Hail the moderate president
Daniel Korski 1:56pm
The news is in: the next U.S president will be a moderate. Why? Because whoever is elected in November, the Democrats look set to increase their share of congressional seats and may even win enough seats in the Senate to overcome Republican attempts to block legislation.
Currently, Democrats have a 51-seat majority in the 100-member Senate. They would need 60 seats to end debate on legislation and send it to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote. All 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats will be up for election and Congress’ approval rating is currently quite low -- just 19 percent of those recently polled by Gallup/USA Today said they approve of Congress’ performance.
A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported 52 percent of Americans prefer Congress be controlled by Democrats, while 33 percent say they favour Republican control.
Twelve Democratic senators are going for re-election. The Republicans, however, are defending twenty-three seats, five senators are retiring, and many of the election battles look to be bare-knuckle fights. Known Republican senators, like Oregon’s Gordon Smith and Minnesota’s Norm Coleman are already struggling. Democrats, on the other hand, are likely to pick up Virginia and New Mexico.
But even if the Democrats come out on top, their congressional delegation will see its ranks swell with Jim Webb-style democrats; pro-life, pro-gun and pro-military. Take Bobby Bright, the mayor of Montgomery, the second largest city in Alabama. He is a Democrat running for the seat left open by the retirement of Republican Terry Everett.
In 2004, the district voted overwhelmingly for President Bush. But Mayor Bright calls himself “a conservative Christian candidate” and looks set to win. It probably helps that Mayor Bright is also a deacon at Montgomery's First Baptist Church.
There are many others like him. So while the party conventions force the two presidential candidates to emphasize their differences, in truth John McCain’s policy on Iraq and Barack Obama’s economic plan are likely to be counterbalanced by a legislature controlled by the Democratic Party, - but one which is more conservative than even the 110th Congress.
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Martin Adamson
September 2nd, 2008 2:52pmOr one which, for electoral purposes, has to pretend to be moderate. How sincere they are, and whether they will govern as moderates remains to be seen.
David Lindsay
September 2nd, 2008 6:35pmJim Webb is not pro-life, alas. However, it is true that in 2006, the Democrats gained in the Senate a majority of one in the person of that economically populist opponent of the Iraq War – and Ronald Reagan's culturally conservative old Navy Secretary.
This year, it is perfectly possible that Obama could just scrape in on the votes of those whites in South Carolina, where he will of course clean up among the large number of black voters, who vote the ticket that has on it Bob Conley, traditional Catholic (with all that that entails on life and family issues), Ron Paul activist (with all that that entails on trade, immigration and foreign policy), and Democratic candidate for United States Senator.
For that matter, the black votes for that same ticket, because it has Obama on it, also make it Conley's ticket to Capitol Hill.
Conley's moral views are in any case closer than Obama's to those of most African-Americans. And the black churches are key to getting out Obama's vote nationwide.
Who are the black churches? Baptists, Pentecostals, like-minded tendencies within other denominations, Catholics who don't like the Modern Rite because it sounds too much like how their white bosses and landlords speak whereas the Latin Mass didn't, and pockets of extremely traditional Anglo-Catholicism. The grandaddy of Civil Rights in Obama's own Chicago is Squire Lance, a very active member of Opus Dei.
All is far, far, far from lost.
Craig Strachan
September 2nd, 2008 9:01pm"Senator Al Franken". This is getting really silly, now.
Ian C
September 3rd, 2008 3:55pmWho are you kidding? A moderate Democratic President with a Democrat congress? The only time you get a moderate in the US is when Congress is controlled by the other party to the presidency - or when you have a sensible president.