Now Comes the Hard Part

It is a party that chose to try and maintain the illusion that all was well, while its inner demons destroyed it. Commitment to “the Precious” comes with a high cost.

For those of us who follow politics, the results of last night’s election do not come as a great surprise. The Republican Party has a cancer that has been growing unchecked. The cancer is the GOP’s commitment to maintaining power at any cost. This obsession has resulted in immoral acts ranging from dishonesty about the war in Iraq, to corruption, to maintaining party unity by turning a blind eye toward a pedophile. It is a party that chose to try and maintain the illusion that all was well, while its inner demons destroyed it. Commitment to “the Precious” comes with a high cost. You did not have to be a political genius to tell that the American people would not tolerate this behavior.

The question is whether the Democratic victory can be attributed to good Democratic policies or whether it is a reflection of the toxicity of the Republican party. I think that it was a little of both, but now that the Democratic party is going to be in power, it must show America that Democrats have not succumbed to the same cynical obsession that doomed the Republicans. America wants leaders who will tell the truth. Living in the Bush/Rove world of spin, where Iraq is going well and the Katrina victims are whole, became too maddening to be tolerated. The country has elected Democrats to give it honest answers.

Democrats must have the integrity and strength of character to tackle the hard questions, not shrink from them. This means that we are going to be required to make hard decisions, and not take easy political outs. We are going to have to build consensus and lead, putting the good of the country ahead of political power. For 12 years we have criticized the Republicans for being disingenuous political animals who only care about dividing the country enough to get the 51% they needed to push their policies. Now we will be judged by our own measure. Now comes the hard part.