Barring some kind of miraculous Republican comeback or some huge deficiency in every poll taken in the last month, America is going to experience something it has not truly experienced since 1932 - an overwhelming rejection of conservative Republicans in favor of progressive Democrats. Yes, Wednesday will bring Washington Posts and Wall Street Journals full of op-eds about how the Democrats better not overreach and actually enact their platform, about how this is fundamentally a center-right nation (etc.) but don't let that punditry fool you. For the first time in pretty much everyone's lifetime, Democrats are going to control DC, and we'll get to see if all the progressive rhetoric pans out when the party is actually in power.
A lot of commentators have said, quite prudently I think, that to have outsized expectations of Obama and the Democratic congress is a mistake. And we shouldn't forget that Obama is the guy who voted for the FISA bill last June, who proposed the least progressive healthcare plan of all the Dem candidates, and whose initially-measured response to the Georgian war was quickly walked back and replaced by one more militaristic than McCain's. To expect miracles from him is wrong. So too, I think, is it wrong for one to expect some great progressive agenda to come out of the upcoming Congress, which is only marginally less corrupt and conflicted than the Republican one it replaced.
So the question shouldn't be "What are Obama and Congress going to do?" Rather, it should be "What are we going to do?" Will the connective technologies embraced by Democrats this cycle remain relegated to fundraising and GOTV, or will they provide a platform for true citizen involvement in the highest levels of government?
I think the real value in this campaign isn't the actual policies that will come out of the Democratic government - instead, it's the people who are invested in the political process for the first time in their lives and won't go away without a fight. We can chalk this up to Obama. What are these people going to do or believe when Obama inevitably screws up? What if they find they disagree with him on something huge?
I don't know the answer to those questions, but it'll be interesting as hell to find them out.
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