the left’s campaign to take out California representative Ellen Tauscher, head of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

Never mind that the New Democrats increased from 47 to 60 congressional members after last year’s election. The leftists in the party not only believe they are the future, they believe the future has no room for would-be allies who don’t march in lockstep.

As far as I’m concerned, the current appeal of the Democrats is their diversity of opinion. Too often the Republicans seem like some bizarre collective consciousness—groupthink masquerading as ideology. I’d hate to see Democrats go the same way. But, apparently, that’s exactly where the leftists are trying to take the party.

Support the Troops, Oppose the Mission? Democrats Need New Tactic.

The Wall Street Journal blasts Congress for the non-binding resolution opposing the Iraq troop surge. The Journal’s opinion is pretty straight-forward:

1) The resolution emboldens the enemy by signaling that the U.S. Congress expects defeat.

2) It’s a cowardly move to rhetorically oppose the mission but effectively do nothing to stop the surge.

The most convincing argument:

[I]f Congress feels so strongly about the troops, it arguably has the power to start removing them from harm's way by voting to cut off the funds they need to operate in Iraq. But that would make Congress responsible for what followed--whether those consequences are Americans killed in retreat, or ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, or the toppling of the elected Maliki government by radical Shiite or military forces. The one result Congress fears above all is being accountable.

We aren't prone to quoting the young John Kerry, but this week's vote reminds us of the comment the antiwar veteran told another cut-and-run Congress in the early 1970s: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The difference this time is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha expect men and women to keep dying for something they say is a mistake but also don't have the political courage to help end.

This is where the Democrat’s “support the troops, not the war” position reveals its true emptiness. It’s always been impossible to support the troops without also supporting their mission. You may fervently pray for the troops’ safety and wish for their speedy return but that is not support. That is compassion. Support requires a commitment to the mission and an expectation of success.

It’s ok to be compassionate but not offer support, but Democrats won’t say as much because they’re afraid of being labeled weak on defense. So now, when the moment has come to make a real impact on this war, the Dems are paralyzed. Withdrawing funds certainly indicates a lack of support for the troops. But saying nothing about the surge indicates a lack of opposition to the mission.

The result is the impotent non-binding resolution … an official scolding that does nothing to deter Bush. Does it also embolden the enemy? That sounds to me like political posturing, a tired accusation pro-war sides always fling at the anti-war side. In reality, our failure to effectively combat the insurgents/terrorists/sectarian evildoers has done far more to embolden the enemy than will this resolution.

But that doesn’t make the resolution any less of a bad idea. If Democrats believe we are destined for failure, they need to pull the plug and take responsibility for the fallout. If they think we can still secure some form of victory, they need to allow the military and the Commander-in-Chief to do what they think is necessary to win – or, at the very least, if Democrats “support the troops,” they need to propose alternatives that don’t involve a total retreat and abandonment of all facets of the mission.

Personally, I think the surge is the wrong tactic. But I’m not resigned to defeat so I support this last attempt to secure some form of victory. I wish the President had chosen a different path but I am not yet prepared to move into the anti-war camp.

The question now is, when will the Democrats be ready to be anti-war? Their support the troops, oppose the mission philosophy is just an excuse for refusing to take responsibility. They’re trying to split the middle on an issue that has no middle. Now’s the time to either cut off funds or stop declaring American defeat.

Hey Dems, How About Fixing Healthcare?

I’m constantly amazed that healthcare is not a bigger issue in American politics. I simply can’t think of any area of American domestic policy that’s more screwed up. A personal experience illustrates this fact.

Last Fall my wife left her fulltime job to become a private contractor. Her new job has no benefits. I’m a freelance writer, so I have no benefits either. As such, we’ve been on COBRA and, to keep our old healthcare plan, we’ve been paying an amount that’s higher than any other monthly bill save our mortgage. Higher than our food costs. Higher than all our utilities combined. Higher than our two car payments combined.

And this is not a fancy plan. The deductible is high and, after that, the plan pays only 80% of in-network costs. We could get a cheaper plan but, as we have learned, only two insurance companies will insure for maternity in Texas. If you want to have a baby in Texas and have the costs covered, you have to pay a huge monthly premium.

I shouldn’t say “have the costs covered.” I should say, have a few costs covered. After the birth of my daughter, we owe various providers thousands of dollars. Those charges cover our 20%. But here’s the infuriating part: because of special contract agreements insurers have with the hospital plus the deductible costs we’ve paid, our insurance company will end up paying LESS than we will for the labor, delivery and post-natal care of my daughter.

Now, we’re going to be just fine. We’re financially secure. But it is a burden and one that’s requiring us to be pretty frugal for awhile. I can’t imagine how anyone in worse financial shape can afford health insurance if they don’t have a job with benefits.

I understand that it’s not cheap to provide health care. What I don’t understand is why politicians continue to offer band-aid solutions when something far more radical is needed. My personal experience is just one minor example of a healthcare system completely out-of-sync with modern American needs. Tens of thousands of other examples paint and even drearier picture.

