Elections

Elections:

Once again, elections are down to the wire. I'd like to begin by reposting my comments on the 2004 election. Let's look at what's the same, and what changed:

Yesterday, almost 55 million Americans got up, formed part of record lines, and voted to replace the President of the United States. Many of them felt passionately about doing so. Many had donated money to political campaigns for the first time. Many people heretofore uninterested in politics joined grassroots organizations aimed at removing George Bush from office, and to try to pry any part of the Federal government back to their political party.

This morning, the results must look to them like the carnage of a battlefield. Despite everything they did, George Bush was reelected. The Republicans, far from losing the House or the Senate, secured and increased their majorities. The highest ranking Democrat in the government, Senate Minority Leader Daschle, was turned out by voters. For social liberals, the sweeping victory of amendments forbidding gay marriage -- every one offered passed handily -- must be depressing. There is nothing for them to feel good about in the results, except the election of Mr. Obama and the well-deserved defeat of Mr. Keyes in IL.

They were defeated only because more than 58 million Americans stood up to vote for the opposite things.

In medieval battles, often forces coming into contact with each other were nearly evenly matched. The forces fight -- Vikings and Saxons clashing at each other behind their shield walls -- until that small difference in strength breaks one of the lines. Then, pouring through the breach, the victors tear apart the shield wall and rout the enemy. Few of the losers escaped from such battles, when any did. Though the foe may have been of nearly equal size and strength, at the last that small difference led to a complete victory for one side, and complete destruction for the other.

Democracy works in a similar way. We have had a giant clash of peaceful armies, and in spite of the completeness of the rout, we must remember that their force was nearly as powerful as our own.

For those of you readers who were part of the defeated army, I salute you. You have every reason to be proud of how hard you fought, and of the dedication and steadfastness with which you struck for your cause. You can hold your heads high, knowing that you did absolutely everything that could be done.

In the next years, we must remember the 55 million. It may be that some of them can be won over, through argument or through example, or even -- on matters not of principle -- through compromise. Even when not, we must remember that they showed that America is their country too: no one can ever again claim to be backed by the "silent majority." That majority has now spoken, but it spoke on both sides.

We should remember that they felt all the passion and concern that we did ourselves, and found that doing everything they could only led to the defeat of their cause. That kind of defeat can weaken the Republic, which many of us are sworn to uphold. It weakens it by undermining faith and confidence in the institutions. We must take care to be sure they find fair hearing of their concerns in the institutions that conservatives now control. The government must serve them as well. We should take care to observe the tenets of Federalism, and not use the power of the Federal government to try and influence liberal states according to a general will. We should erect new walls in that regard, so that our disappointed neighbors can still live the lives they want to live in what is also their country.

Those same walls will protect us, should we ever someday lose.

Congratulations to the victor.

What was different this year? First of all, the defeated army was a political party, not a movement. In 2004 conservatives and others of the right carried the day, defeating John Kerry and his movement from the left. This year, conservatives in many places simply absented themselves from the fight. 2004 was Red v. Blue; 2006 was about the Republican party, which has stunk it up.

Indeed, the abandonment of conservatism by the Republicans is not only clear in the agenda they've pursued these last years. The most conservative person elected in this race appears to be -- awaiting final results -- Jim Webb. The Democrats elected a man who is a true conservative. Several of their other victories, and a number of near misses, were also centrists or even rightists (at least in their campaign rhetoric!).

That's the second difference: while in 2004, the left could console themselves that they had done all they could, in 2006 the same can't be said of the Republicans. They didn't do all they could do; they barely did anything at all. Half of what they did do was wrong. They didn't deserve support, and so they didn't receive much.

In 2004, I blogged about the upcoming elections almost every day. This year, I hardly mentioned them at all. In 2004, I gave lots of money to political causes; this year, not one donation to any candidate or movement. Instead, I've spent the days running up to the election raising money for a far better cause than politics: Project VALOUR-IT. That fundraiser, ongoing until Veteran's Day, needs your attention and help if you have any to give.

I didn't stay home. I still went out and voted, as everyone should -- and, as I said below, at the state level it was a nice election.

That brings us to what is still the same, this year as in 2006. My vision of what we need in this country's domestic politics:

We must take care to be sure they find fair hearing of their concerns in the institutions that conservatives now control. The government must serve them as well. We should take care to observe the tenets of Federalism, and not use the power of the Federal government to try and influence liberal states according to a general will. We should erect new walls in that regard, so that our disappointed neighbors can still live the lives they want to live in what is also their country.

I think that's as right now as it was two years ago. Georgia should be allowed to be Georgia; Vermont, Vermont. American elections won't be so contentious, nor cause such turmoil in people's lives, when we re-enforce the walls of Federalism.

Such an agenda is right on the merits, whether it is meant to protect our way of life, or our neighbors' in the Blue states. We are all Americans, and ought to look out for each other -- even when we don't agree.

Congratulations to the victors.