Election Fallout

Well, it becomes official sometime today that the Democrats have officially won both the House and Senate. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really change much. There will be a lot more gridlock and Bush will be using his veto a lot more in his final two years. About the only major thing is that since the Democrats have gained control of the Senate, Bush will not be able to push through any significantly conservative judges. In fact, if either Ginsburg or Stevens decides to retire in the next two years, the Democrats will all but force Bush to nominate a liberal justice to replace them. That won’t really change anything on the court, although I’m sure Bush would have liked to get a 6-3 conservative majority rather than keep the 5-4 he has now.

Gridlock is not necessarily a bad thing when you realize that the mentality of most elected officials is “Don’t just stand there, spend something!” A few things will get through, but talk about increasing the minimum wage and some of the other liberal perks will get shot down by Bush and even now the Democrats won’t have enough votes to override his veto. Probably the real winner in this is John McCain. If the Democrats don’t do anything stupid, there is no reason to believe that they won’t keep their majority in Congress (or at least the House). Thus, you will need a President who can work with that and is seen as a bit more moderate. I’m not sure the people will be ready to trust a Democratic Congress with a Democratic president just yet, but a moderate Republican president with a history of working across the aisle will be a bit more palatable to the people. Enter John McCain.

There is one major downside to this change though. The Democrats have made it no secret that they intend to use their control of the purse strings to force the Pentagon to start scaling back in Iraq and a few other places. That will limit our mobility for a while and I think that Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians are going to try and take advantage of the situation. The Palestinians are seriously hurting for cash and they are starting to feel the pressure of the Israeli incursions into Gaza. Rather than be rational and stop fighting and recognize Israel, the Palestinians will probably coordinate with the leader of Hamas in Damascus, who will arrange a three way assault against Israel between Hezbollah, the Palestinians, and Syria. Iran will probably find a way to send money and materials over to the Arabs to keep the war going. While the world stands by and talks about it as they did during the Lebanon crisis, the Arabs might catch the Israelis by surprise enough and with overwhelming numbers to overrun a portion of their military. If that happens, the Israelis will have very little choice to turn to desperate measures to keep themselves afloat.

One other little note, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsak officially announced he is running for President today. Joe Biden is also believed to be running although he has not announced it yet. John Kerry and John Edwards never stopped running, although they too have not formally announced their candidacies yet. Hillary Clinton also has not said much and she has also given very mixed signals as to whether she will try to run. I must admit, I think the primary fight would be a lot more entertaining if she did not run. It gets boring when one candidate crushes everyone. But Vilsak running officially means that everyone else is running for second place when the Iowa straw poll comes about in January 2008.