If Democrats are able to win control of either house of Congress on November 7, the Bush presidency will be severely constrained and there will be a radical shift in the balance of power in Washington.
After being reduced to hapless bystanders for years, Congressional Democrats would become relevant again in steering the direction of the nation’s domestic and foreign policy. They could checkmate the president’s agenda and force him to address their concerns about renewing Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, privatizing Social Security and packing the Supreme Court with right-wing judges.
We also would see true Congressional oversight of the executive branch, buttressed by a subpoena power that would force greater transparency and accountability from this highly partisan, secretive White House.
The prospect of a possible Democratic takeover of Congress in November makes the dead-heat election in Missouri for the U.S. Senate a high priority for both parties. Missouri is one of three states that Republicans have determined they must win, at all costs.
Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq and several shameful Republican scandals in Washington, D.C. have trumped other issues and made many Republican incumbents vulnerable in states usually considered a sure win for them. Since Republican strategists consider Missouri an absolutely must-win state (along with Tennessee and Virginia), they have initiated a ruthless, spare-no-expense, no-holds-barred campaign to save these Senate seats for Republicans so that the GOP may assure its continued control of Congress.
Despite his campaign’s recent avoidance of the president, incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent has been joined at the hip with Bush for the last four years. Ignoring his insider status as a Republican incumbent, Talent and his party are lavishing their huge financial resources to present the junior senator from Missouri as an agent of change, a candidate opposed somehow to the Republican-controlled Washington establishment, of which he has in fact been a most willing supplicant.
On both sides, there is uncertainty about who will show up at the polls on Nov. 7, in a mid-term election with no presidential race and several controversial proposed state constitutional amendments on the ballot, dealing with raising the minimum wage, protecting stem-cell research and taxing tobacco.
For African Americans – and the future course of this troubled nation – the importance of this race for the Senate in Missouri lies far beyond the personalities of the individual candidates. The ultimate outcome of the political struggle for control of the upper house of Congress hangs in the balance.