Will the Democrats squander their victory?

Democratic politicians, like Republican politicians, are delusional. I watched Democrat after Democrat walk to the podium to give an election speech claiming that the election was a great endorsement for “progressive” values. Read socialist for progressive and you’ll have a clearer picture.

One Democrat went on about how it is said that Washington, D.C. is often the “last place to know”. He then said that they got the message from the American loud and clear. They support progressive values.

Exactly where do they get these delusions. For weeks the American public has been quite candid in what was compelling them to vote. They were sick and tired of Bush most particularly over his disastrous foreign policy.

But voters said they were voting against Bush, not that they had some Damascus Road experience and had become soft socialists. Almost 60 percent of the voters are unhappy with King George. The reality is that don’t know who Nancy Pelosi is and they don’t care. They were just fed up with Bush.

Only about a third of the voters want troop levels in Iraq to stay the same or increase. Most want to begin the “cut and run” process that Bush kept saying the Democrats would support.

Ninety percent of voters who said they were sick of Iraq voted Democrat. Was this because they like the Democrats on Iraq? Not at all. Where are the Democrats on Iraq? They were quite quiet. It wasn’t as if they were promising to “cut and run”. The only politician saying Democrats would “cut and run” was Bush. But voters liked the sound of it. Bush probably got the Democrats a lot of votes every time he made that claim. Because voters weren’t hearing that from the Democrats.

And if it was not foreign policy it was Washington sleaze and corruption that angered voters. Again there is little love for the high tax, regulatory, Nannyism of the Democrats.

There were some issues never mentioned by voters going to the polls. You didn’t see them saying: “You know we aren’t taxed enough. We need higher taxes and more social welfare.” No doubt some on the extreme Left thought that way but the mainstream voter didn’t.

The fact remains that Republican promises (not delivery) are far closer to the American mainstream than any form of “progressivism” the Democrats have to offer. Republicans have outperformed Democrats at the polls for years because the Democrats are disconnected from the voters on economic issues. And if voters were not so unhappy with the inept, big government policies of Bush they would have kept voting Republican.

One man gave the Democrats such a victory and that man was George Bush. But the Democrats have only two more years of Bush. And for the next two years they can’t blame him for anything since he can’t do anything without their approval. By 2008 the anti-Bush groundswell will be over and voters will start asking the Democrats what they actually have to offer.

And if the Democrats offer up the twaddle they were dishing out in the victory speeches the large middle section of the American voters will return to the Democrats. There was no endorsement of “progressive values” or any such rot. There was merely an overriding desire to cut Bush down to size.

And if the Republicans have a hard-think and chuck out the lunatic theocrats and return to a Reaganesque type of program the shift to the Democrats will shift right back to the Republicans. If the Democrats want to keep this support they are going to have to do what Bush refused to do, move to the middle. Voter don’t want the religious right or the progressive left.