Here in California, what looked like a potentially disastrous election might not turn out so badly after all. Recent polling gives Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer a good chance of being re-elected, should the GOTV go well. Today’s Field Poll shows Prop 23 trailing and Prop 25 leading, which is good, although Prop 19 is now trailing too, and nobody really knows what the fuck is happening with Prop 26.
There are still some downticket races that really matter, particularly the battle for Attorney General between Kamala Harris and the Karl Rove-backed right-winger Steve Cooley, a race Field yesterday found to be a dead heat.
But the most suspenseful race on Tuesday night will involve a member of Congress who will have no trouble getting re-elected from her district. Nancy Pelosi is the first Speaker of the House from California and the first female Speaker. But after just four years in the Speaker’s office, only two of which came with a Democratic president, she faces the loss of her majority on Tuesday. Nate Silver at 538 projects Republicans will gain 53 seats, enough to give them about a 20 seat majority.
Seats here in California are in play. Democrats face close races in CA-11, where Jerry McNerney may just barely hold off David Harmer; in CA-20, where Jim Costa faces a tough fight against Andy Vidak, and in CA-47 where Loretta Sanchez might finally have met her match in Van Tran. On the other hand, Dems have a real pickup opportunity in CA-3 with Ami Bera challenging Dan Lungren, and could also win a number of Southern California seats: CA-44 (Bill Hedrick challenging Ken Calvert), CA-45 (Steve Pougnet challenging Mary Bono Mack) and CA-48 (Beth Krom challenging John Campbell).
But it’s the worsening national picture that portends doom for Speaker Pelosi. Many of the seats won in 2006 and 2008 are poised to flip back to Republicans in states like Florida, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Combined with a nationwide enthusiasm gap (one that hasn’t appeared on the West Coast), it might be enough to cost Democrats their House majority.
Even if Democrats keep the Senate, however, Republican control of the House will be catastrophic for California’s future. Although Frank Rich believes a Republican House wouldn’t act as radical as it talks, I’m not so sanguine. The teabagger majority will demand massive cuts to important federal programs such as health care, education, and mass transportation. They might not get the 40% cut in spending they demand, but they’ll get quite a lot of the Hooverism they demand, and California will get the brunt of it.
Worse, new initiatives to create jobs will be stalled (not that the White House was doing much about it anyway) and unemployment will either remain steady or rise – as Robert Reich suggests, Republicans will want to keep unemployment as high as possible going into 2012 in order to defeat Obama. California, with 12% unemployment, will struggle to reduce it without federal help, worsening our already dire budget situation.
That’s all bad enough. What is truly unjust about this situation is that Speaker Pelosi did everything right. Under her leadership the past two years, the House of Representatives passed some very strong legislation that mostly fulfilled a progressive agenda. Some of the highlights of Speaker Pelosi’s accomplishments:
• Strong health care bill with a public option
• Cap-and-trade climate bill
• Blueprint for new transportation bill with $50 billion in high speed rail funding
• Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
• Decent (if not great) financial regulation bill
And Pelosi had been frequently calling for a second stimulus after it became apparent that the first one (itself stronger in the House than in the Senate) was failing to end the recession.
What happened to that ambitious agenda? It died in the US Senate, where Democrats like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln were enabled to sabotage and ultimately destroy the Democratic House majority by Harry Reid’s failed leadership. The White House also spent plenty of time sabotaging the House’s progressive agenda, either failing to stand up for its priorities in the Senate or by actively collaborating with the DINO bloc to undermine the House’s accomplishments.
President Obama and the Senate Democrats failed their party, failed their base, and failed their country. Yet it is Speaker Pelosi who may pay the price. It’s a monumental injustice, and a disaster that could derail this country for a generation.
If you live in a district where there is even a hint of an incumbent Democrat being in trouble, or even a possibility of a Democrat knocking off an incumbent Republican, we need you to get out there right now and help elect those Democrats. Speaker Pelosi deserves another 2 years to try and force the White House and the Senate to get things right – and the country deserves to be saved from the catastrophe that would be Speaker John Boehner.
