Election news super but racism persists

President Bush flunked ignominiously the midterm examination administered by the American people. The wonder is that it took so long to expose the Maximum Leader for trashing the nation and running roughshod over the world.
As Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote, the “Rovian scare and divide tactics,” used by Republicans to win the previous two elections, no longer worked. Neither, for the most part, did the GOP smear, slime and gutterball tactics.
The capture of the U.S. House and Senate in voting last week is the best news America has had politically for six years. Bush is so unfit to be president that he once referred to the Constitution as “just a god-damned piece of paper.” And he acted that way too. “The Decider” has been little different from the notorious dictator Pinochet of Chile.
Bush, the self-proclaimed uniter not divider, became the Great Divider. The self-described compassionate conservative proved to be devoid of compassion.
One sad aspect of the national triumph for decency and humanity: racism. It still rules the South. Tennessee Republican, senator-elect Bob Corker, trailed the Democratic candidate, Harold Ford, a talented black Democrat, in the polls.
Then the GOP played the race card, a tactic that has served it well since Nixon’s Southern Strategy played on atavistic fears and prejudices. (Willie Horton. The black-hand ad in South Carolina to keep a racist in the Senate.)
The Tennessee television spot showed a bare-shouldered white woman declaring that she had met Ford at a Super Bowl party (attended by 3,000 others). She beckoned to Ford with a come-hither look and cooed “call me.” Hence: a stereotypical “black buck” chasing white women.
The ad worked, defeating the man who would have been the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction.
Back to the positive. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco will become the next speaker of the House, enhancing possibilities for liberal legislation.
One of the legislative priorities in her Rooseveltian first 100 days is to ban gifts from lobbyists, including free rides on corporate jets, and to require disclosure of earmarks. Her agenda also includes an increase of the paltry minimum wage. Pelosi holds out the possibility of prolabor legislation after the long union hostility of the GOP.
More good news: the 110th Congress will have progressives heading committees in the House and Senate. Among them are Rep. Henry Waxman of California of the House government committee. Waxman’s powerful legislative assaults on government will now get the attention they deserve.
Another is Rep. John Conyers of Michigan of the House judicary committee. He is one of the most radical--and justifiably angry--politicians in the country. He will make the GOP squirm.
On the Senate side, liberals will replace conservative and reactionary GOP chairs of committees. Some key liberals are Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, environment; Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, judiciary; and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, armed services.
Another notable triumph: Bernie Sanders of Vermont who won an open seat for the U.S. Senate. Sanders proudly calls himself a democratic socialist in an era when far too many Democrats are barely distinguishable from Republicans.
And another joy: the eco-fascist Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, Calif., was defeated. He was a fierce foe of environmental regulations and had wanted to toss out the Endangered Species Act.
Nationwide, results on social issues were generally upbeat. In the abortion wars, the prochoice forces rejected an abortion ban in South Dakota. California and Oregon voters defeated a parental notification anti-abortion measure.
Arizonians turned down a proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. And in Missouri, voters approved a measure to allow stem cell research.
But the election also showed that Nevada is still in the Dark Ages politically, defying all national trends by electing two Bush-clone Republicans to Congress, Jon Porter from the South and Dean Heller from the North. Nevada is still a terribly conservative state.
The election of Jim Gibbons as governor is shameful. He is totally unworthy to be governor. As Dennis Myers wrote in a political analytical piece for the Reno News & Review, damaging charges against Gibbons raised “character issues” and undercut his “standing as a candidate of moral values.”
On ballot questions, Nevada voters wisely approved tougher restrictions on smoking, banning indoor smoking except in casinos.
However, they joined the phony “war on drugs” by defeating the legalization of small amounts of marijuana. Alas, puritanism still reigns in the Silver State.