The pundits have already said much. The Democrats lost because they offered no alternatives; because they were seen as the party of obstruction; because the American public has finally figured out they are both wrong and immoral -- the reasons are as varied as the commentators.
The general wisdom is that George Bush was able to turn his personal popularity into a political win for his party's candidates. The most thoughtful analyses I have read, however, point to the source of that popularity, the war on terror. Like the war on poverty, and the "moral equivalent of war" of the energy crisis of the late 1970s, this war has an ill-defined enemy, an essentially unreachable goal, and no clearly-defined end.
The war on terror, however, has a power the other two didn't have. American blood was shed: unexpectedly, senselessly, and in an attack of incomprehensible boldness and savagery. Americans have experienced, briefly, something many of the world's other peoples experience regularly: fear of an "unprovoked" attack that breaches long-established barriers. The sound we heard on Tuesday, November 5, 2002 was not the sound of confident voters expressing carefully-reasoned choices, it was a colletive quaking in the voters' boots.
I could comment for hours on the source of our society's penchant for violence. That a culture which has endured such a shocking act of terror should think that responding in kind, only with a far more sophisticated and accurate technology, would solve anything speaks volumes about the failure of evolution to bring real civilization to life.
"But evolution got us this far," I hear someone argue. "We have advanced from the barbarism and ignorance of the middle ages." I have my doubts. That's an assumption based on the belief that there's nothing else to explain the origin of life. But if one understands the mechanisms of evolution, one begins to see that those advances, associated with the Renissance, the industrial revolution, the Protestant Reformation (rebellion), and other political and social forces, could not have been caused by evolution.
Playing to a society's fears, however, begs evolution to take over and to lead us backwards toward many of the social realities of the dark ages. Bush and company have been rapidly taking down the walls of protection that were built up over years of American political development. We are, today, less civilized, less generous, less aware of the real concerns and conditions of the rest of the world, more suspicious of our neighbors, more intolerant, and more angry.
It's not like Democrats don't understand the power of fear in this post 9-11 nation. They voted with the President on war in Iraq. But, as Republicans like to point out, some of those Democrats who voted with the President lost their reelection bids. They may have voted with him, but as a party they had the temerity to question what Mr. Bush was doing. That's an extremely important function in our system of government. But to an electorate galvanized by its fears it was unconscionable.
Other commentators wanted to make this election about the shallowest of moral issues, sexuality. They keep pointing to William Jefferson's infidelities to suggest that Democrats in general are immoral. (This, of course, ignores the fact that on more important moral issues Mr. Clinton's well worn shoe soles stood higher than George Bush, and that doesn't put Mr. Clinton very high.) They note that the only incumbent Republican senator to lose a relection bid was someone who got a divorce to marry a political aide.
People who think that didn't live here in Arkansas. Not ONCE did that matter become part of the debate. Tim Hutchinson did not just throw mud -- he unleashed machinery to pelt fusillades of the foulest muck toward just about anyone he believed might be his enemy. The ban on "soft" money that goes into effect after this election had the parties scrambling to spend all the cash they'd skimmed from a struggling economy before they had to give it back. Mr. Pryor responded by misrepresenting Hutchinson's voting record, but at least he had a few facts in his return volley.
The Republican gains weren't that spectacular. The "swing" from 2000 may have involved as little as one percent of the voters. And the low turnout in most venues suggests that the 2002 election may be as much about voter disillusionment with the process as about any ideological matters. And what will happen to fix it?
Recent opinion and analysis articles point out that the current enforcement agency, the Federal Election Commission, is primarily a tool of Congress. As I write this an unusually large two percent of the senate is neither Republican nor Democrat. So the function of this agency is not to enforce the law, but to protect the interests of the two major parties. So expect the commission to find or make a loophole that allows the dollars to flow again.
That is, in my opinion, the most obscene feature of this election. The economy is, by all accounts, struggling and possibly even slipping. Joblessness has climbed (that's a whole other article or twenty) and millions of families are feeling the pinch. And what does the "pro-family" party do about it? They spend a record amount of money trying to get reelected.
Doesn't that spur the economy? Let's examine that for a moment. Who gets most of the money the parties spent this fall? Broadcasting companies, and there's a lot fewer of them today than there were even ten years ago. What will these companies do with this largesse? Will they hire more reporters to give us a more accurate picture of the world around us? Will they hire ANYBODY? In today's environment, and with ever more sophisticated automation technology available, broadcasters are laying off, not hiring. So where will the money they got this fall go? Straight to the bottom line. In other words, out of the economy.
That the United States voter hasn't seen through what's happening is a tribute to the obfuscatory power of huge sums of money. For someone to assert that restricting the amount of money used in political speech upholds the first amendment is like taking the American flag, trampling it in the mud, ripping it to shreds, and eventually losing it, all the while crowing about the respect they're showing it.
Now about Iraq. Imagine that you're the citizen of a widely-reviled country. Your political leader came to power by questionable means and has maintained his hold on power by terrorizing the citizenry. He has scorned international weapons control resolutions and maintains a large arsenal of highly destructive munitions. Your country has already been the victim of an international military action to restrain your leader's territorial advances.
In response your leader has claimed the cover of national sovereignty and has pointedly refused to change his policies to accomodate those who attacked him. He has manipulated elections to make it look like the people of his country support him. And now the rest of the world has issued a new ultimatum. New attacks are likely. How do you feel?
You have just imagined yourself! How do you want the rest of the world to treat you? Are you big enough to treat them in the same way -- to live up to the ideals expressed by the man you claim is your religious leader?
Do I sound cynical? Do I make our political environment sound hopeless? Then I'm expressing my opinion. Our only hope is that the Republicans will succeed at taking control of the political agenda, that they'll institute their reforms so rapidly that only the dullest will fail to see the difference. Maybe the best thing the Democrats could do for the next two years is to sit back and let the Republicans weave their own noose.