MIDTERM ELECTIONS IN RETROSPECT

MIDTERM ELECTION DAY

The media saturated the public with the official analysis of the midterm election results and while they disagreed about the possible consequences they all agreed that the vote was heavily influenced by one defining issue – Iraq with honorable mention going to scandal and corruption.

I believed the outcome wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference because the choices that would succeed were limited to those who supported a war based on faulty intelligence or an outright lie and those who looked the other way. As such I had no intentions of participating

As far as I know there was no candidate mentioned by the media for any office in my area and I suspect throughout the states that was against the war before it began and now demands an opportunity to participate in resolving the crisis in Iraq. Indeed there was little or no coverage of the candidate who said we lived a way of life that required a new way of living and suggested that we begin this new way of living by becoming responsible for our actions as individuals and as a people hold our representatives accountable for theirs.

After the dust settled it occurred to me that I too was influenced by the war in Iraq when I found myself inside the both pulling the levers for the Socialist Worker and Green Party candidates that the mainstream press ignored with intent for fear of exposing the difference between the rhetoric of “we are a nation of laws” and the reality of “we are a nation of men” when the supreme law of the land is violated and the suspects aren’t even charged with the crime.

THE DAY AFTER

After all was said and done my suspicions were confirmed when the results of the midterm election reflected the numbers and percentages of winners and losers but only between Democrats and Republicans, no other party received recognition of its existence. Indeed I couldn’t even readily find any official tally which reflected the parties I voted for.

In Yova’s world we are living in a one-party state which gets its consent from a minority of the governed who have once again been conditioned to accept the existence of two major political parties with differing agendas when in fact they are but two factions of the same ruling class that represents the interests of financial wealth as evidenced by the 2.6 billion dollars spent on political advertising by the major political parties.

Indeed prior to 98 I wasn’t even registered to vote because I believed that to vote was to recognize the legitimacy of an illegitimate political system i.e. the one party state but the reason for my about face is a topic for another post yet to written. Sufficed to say that more than sixty percent of eligible voters decided to withhold their consent compels me to suspect our present government does have the consent of the majority of people that it governs. Could it be an indication that the real silent majority wants a new contract with government, one which will better for our future security?



ANALYSIS


While there were several different opinions provided by panels of political analysts the first one which caught my attention was that the Democrats won both Houses of Congress but the executive branch captured the headlines by announcing the resignation of Secretary of State Rumsfeld. The same Donald Rumsfeld who only a week ago was staying in the Bush Administration and while all the talking heads offered a variety of reasons and repercussions none dared to entertain the very strong possibility that had the Republicans won Rumsfeld would not have resigned.

Meanwhile explanations of why the Democrats won was reduced to an admonition by the press that they now had two years to do something positive or else find themselves out of office. For six years the party in power failed to uphold its oath to support the constitution by rubber stamping the violations of the same constitution by the executive branch and now the press is claiming that the party that won, the party that looked the other way now has but two years to fix what the other party broke for six years or else the party that lost in 06 will win in 08.


I waited for a rebuttal that mentioned it would be hardly reasonable to expect actions in two years to correct the actions based on the faulty intelligence of six years. The implication was that the public wanted bipartisan cooperation and they didn’t want the distractions of endless investigations or possible impeachment proceedings.

At the end of the day will the Democrats hold this Administration accountable for its faulty intelligence, its deceit and deception of Congress and the public, the scandal, the corruption, nor the violation of the Constitution of the United States or will the relationship between the people’s representatives and the executive branch be business as usual?


A PERSONAL REFLECTION


Only now do I realize that my vote was also influenced by the prevalence of scandal and corruption in Washington because the only major party candidate I did vote for was the Republican candidate, Warren Redlich, because he claimed that a fellow Republican, John Sweeney, symbolized the scandal and corruption that should not be permitted.

Although both men lost election in their districts I take comfort in the memory that John Sweeney was one of the neo-fascist Republican brown shirts that in 2000 demanded they “stop the recount” in Florida. He was in lock step with anything his president desired in violation of the Constitution.

And there is a measure of satisfaction as well knowing I voted for a man who lost to a do nothing Democrat who looked the other way. Indeed his current position would qualify as “cut and run Democrat” because he believes we gave Iraq a chance to have a new way of life, now it’s up to them to defend it and for us remove our troops from Iraq.