Sunday, November 02, 2008
Opinion, Politics
Obama, a risk we should take
McCain is losing in a way that "threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him"
By Arianna Huffington
Republicans, while still holding out hope for a "McCain Miracle," are increasingly worried that McCain is losing in a way that, as David Frum put it, "threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him." As a result, Frum and other Republicans are urging party officials to shift the emphasis off the presidential race and on to preserving as many Senate seats as possible.
Democrats, while being careful not to count their electoral chickens before they're hatched, are privately worried about winning without enough of a majority in the Senate to really change things.
The enduring theme of Obama's campaign has been fundamental change. But, with victory within sight, the question becomes: How much change can he deliver if Democrats don't reach a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate?
In the just-ended 110th Congress, obstructionist Senate Republicans, led by human roadblock Mitch McConnell, mounted a record 104 filibusters (and that was with Bush in the White House; imagine how much more intransigent they would be with Obama). To put that number in context, in the previous Congress, the 109th, in which Democrats were in the minority, there were just 54 filibusters.
The specter of Democrats controlling both the executive and the legislative branches of government has become a useful late-campaign boogeyman for Republicans. In John McCain's version, voters need to elect him president to balance out a Congress led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
Republicans aren't the only ones warning about one-party rule. On Sunday, the New York Times, falling into be-careful-what-you-wish-for mode, warned that gaining a 60-seat majority would put Democrats "at risk of overreaching."
For the sake of the country, that's a risk Obama and Senate Democrats need to take. As Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse puts it: "I think we are in enough trouble in enough areas, that I would rather own it and then have to perform than continue with this back and forth, back and forth with Republicans, particularly while they are engaged in this absolute determined policy of obstruct, obstruct, obstruct."
SP