When it was clear during the course of Tuesday evening that Democrats had lost the House of Representatives, U.S. Rep. John Boehner took the stage as the Republican House Majority Leader. He wallowed in the GOP victory, claiming that America’s voice had been heard and the message to President Obama is to “change course.”
A disillusioned Democratic base could probably say the same thing to the president, but with a different meaning.
It was clear weeks out from the election that the enthusiasm of Democratic voters lagged way behind their Republican counterparts. The Democratic Party just doesn’t seem to understand that the further you move away from your platform and your core values, the further your base moves away from you.
Most Democrats moved even further from the platform and the base during the midterms, distancing themselves from President Obama and even the gains made in the first two years of the “change” administration. Very few Dems mentioned reforms they had won in health care, credit card regulation and student loans, to name a few. They couldn’t bring themselves to even whisper about the so-called end to the Iraqi war and the projected drawdown of military forces in Afghanistan. Their message and their thunder were hi-jacked by extremists in the Republican Party.
Of the 56 Democratic House seats lost, 49 were incumbents. Each race has its own particularities, but a loss is a loss. In Missouri, the Democratic Party decided to cut Robin Carnahan loose and dump those dollars into Harry Reid’s race. It was a signal for the Republican scavengers to come in for the kill. Everyone in Missouri knows if there’s going to be a sacrificial lamb, it will be a woman. Bye, bye, state Auditor Susan Montee.
The 2010 midterm elections made history in terms of the dollars candidates spent on trying to get in office – or, said in another way, trying to buy an office. California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman spent $142 million of her own money to win an office with annual salary of about $212,000. A conservative figure of $2 billion has been kicked around for the amount of monies spent on campaigning to be a public servant.
These midterm elections could mean some ugly changes for Americans who are not in the top five percent of income. A vote on the Bush tax cuts was put on hold until after the election, another stupid mistake by the Democrats. We should brace ourselves for a deeper recession, and attempts to cut spending may mean cutting services and programs for the poor and the working class.
A billionaire in Missouri decided that he didn’t like the city’s earning tax. Rex Sinquefield put up $10.7 million of his own money to run a massive media campaign to convince statewide Missouri voters that they should decide. In the end it was out-state voters who got to decide about what will happen with one-third of the revenue streams for the cities of Kansas City and St. Louis.
And since we are in the mode of letting voters decide and for the people sending messages, how will out-state legislators deal with the majority of St. Louis voters who want local control of their police department? Will they respect the wishes of 70 percent of our community who have already let it be known in many different ways that they want a police department that is not controlled by the governor – a department like every other department in the country except for Kansas City?
More messages were sent when Donna Jones received an astounding 40,000 votes to return her to the St. Louis school board. Former school board member Bill Haas was also elected to the board. Some think the message was sent to the St. Louis teachers union, which allegedly supported two other candidates because the elected board did not support Proposition S during the last election. Still others believe it is a resounding message to the State-appointed board that voters trust the elected board, a sentiment expressed in a survey conducted with parents by the Board of Education.
One can only speculate what lays ahead for the city and for the country, but one thing is for sure: it is no time to sit on our hands. It’s time to organize against corporate domination.