Winning--and governing
I can only imagine the turmoil in Sen. Hillary Clinton's camp right now, as the latest CNN poll shows Sen. Barack Obama pulling ahead of her by about 10 points in New Hampshire, which holds its primary Tuesday. Same in Romneyland: Sen. John McCain, written off for dead not too long ago, has pulled ahead of Romney by about six points. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trails in third place. I suppose McCain could still pull it off and become the Republican nominee, but along the way voters are bound to figure out how old he would be when he took office (72--Reagan was 70) and how old he would be if he completed two terms (80). And that he supports endless war in Iraq.
Obama is riding the crest of his win in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday, receiving the kind of press that will pull undecided voters into his column. Clinton has to be worrying that she's going to end up like Sen. Ted Kennedy, a legacy candidate himself who once had an air of inevitability about his own presidential prospects. If Obama wins New Hampshire decisively, it will be hard for Clinton to come back. Or John Edwards, for that matter.
If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and is elected President, the question then becomes whether he can deliver on the "change" he has promised, and which his legions of followers so clearly wants. That will all depend on the make-up of the U.S. Congress. Dramatic change requires dramatic majorities, not the bare Democratic majorities that exist now.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932, wouldn't have had a prayer of enacting the New Deal reforms if not for the big Democratic majorities in the 73rd and especially the 74th Congress. The Congress before the 1932 election was much the same as the Congress now, nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
President Herbert Hoover had enjoyed strong Republican majorities in the Congress that took office with him after the 1928 election. That Senate had 56 Republicans, 39 Democrats, and one Democratic Farmer-Labor member. The House had 270 Republicans, 164 Democrats, and one DFL. But then came the stock market crash in October 1929 and the relentless onset of economic depression in 1930. Hoover lost his strong majority in the 1930 election, just as George W. Bush did in the 2006 election because of the Iraq War. After both elections, though, the Congress became essentially stalemated. Democrats couldn't do much about the Depression under Hoover, just as they couldn't end the Iraq War under Bush.
Then came Roosevelt's defeat of Hoover in 1932. Many Democrats were swept to victory on the new President's coattails. The new Senate had 59 Democrats, 36 Republicans, and 1 DFL. The House had 313 Democrats, 117 Republicans, 5 DFL, and 2 Progressive Party members. With those majorities, he was able to enact several key economic recovery measures. But the really far-reaching legislation didn't come until after the 1934 election, when his majorities went even higher.
Beginning in 1935, the Senate of the 74th Congress had 69 Democrats, 25 Republicans, 1 DFL, and 1 Progressive. The House had 322 Democrats, 103 Republicans, 7 Progressives and 3 DFL. And some of those Republicans, like Nebraska's Sen. George Norris, would today be considered radical liberals. Roosevelt could do just about anything with those kind of numbers, and did. Obama, take note.
Out of the 74th Congress came Social Security, which ended many of the terrors of old age, the National Labor Relations Act, which created the modern labor union movement that moved millions of Americans into the middle class, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which established that people through their government can force radical reform on business without its consent, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or welfare, which gave children of low income parents a shot at survival and a better life. A President can't pass laws like that with bare Democratic majorities in Congress. It just doesn't happen.
So whether the next President is Obama, or Edwards, or even Clinton, if you want real change it is vitally important to elect a strongly Democratic Congress, too. There is no other way.