Those who say there’s a free-market solution misunderstand that the entire system operates outside of anything resembling the free market. Thousands of regulations and rules are in effect from the municipal level all the way to the federal level. Furthermore, most healthcare is not a consumer good and cannot be expected to respond rationally to the usual free-market forces. There is no escaping that this is a problem for government policy to solve – as much as I wish it were otherwise, we cannot free ourselves from the web of market complexities and government regulations without resorting to serious governmental intervention.

If the Democratic Congress really wants to help the working and middle-class American, they’d focus on healthcare. Sure, a minimum wage hike is a nice bit of feel-good legislation but the real vice-clamp on Americans is not our wages. It’s our health costs.

Murtha a Bad Choice for Majority Leader

Nancy Pelosi wants John Murtha as Majority Leader. That’s a bad idea. And The Washington Post agrees with me. You need to read the whole editorial in The Post, but here’s a rundown as to why Murtha is not fit to be Majority Leader:

1) He’s corrupt. Not just average Washington corrupt, but a really dirty guy. He’s against strong ethics and lobbying rules, is a leading abuser of earmarks and was an un-indicted part of Abscam, caught on tape admitting, if the situation is right, he can be bribed.

2) He’s too extreme on Iraq. As The Post notes: “Just last week he denied that the United States was fighting terrorism in Iraq, though al-Qaeda is known to play a major part in the insurgency. He said the United States should abandon even the effort to train the Iraqi army and should "redeploy as soon as practicable…"

The Democrats keep saying that the election was about angst over Iraq and about a desire for reform. When it comes to corruption, Murtha is only a smidge better than the uber-corrupt former Majority Leader Tom Delay. As for Iraq, America is looking for a reasonable solution not a complete and immediate abandonment of our responsibilities there.

Putting Murtha in a top position is not the way to keep centrists like myself rooting for the Democrats. And it's not a way to better govern this nation

How the Democrats Didn't Lose

To be sure, this election represented a complete Republican meltdown. The party which seemed robust and idea-driven just two years ago felt sick and empty this year. But give Democrats credit. Somehow, either by divine accident or brilliant strategy, they successfully minimized their many shortcomings while maximizing the failures of their opponents.

How’d they do it? I have a theory.

1) They used not having a coherent plan or vision to their advantage. They let each individual candidate win on his/her own merits while forcing the Republicans to run on the GOP’s record. So liberal Democrats ran as liberals in left-leaning areas and conservative Democrats ran as conservatives in right-leaning areas and no candidate had to worry about the national party laying out a distracting agenda.

2) They kept their leadership pretty quiet. Other than Kerry’s flub, the Democrats did a good job keeping Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, Howard Dean and other usually shrill leaders even-keeled and mainly out of the limelight. Some would say this is because the media gave them a pass but, even if that’s true, they were smart enough to know when not to be seen.

3) The out-of-touch but far-too-engaged leftwing netroots expended all their energy early on fighting Lieberman (and other Democrats like Texas Representative Henry Cuellar). Whether the early victory over Lieberman made them complacent or depleted their ability to make noise on a national level, the netroots did not make themselves nearly as big of a factor (or distraction) in this election as they did in 2004. Even publicity hounds Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore were strangely absent from the national spotlight during the last few months of the campaign. Without the leftwing running around and scaring voters away, the Democrats had an easier time of it.

4) They never formulated a real plan on Iraq. I criticized this up and down and back again. I said they are forfeiting their chance at victory because they have no Iraq plan and no greater vision on the War on Terror. But the thing is, plans can be critiqued and compared. A generically unclear but “different” plan actually holds an advantage over the specifically unclear current plan. Are Democrats going to ask for an immediate withdrawal? A phased withdrawal? A partition of Iraq? No one can really say – and that actually helped the Dems. They kept the focus on the need for change rather than on what that change would be.

If you told me two years ago that the Democrats would sweep back into power in 2006, I’d have suggested you seek professional help. Heck, if you’d told me six months ago that the Dems would succeed in retaking the House and Senate (most probably), I’d have rolled my eyes and laughed.

I didn’t think they could do it without a unified vision for America. I didn’t think they could do it so long as the leadership positions were held by devoted liberals. I simply didn’t think they could connect with middle America. Obviously I was wrong. I underestimated how fast and how total the Republican collapse would be. But I also underestimated the Democrats ability to run a deceptively disciplined campaign.

Well done, Democrats. Now don’t screw it up

Democrats Actually Win ... And Win Big

After live blogging at Donklephant the entire night, I’m going to bed. But sense I won’t be able to post much tomorrow (lots of work + little sleep are likely to create problems for me), I wanted to offer just a few thoughts.

Democrats have definitely won the House and it looks likely that they will take the Senate as well (although that could change before I awake as Montana is tightening at this late hour). This election is unmistakably a major rejection of Republican rule. But that doesn’t mean it’s a major vote in favor of Democratic rule. I don’t think Americans will have much patience for any sort of radical agenda.

