The American Congress Elections

The elections are over and as you have noticed, the Democrats have won or rather swept. Given the limited scope of the contest in US House elections, thanks to gerrymandering, I consider this a clean sweep. But let me take a step back and look at the two major US parties and dissect them a bit.

The Democratic Party has been always a strange coalition of North-Eastern intelligentsia, Southern conservatives and Pacific Coast Environmentalists-Liberal-libertarians. I come under the last branch.

The Republican Party has a more interesting philosophical “composition”. It is a stranger coalition of “Christian Religious Right”, “Nation-State Conservatives i.e. Tories” and “Free Market liberals” (or as some would say instead – State-Capitalists i.e. industry interests).

And the preceding years there was a tension between the Conservative wing and the Free Market wing over immigration. The Nation State Conservatives want a Strong State but was unwilling the pay for the Government – the result – runaway debt, badly managed Iraq war (war on the cheap becoming defeat)

Pundits from the left and the right have commented on this election and most agree that this was a major backlash against the Republican Party. But let us step back and check on what is to come.

The Bush Legacy – or rather the lack thereof

Bush needs (badly) a legacy to be left behind. For all the dance-drama to become a Winston Churchill II has failed. The Iraq war wont be won by the next two years (despite how loud the conservative blogs bark) and so Bush would be known as a President that led to a (very questionable) war that bled America like Vietnam. He has to find out another way to leave a good legacy behind (or a very bad one will remain) and he could get a interesting friend with the democrats.

The Democratic (non) Manifesto

The motley crew of democrats that won the elections there was a common underlying theme. Anti-Bush. This underlying abstraction may be translated into concretes that may be mutually exclusive. For example, the anger against Bush for his anti-gay efforts for a Dem from California may not be shared by one from Georgia.

Therein lies Ms Nancy Pelosi’s non-Manifesto. She knew whatever she says would be torn up by the Republican Machine. She knew that the Republicans are committing suicide and when one’s enemies are committing suicide one should get out of the way.

What made it a success was that each candidate worked in his constituency looking at the very problems of his region. So there was no national level position to the Republicans to attack!

What Next!

Now these are the real issues that I need the new government that needs to address asap.

• Iraq War: Some sort of a closure is required. Any sensible person would agree.

• Education: The United States currently lags way behind not only in education per se but also the drive of the students to take up higher education! It is the latter that needs to be addressed.

• A neoliberal attitude: Mr. Clinton went in for NAFTA. The congress must work towards integrating the resourceful “undocumented labor” and work not only towards a guest program but also a mechanism for labor movement in the NAFTA region!

• Fiscal conservatism: A need for balancing the budgets is the order of the day. If needed, taxes need to be raised. Deficit of today is the taxation of tomorrow. You may say that with increased GDP the deficit would be taken care of. The answer to that is if there were no deficits taxes could come down! In whatever way you look at it, you are asking your children to pay for your spending today. Now you may take an exception for capital outlays today but most of the deficit is coming from revenue expenditures

I kept the list short so that it is effective.