What the 2002 Election Means for 2003-2004

by

Jim Boulet, Jr.

Executive Director

English First

The Dangers of Victory

In politics, as in sports, winners celebrate while losers analyze what went wrong. Hindsight makes winners think the result was inevitable, proof of their superior wisdom or both.

President Bush was a big winner on Election Day, which has both pluses and minus for the official English cause, as well as other causes.

Team Bush has now accomplished what has been deemed impossible twice. In 2000, challenger Bush beat a sitting vice-president during a time of what appeared to be peace and prosperity. In 2002, Republicans became the first party in office to seize control of either the House or the Senate during an off-year election.

November 5, 2002, was the first time in a century that a Republican president saw his party gain seats in an off-year election and only the second time since 1934 that a sitting president's party did not lose seats in Congress. Republicans now have more seats than Democrats in state legislatures. The last time Republicans held a majority of state legislative seats was 1952.

Now Team Bush must plan for 2004. What will the next two years mean for official English and other causes?

The White House and the Quest for the Hispanic Vote

President Bush has gone out of his way to win Hispanic support. The United States Navy is vacating a training range in Puerto Rico that it has used since World War II. Why? Folks at the White House think this will win votes among Puerto Rican residents of Florida and New York. Amnesty for illegal aliens, an issue the White House was pushing hard prior to September 11, 2001, remains a live issue.

Quite frankly, if President Bush is seen as succeeding in the war on terrorism and the economy improves, he is likely to win reelection no matter what else he does or does not do. The Bush people also know that he won the presidency despite tepid support among conservatives. (Gore's effort to steal the presidency via selective litigation and disenfranchising of active-duty military personnel did more to bring conservatives around than anything Bush did during the entire campaign.)

Because team Bush must focus on national defense and economic growth with laser-like intensity, whatever else shows up on the president's desk will not be allowed to consume much time in an Administration that has already gone well out of its way to avoid confrontation.

Faced with a Democratic Senate in 2001-2002, President Bush still kept his veto pen locked in his desk drawer. The Administration's eagerness to get issues off the table led to the President signing an education bill that Ted Kennedy liked, but many House Republicans didn't, as well as accepting bad bills on campaign finance reform and airport security.

A desire by Republicans not to "embarrass the President" will lead to even more acquiesce to Democrat priorities and still less confrontation.

While conservative Republicans will be discouraged from pursuing their agendas, there will be no such check on liberal Democrats. This means that many of the legislative battles in the 2003-2004 Congress will be conducted on turf and at times most favorable to Democrats, and thus a dragging of the Congressional agenda leftward.

Republicans Gain a Senate Majority -- Will Anything Change?

The 51-47 Republican majority in the U.S. Senate (one seat will be decided December 7th) means that Trent Lott, rather than Tom Daschle, will technically control the legislative agenda. It also means drastic changes in certain Senate committees because Judd Gregg (R-NH), not Ted Kennedy (D-MA), will chair the Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, James Inhofe (R-OK), not Jim Jeffords (I-VT), will chair the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), not Patrick Leahy (D-VT), will chair the Judiciary Committee.

Yet Senate rules ensure that one determined Senator can force his colleagues to debate any issue on the Senate floor at virtually any time. In 1979-1980, Republicans held just 41 seats (an increase from 38 in 1977-78). Yet Republicans drove the legislative agenda those years by combining party unity with a creative approach to their agenda.

Senate Republicans have lost proven leaders -- people willing to stand up and force votes -- with the retirements of Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Phil Gramm (R-TX) and the defeat of Bob Smith (R-NH). Helms and Gramm in particular were willing to fight for their beliefs despite the opposition of every other Senator. Both also defied previous Republican presidents as they thought necessary.

By contrast, among the new Republican Senators, both Norm Coleman and John Sununu were handpicked by the Bush Administration in the first place. They are likely to have zero interest in defying the White House over anything.

All this means is that President Bush can expect little trouble on his right flank. Unfortunately, the left flank of his party is a hornet's nest of potential trouble. The Senate GOP caucus contains one possible challenger to President Bush in 2004, John McCain; at least one possible party switcher in Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) and at least three demonstrably unreliable votes in Arlen Specter (R-PA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Chances are, President Bush will not have 50 votes for any conservative issue and that the White House Legislative Affairs shop will spend most of its time appeasing liberal Republicans.

While Senate conservatives will be as tame as house cats, Senate liberals will be roaring tigers. The Senate's Democratic Caucus is stocked with 2004 presidential candidates eager to provoke fights -- think John Edwards (D-NC), John Kerry (D-MA), Tom Daschle (D-SD) etc. Add to their number both Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton of New York and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

The only fear Democrats have is the fact that, as Ronald Browstein noted in the American Prospect on November 12th, nine of the 19 Democratic senators up for reelection in 2004 will be running in states Bush won in 2000 -- "six of them in states he carried by double digits. With Bush actually on the ballot, they will probably be even more reluctant to oppose him."

The Homeland Security Battle and Senator Byrd

Senate Democrats and the White House must also contend with Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). The New Republic noted even before Election Day, 2002, that Byrd's delaying tactics on both the Homeland Security bill and the Iraq war resolution hurt Democrats: "[M]ost [Democrats] agreed on at least one thing: It was best to get the war debate over quickly and return to domestic issues before the November election. But one Democrat wanted no part of this plan: West Virginia Senator Robbert C. Byrd."