What happens next will be interesting. Democrats are bringing in a lot of centrist-leaning members. The party will have to incorporate a lot more views than the liberal base would prefer. If the Dems integrate all the centrists successfully and move the party toward the middle, they’ll be in a good position to keep control of Congress in 2008. If they don’t, their rule will be fleeting.

I’m pleased with the results of the night. Yet I worry. If the Democrats cannot get their act together on Iraq and national security in general, the nation is in trouble. I have faith that things will turn out far better than the shrill voices on the right would have us believe. But it’s going to be an interesting two years. The Democratic class of 2006 has a lot more pressing and serious issues before it than did the Republican class of 1994.

Much more when I have time to write more.

Don't Believe the Fear

Acclaimed science fiction writer Orson Scott Card is known for his novels that delve into the complex moral judgments of war. So I was not surprised to find he’d written an essay on our current war. The whole essay is worth the read, but I'm going to focus on how he opens:

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

That is very similar to the opinion I would have written had I not come down on the Democratic side in this election. But I didn’t write that opinion because I think it’s ultimately flawed.

A victory for the Democrats is not a victory for our enemies. While it’s true that many Democrats want us out of Iraq regardless of the consequences, I know of no prominent Democrat who wants us to simply roll over to the terrorists. That is doubly true for the many centrist-leading Democratic candidates who are poised to win their elections.

I understand Mr. Card’s worries. But he is wrong to think there is no chance for victory in this war should the Democrats win. The balance of power will be such that Democrats can’t lead a full-scale withdrawal out of Iraq even if they wanted to. But they can push the President to adopt new tactics and new strategies that a Republican Congress would be reluctant to request. I wouldn’t vote (and didn’t vote) for pure “we gotta get out now” Democrats. But there are enough intelligent Democrats running that I believe we can trust the party just enough to give them power for the next two years.

In my way of thinking, it’s essential to give the Democrats majority status so that we can discover once-and-for-all whether or not they can be trusted on national security matters. If they are as dangerous as Card and others believe, then President Bush provides the perfect stopgap. That gives us the opportunity to safely (or relatively safely) discover who the modern Democrats really are before we elect our next President.

The Republican Congress isn’t getting it done. They’ve botched things too much for anyone to feel comfortable with letting them continue at this time. The Democrats may be worse. But we don’t really know that until we give them a shot. People like Card should stop buying into the fears propagated by the right and begin viewing these next two years as the perfect chance to audition the Democrats.

Democrats Get Right With God

A number of Democrats running in this election are openly discussing their faith and reaching out to religious voters. Now, I’m sure some would say this is a ploy engineered by conniving secular Democrats trying to steal votes from the Republicans. But, in reality, you can’t fake faith. This is, I believe, another sign that the Democratic party is changing for the better.

Religion is an important part of American life. You can argue it shouldn’t be that way but you can’t deny our nation’s strong spiritual core. Over the past few decades, Democrats have moved slowly away from that core. The reasons for this are varied but the consequence is clear: party leaders are no longer able to fluidly speak in the language of hope.

Follow me here…

Most religious Americans believe in a religion of hope. Call it naïve or willfully ignorant, but most religious Americans hold it as a matter of faith that our best days are ahead, assuming we do what’s right. And “what’s right” is a matter not just of policy but of morality—a morality informed through religious texts.

When you remove the religious undertones and touchstones from political rhetoric, you remove the spirit of hope. I’m not talking about quoting the Bible. I’m talking about being able to speak in a manner that interweaves politics with the themes, wonders and moralities of faith. Bill Clinton can do it. Barack Obama can do it. But most Democrats can not.

Democrats, for the most part, offer a secular hope of plans and policies and humanist justice. That’s all valid, but it lacks the sweep, the crescendo and the depth of religious oratory. Spiritual hope, on the other hand, offers something more. It offers vision and righteousness and divine justice. I’m sure secularists who view religion as an opiate or a mind control will find my preference for religious rhetoric to be worrisome if not down-right dangerous. But for the majority of Americans who are comfortable in their duel role as Christian and American (or Jew and American, or Muslim and American), spiritually rich political oratory is inspiring.

Over the last few decades, Republicans have pulled in voters by acknowledging the importance of faith and its moral impulses. Even though they have too often reached for the intolerant extremes of American Christianity, Republicans have still bested Democrats in their ability to speak in a way that resonates with the religious.

But Republicans have erred in focusing too specifically on social conservatism while ignoring other highly important religious tenants—specifically the call to help the least of us and not needlessly enrich oneself. In that arena, Democrats have the higher ground. Imagine if they had the right rhetoric to go with it? Imagine if Kerry, instead of droning on and on about “his plan” for this and that had been able to, like Dr. King, speak convincingly about his dreams?

There are those in the Democratic party who will cringe when they realize how many religious Democrats are running and winning this year. But the over-reliance on secularism has hurt the party. It’s good that some Democrats are trying to reverse that trend.