What happened to that ambitious agenda? It died in the US Senate, where Democrats like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln were enabled to sabotage and ultimately destroy the Democratic House majority by Harry Reid’s failed leadership.
This is like blaming the Democrats for California budget/revenue problems. The Senate requires 60 votes for
pretty much everything (not quite 2/3rd’s, but close). The
only good thing is that Democrats can veto changes in the health care bill with only 40 Senators (in case we have President Palin in 2013).
I think it is emblematic of the Democratic Party’s troubles that impeachment and/or indictment of Republican officials of the previous administration for War Crimes was pre-emptively taken off the table. There was (and still is) a solid case for impeachment/indictment of Bush and many of his subordinates for War Crimes and related offenses. Torture is perhaps the easiest of the War Crimes charges to comprehend and prove. Starting a War of Aggression in Iraq is now rather simple to document.
Democrats needed to be strong and impeach/indict Bush and his cabal for their War Crimes. Failure to do so previously was weak and, frankly, unprincipled. It was downhill from there. Our present electoral disaster is proof of the pudding.
Many have documented the insults to the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party thrown out by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (and others) which split the Democratic Party into the “DFH” wing and the “Pro-appeasment of the Republicans” wing.
Why does anyone wonder why the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party is dissatisfied? Lack of enthusiasm is significantly responsible for the electoral disaster awaiting us in a few days.
“But the most suspenseful race on Tuesday night will involve a member of Congress who will have no trouble getting re-elected from her district.”
You sure about that? If Reid’s seat is on the line, she might not be much more safe than him.
“What is truly unjust about this situation is that Speaker Pelosi did everything right.”
Yeah, except for impeaching Bush, ending the wars, giving us universal health care, or even a public option, and prosecuting banksters, she did it all.
“It died in the US Senate, where Democrats like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln were enabled to sabotage and ultimately destroy the Democratic House majority by Harry Reid’s failed leadership.”
It’s nice to blame them, but it’s her job to demand more, isn’t it?
“The White House also spent plenty of time sabotaging the House’s progressive agenda, either failing to stand up for its priorities in the Senate or by actively collaborating with the DINO bloc to undermine the House’s accomplishments.”
The White House was trying to get something passed because the members of the House and Senate had their thumbs up their asses.
“President Obama and the Senate Democrats failed their party, failed their base, and failed their country. Yet it is Speaker Pelosi who may pay the price. It’s a monumental injustice,”
Why is it an injustice? She had four years to get it right, and yet she slacked off as badly as Bush during Katrina and 9/11. Newt was as unpopular as her by the end, and yet he actually got things done. And he didn’t have a super-majority. Why the hell should she be rewarded for lacking as much spine as Reid?
“Besides, she’s not the one who declared that “we’re not going to look backward” as he implemented or continued Bush’s core policies on national security and the war in Afghanistan.”
Yes, but she could’ve still defunded the war.
Joker: Even if Saddam lied, every expert on the Bush team who wasn’t bought by the military-industrial complex proved the WMD claim false. So the buck still stops with him.
will she hang on as minority leader? I think you made a good case that the deluge wasn’t of her doing for the most part(I would question the cap and trade vote without some assurance it could at least make it to the floor of the Senate—a number of House Dems will go down Tuesday in part because of that vote). I wish she would have put more resources into the no on 20 campaign–Dems will a number of seats in the new reapportionment is 20 passes.
Had she given into the impeachment crowd in the middle of an economic meltdown it would be an electoral diaster of epic proportions. She deserves 2 more years as speaker or minority leader.
You should be hoping that Reid holds on Tuesday as well—Dems need to control one branch for the subpoena power, block on regressive legislative and fiscal ploys pushed by a GOP House and control committee hearings.