Byrd's mini-filibusters ensured there was far less time for Senate Democrats to initiate legislative battles on Democrat-issues. The debate would justify the kind of saturation coverage they have come to expect from their friends in the media during the two weeks before any federal election.

The flaw in the "it's Byrd's fault" analysis is that Senate Democratic candidates were filling the airwaves with commercials touting their issues. A longtime observer of the Senate remarked that it seemed unlikely that potential Democratic voters never saw all the TV ads but closely watched the Senate floor. Yet, my friend went on to say, perception is often more important than reality in politics.

And even had Byrd gone along with the Democratic program (and let us remember that Byrd also opposed the 1990 Iraq war), the D.C. sniper ensured that personal security and national security would remain major election issues. (Although had the D.C. sniper actually been an angry white male, as ABC News' The Note suggested even before the arrests, the election might well have turned into a Democratic landslide.)

Election post mortems suggest that the lengthy homeland security debate, and the perceived steadfastness of the Republicans1 is seen as a major cause of Democratic defeat:

Walter Shapiro, "Democrats' crummy sales pitch gets them the boot," USA Today, November 12, 20002 http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/2002-11-12-hype_x.htm

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 11/12/02 http://talkingpointsmemo.com/nov0202.html#1112021026pm

Paul Glastris, "How Democrats Could Have Won," Washington Monthly Online, November 13, 2002 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0212.glastris.html

The House: More Republicans May Mean More Defectors

House Republicans, like their Senate counterparts, have a numerical majority, but not an ideological majority. Because the GOP majority is now 21 votes rather than 12 (one House race will be decided December 7th), the moderate Republicans will feel less pressure to be team players and, given the likelihood that the Senate will no longer be a graveyard for House-passed legislation, more pressure to oppose conservative legislation.

This means that the new House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (R-TX) may actually have a harder job in the 108th Congress than he did as Majority Whip in the 107th.

The election of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as House Minority Leader could counterbalance Republican defections with defections by conservative Democrats. Pelosi was featured in ads against Democrats candidates during 2002 (e.g. "Joe Turnham: He's sold out our Alabama values to the Washington liberals.") Senator Zell Miller, a proud Georgia Democrat, warned his colleges after the election that his party had a serious problem:

Democratic Congressman who represent districts carried by President Bush, particularly the red states of the South, have good reason to fear they will be linked to Pelosi by their 2004 opponents. This may mean actual party switches.

The Democrats' Dilemma

Glenn Close's announcement in Fatal Attraction that "I'm not going to be ignored" set the stage for all the horror that followed. Democrats have good reason to fear that African-Americans, who vote for the party at a rate of 9-1, are equally tired of being ignored.

Consider Robert Ehrlich's victory in the Maryland governor's race. Ehrlich, a Republican, carried a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 2-1. The Democratic nominee, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend chose a white male as her running mate instead of an African American.

Ehrlich not only chose an African American running mate, he pointedly reminded black Marylanders of Townsend's seeming disrespect. The Washington Afro-American reported that Ehrlich sent out a postcard with "Wait" on one side. The other side "had pictures of four highly qualified African Americans . . . who easily could have been Townsend's running mate."

Exit polls suggest that Townsend still received 90% of the black vote in 2002. But the complaints about disrespecting the black community drove her to reaffirm her wish for black support in a way which turned off large numbers of moderate whites.

Townsend's opening statement during the only debate of the campaign made national news: "My opponent opposes affirmative action based on race. Slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination was based on race. Jim Crow was based on race. Affirmative action should be based on race." Since the debate was sponsored by the NAACP, Townsend's statement provoked a mighty roar of approval.

Similarly, Florida's Democratic candidate for governor, Bill McBride, was forced to stump overwhelmingly Democratic south Florida with Bill Clinton in tow during the last week of the election. The reason? McBride had been too hasty to declare victory over Janet Reno in the primary. Problems with South Florida's voting machines in the primary lead to claims of black disenfranchisement, and McBride had appeared unconcerned.

The New York Times reported on November 9 that "strong turnout in predominantly white communities" led to Republican wins in both Maryland and Florida.

Even as the black community demands more Democratic attention, the Hispanic community, now America's largest minority, is demanding the same kind of political consideration once reserved for blacks. The increase in the potential Hispanic vote has encouraged some Democrats, including Jesse Jackson, to suggest that Democrats cease to worry about white voters period: "Bill Clinton was elected with a minority of the white vote," Jackson reminded a C-SPAN audience. He did not add that had Ross Perot not run, Clinton might well have lost.

Texas was a test for the majority-minority statewide election strategy, with a Hispanic candidate for governor, Tony Sanchez, and an African-American, Ron Kirk, running for the U.S. Senate. Rick Perry, the Republican candidate for governor, trounced Sanchez by 18 points.

Harold Meyerson explained to readers of the American Prospect what went wrong:

The Democrats are learning, the hard way, that a politics based upon group entitlements on the basis of race or ethnicity leads to insolvable conflicts.

_____ 1 Joel Mowbray reported in "Homeland Victory," National Review Online, November 13, 2002 [http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray111302.asp] that Republicans were willing to concede the issue of a unionized Homeland Security Agency before the election: