« Voting Machines | Main | Rumsfeld Out »

November 08, 2006

The Day After

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

Bette Davis, All About Eve

No political victory would be complete without people coming out of the woodwork to claim credit. Success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan, after all. And so we see Chrisy Hardin Smith explaining to Rahn Emmanuel how things are going to be, see?

This is understandable. Bloggers like those at Firedoglake worked very hard to elect Democrats over the past year, and they expect that those Democrats will now address their concerns. And they should; the Democrats would be foolish to assume they can count on the support of any group if they don't treat their issues seriously.

But elections are won by coalitions. While I know it's fashionable to attribute electoral changes to single issues, humanity is far too complex for such simple answers. The Democratic margin in some races yesterday was certainly due to the votes of committed leftists who want to see the Bush administration pay for its crimes. It is also due to people who wanted to see a split government in the hopes it would slow runaway spending. And to people who were upset at how the Bush administration has handled Iraq. And to people who are appalled by the corruption of the Republican Congress. And to many other groups I haven't named. The point is, there were a lot of reasons why people voted for Democrats yesterday. While the Democrats cannot possibly make them all happy, if they work to hard on pleasing one group, they're likely to alienate other constituencies. That may make them wildly popular with a small group, but it will render them in sad shape when the next election rolls around.

Emmanual's job was to get the Democrats into power, and it is now to keep them there. That job is going to be really difficult, because lots of people who have waited a very long to taste a little power are going to want their piece of the pie. Now comes the feeding frenzy.