A Note To The New Congressional Leadership

I'd like to take a moment to send a message to the forthcoming leaders of our newly-elected, democratic-led congress. They got to spread the victory party out for two days, thanks to the delayed VA-Senate result where it wasn't announced until today that Jim Webb had defeated George Allen and thus guaranteed the Democrats control of the senate, as well as the house.

Good for Webb, who needed a final-hours campaign blitz including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to achieve his eleventh-hour victory over the incumbent, Bush-supporting and apparent racist Allen. Good for you, democrats. Good for the country that in this day of cynicism and apathy that citizens turned out in strong numbers to make changes in their government through the democratic process. But allow me make this plea to our newly elected leaders:

Don't dance in the end zone.

You won the election. You made the team. But you haven't won anything, apart from the chance to fix what the republican congressional leadership has allowed our arrogant, childish and incurious President to screw up over the last six years. You're going to be charged with reprotecting the environment after disastrous rollbacks on big business regulations. You're going to be charged with balancing a budget that in recent years has recorded enormous deficit after enormous deficit. You need to fix medicare, protect social security from the conserva-hawks, which is all going to require you to convince the Prez to sign onto a rollback on tax cuts for people in the top one percent.

Many a GOP stalwart has said something over the last 24 hours to the effect of "the democrats didn't win, the republicans lost", and when one looks at the exit poll numbers showing such disdain toward President Bush, it's hard not to see that logic. And that's fine. It's up to you now, democrats, to prove that you can win the battles in the Capitol Building now that you've been elected. Fight hard, honorably and cleanly over the next two years and you'll enact enough change that it just might inspire the country to vote democratic again in 2008. Do otherwise, and you might just wipe away what little faith the people have left in their government.

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk just cannot stop talking about how this party and its leadership are inept and bankrupt of ideas. Time to go out there and prove them wrong.