Before I get all gushy over this I suggest let's wait and see a bit. Yes, the elected Dems are potentially quite progressive. But, like Hillary when it was "bankrupty reform," she was all against it to protect the average folks, but when the banks flashed the cash she quickly caved in. So when the K Street guys, the lobbyists and various assorted scum bags come by to "collect," can we be sure the Dems will be all that progressive? To a degree, the Dems are just the "nice side" of unbridled capitalism whereas the Repubs are unabashedly one with the Robber Barons. So, we will have to watch very closely this show. If we are lucky we will be on track to some real accomplishments, if not probably it will just be a Comedy Show, but I do agree let's celebrate a little bit. At least the horror show is gone, for awhile, I hope.

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This election was anything but a show for progressive values.. Pelosi actually had to get in bed with moderates to pull this off.. Progressives are out in the cold.. no one is interested in the far left agenda!

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when I see it.

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that we could stop using the word "progressive" as if it's an actual ideology? What a silly piece.

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The Democrats have a lot of work to be done. For the past 6 years they’ve been shouting and rattling on about Bush and how his party has degraded this country. Now it’s up to the Democrats to show a better way. I have yet to hear any type of coherent agenda on Iraq or any other issue for that matter. The country is in the midst of outrage fatigue and needs to move on. Hopefully the Democrats can provide the direction and leadership that has been missing the past 6 years. So I wouldn’t celebrate victory just yet.

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Anyone who can aver that this election is a victory for progressivism is either seriously deluded or criminally insane. Let's see, over the past 6 years, the Democrats have brought us unbridled allegiance to the Bush-Rove plan to attack Iraq (even before the 9-11 "excuse), continued pumping of dollars into the coffers of Halliburton, URS, Bechtel, et al., - war profiteers all, continued bilking of 90% of Americans who haven't gained a lick from capital gains tax reductions, continuation of the rape and pillage of the environment, support for torture and the less glamorous obliteration of the 700-year-old or so writ of habeas corpus, spying on Americans, dissolution of international treaties, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles, and the utter loss of humanity that has led to (over the past 40 years) the deaths of over 6 million innocent civilians - a trend that has been accelerated while Democrats continued to kiss Karl Rove's pecker and stuff their noses up Dick Cheney's butt. In my mind, panderers to the illusion of Democratic progressivism are the same kind of mindless nitwits as the corporate henchmen who control the media machinery, and deserve the same cruel fate that awaits all traitors to humanitarian ideals, a fate which these self-inflated, deluded fuck-toys of the establishment can not even begin to imagine.

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Now all we have to do is keep Nancy Pelosi away from her White House tete-a-tetes. Let's get rid of both of these "parties" and let Cheney run it by himself!

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Repukes wouldn't even let Dems MEET in the capital. You cannot blame any of this on Dems. They were told Bush was invading Afghanistan-and he turned into Iraq. There were so many lies, and the REPUBLICAN CONGRESS made sure they were either hidden or promoted. A typical Republican post-still can't take responsibility for anything they did.

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Below are profiled some of the new Democrats.

Jack Davis is a representative of a politically-significant subcategory among the Democratic candidates: the ex-Republican. The millionaire Buffalo, New York furnace parts manufacturer was a lifelong Republican, a backer of the ultra-right libertarian Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. In 2004, Davis sought and won the Democratic nomination in New York’s 26th Congressional District, to run against Republican Tom Reynolds, a senior member of the House leadership. Davis lost the race in 2004, but sought the nomination again in 2006 and has benefited from Reynolds’ role in the Mark Foley scandal.

Davis bases his campaign on national chauvinism, calling for efforts to “seal” US borders, while denouncing exports by “Red China” for destroying America’s manufacturing base. He has naturally been received with open arms by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, despite operating a non-union factory.

Brad Ellsworth is the sheriff of Vanderburgh County, which includes the city of Evansville, Indiana, and now odds-on favorite to defeat incumbent Republican John Hostettler. The national Republican Party has abandoned the seat and pulled all financial support for Hostettler. Ellsworth’s advertising focuses on his socially conservative views, including opposition to abortion rights, gay marriage and gun control. He cites his law-and-order record and calls for a crackdown on immigration, while offering a few sops to the working class, such as a minimum wage increase. Ellsworth has been joined by at least a dozen other anti-abortion Democrats, who are contesting seats in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Kentucky and North Carolina.

John Yarmuth is another millionaire former Republican, who ran twice unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for local office in Louisville, Kentucky, then used his family fortune (derived from banking and Ashland Oil Company) to buy an alternative weekly newspaper. Yarmuth worked on Capitol Hill as an aide to Republican Senator Marlow Cook, and eventually switched parties in 1985. He is running in the Third District of Kentucky for the seat held by Republican Congresswoman Anne Northup.

Mike Weaver is an actual Kentucky colonel, a 67-year-old ultra-conservative Democratic state legislator who went into politics after retiring from a long Army career. He shares the positions of incumbent Republican Ron Lewis on such issues as abortion, gay rights and gun regulation, offering as his campaign slogan, “Faith, Family, Freedom.” He has criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war and attacked Lewis over health care and the minimum wage.

Phil Kellam is a local government official running in the Second District of Virginia, which includes the huge naval complex of Norfolk and Hampton Roads. According to Kellam’s web site, in his nine years in public office “his primary focus has been on cutting costs through better management and operating efficiencies.”

In a debate with Drake, Kellam denied that the war in Iraq was a mistake and embraced the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq is central to the “war on terror.” At one point he declared, “I think that the war in Iraq is where we are. We need to take the battle—this worldwide war on terror—and we need to take it to them.”

Heath Shuler, a former quarterback for the Washington Redskins and activist in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, is the Democratic candidate now favored to win in the 11th District of North Carolina over eight-term incumbent Charles Taylor. Shuler is a Christian fundamentalist who has refused to campaign or debate on Sundays because that would violate the Sabbath. He boasts of his opposition to abortion. He portrays his ultra-conservative views as “middle of the road".

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mr newman is either an employee or former employee of organized labor and his blog often reports labor issues. so i would respectfully ask Mr. Newman, what did Democratic run congresses between 1977(Jimmy Carter) and 1995, (Bill Clinton) do for organized labor? I don't mean medicare appropriatons or aid to low income schools; there are other powerful lobbies for those liberal causes. I mean legislation to ban the open shop, to simplify voting for union representation, to crackdown on union busting law firms that do with $300 an hr Yale Law School graduates what Henry Ford's goons did with clubs and brass knuckles in in the 1930's? What did George Mitchell, Robert Byrd, Tom Daschle, Thomas Foley, Jim Wright and Tip O'Neill do about the labor rights obliteration and community-destroying free trade anti-labor cheap labor bills when they ran the House and Senate with Democrat majorities?

When Nancy Pelosi keeps the House in session thru all next summer and the following Xmas holidays until they repeal NAFTA, GATT, WTO and the other WalMart Bill Clinton-Goldman Sachs bills, I will be excited. When union members can vote by checking off a card, I will be excited. When most professional workers or white collar folks can join a union and not be classified as "supervisors" because they share an assistant with five other people, I will be excited.

Right now I am going to sleep, Nathan Newman, you alliterative scribe you.

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