“The mid-term elections are over. After spending hundreds of millions of business dollars, the Republicans now control the Senate and hold on to the House of Representatives. It is amazing that the Democrats did not do worse.” If those sentences ring familiar, it’s because I wrote them in 2002 in response to that year’s midterm elections, although they could easily apply today.
Now several weeks removed from the 2014 elections, the news cycle has moved on to other matters, but the fallout remains to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans. Unless Americans start to get serious about their elections, we may as well repeat the same sentiments in another 12 years with an even greater price tag attached.
After spending even more hundreds of millions of campaign dollars, the craven, corporatist Republicans once again control Congress. Of course, the Democrats dialed for many of the same commercial dollars and spent their own hundreds of millions in campaign advertising, all while spectacularly failing to make a better case about the direction of our country to the voters than the worst Republican Party in history.
Note another 2002 reaction of mine: “…the Democrats were not highlighting the desperate need for raising the federal minimum wage (now about a third less in purchasing power than it was in 1968!)” Once again, 12 years later in 2014, Democrats dropped the ball on an issue that polls show 80 percent of Americans agree upon. I also wrote about the Democrats failing to go after Republicans on consumer protection issues like food safety and clean air and water, which we all need regardless of political alignment.
In light of history repeating itself so completely, one must ask where did all these millions of dollars go if, 12 years later, the very same mistakes, blunders and oversights are being made?