The recent mid-term elections have been cause for much celebration among American progressives. The Democrats have achieved a majority voting bloc in both the House and Senate. Most governorships are now blue as well. Meanwhile, the characterization of President Bush’s administration as a lame duck seems all the more accurate. Even better, the secretary of defense whom liberals love to hate — Donald Rumsfeld — has resigned. To die-hard Democrats, the job is over until 2008.
For six years, latterly with the backing of both houses of a markedly conservative Republican Congress, George Bush has led an American administration that has played an unprecedentedly negative and polarising role in the world's affairs.On Tuesday, in the midterm US congressional elections, American voters rebuffed Mr Bush in spectacular style and with both instant and lasting political consequences. By large numbers and across almost every state of the union, the voters defeated Republican candidates and put the opposition Democrats back in charge of the House of Representatives for the first time in a dozen years.
Here's the way to look at the Election Day outcome: If the U.S. were a parliamentary democracy, Bush would be history. Our self-proclaimed "war president" has lost a vote of confidence, not by the members of his party, but by the people of the United States.
The 2006 American elections have a truly global significance. They are taking place in conditions where the Bush administration and the entire US ruling elite is embroiled in a deep-going political crisis, precipitated by the disastrous consequences of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. As numerous books, articles and comment pieces—many of them echoing positions articulated within the American military—have made clear, the invasion of Iraq has been a fiasco. The underlying position of the various critics from within ruling circles is that it has weakened both the immediate and the long-term strategic position of the United States.
On November 7, 2006, American citizens will be engaged in an exhausting host of insane behaviors known as voting, despite the fact that the corporations and criminal operatives that have pre-scripted and stolen every election since 2000 for the George W. Bush machine remain untouched. Welcome back to hell, again.
The trend of ever greater spending for political campaigns continues in the USA. In California, over $500 million is being spent for the November 2006 election, a record high. In 2004, the candidates for president spent over $880.5 million, up 66 percent from the year 2000. The special interests who provide the money include corporations, farmers, lawyers, unions, and ideological organizations. Living in California, where there are 13 state propositions on the ballot, any time I turn on the television, political ads dominate the commercials. Many of the ads are misleading, exploiting the ignorance of the voters. It's a crazy way to enact policy.
