The Democratic victory was not as sweeping as it might have been By Janet Daley

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/08/udaley108.xml

These elections clearly were a referendum on the Bush presidency, but they were about more than the conduct of the war.

Click to enlarge

The country was deeply disillusioned by the administration’s failures in handling the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, but it was probably angered as much by the collapse of promises on immigration and fiscal responsibility.

To the disgust of its traditional party base, the Bush White House spent money at record levels.

To the disappointment of its more radical supporters, it backed away from its major project to reform social security.

And perhaps most damagingly, it dithered over controlling illegal immigration.

So defending the war became the only story that Bush had to tell: his adherence to the Rumsfeld-Cheney strategy came to look like a pathological state of denial rather than courageous consistency.

But for all that, the Democratic victory was not as sweeping as it might have been.

The average number of net Congressional gains for the opposition party in a sixth-year election (half-way through a president’s second term) is around 31, and this result does not look much different from that.

The Democrats may take the Senate but, if they do, it will be only by a knife-edge.

And many of the Democrat wins have been made by candidates who are extreme social conservatives.

How will this pro-life, anti-gay marriage contingent get along with the very liberal Nancy Pelosi-led leadership of its party in the House?

Will the Democrats – who ran on a campaign theme of “change” without ever specifying what the change was to consist of – put forward a coherent programme?

They now talk of wanting a bi-partisan policy in Iraq – and these election results may force the White House to listen to its critics – but it is difficult to see how vague Democratic proposals will change things substantially on the ground.