Volume 4, Issue 3

The 2006 elections dealt a strong blow to the sizeable political and policy ambitions motivating the George W. Bush presidency. Bush's attempt to entrench a conservative political regime in national politics now faces its greatest peril. In particular, Bush's "political capital" is much reduced by Democratic control of the House and Senate. Bush's assertion of his formal powers will also receive greater challenge by Congress. It is now up to future GOP presidents to achieve Bush's extensive regime ambitions.

The 2006 midterm has undercut some familiar assertions about contemporary electoral politics. Political analysts seem to have overstated Republican advantages in several areas: voter turnout, campaign finance, congressional apportionment, party unity, and social issues. The GOP's loss is the discipline's gain, as the election raises good questions for scholarly research.

How did a wave of anti-Republican sentiment breach the wall of structural advantages available to the majority party? In 2006, as in 1994, we learned that structural advantages are not impregnable, there is no permanent minority, and all politics is local, except when it is national. Like House Democrats in 1994, House Republicans in 2006 could not govern the country, could not govern Congress, and could not govern themselves. In particular, in both elections the majority parties beat themselves due to their failure to control the mischiefs of faction within their own ranks. In managing such factions, each party faces a constitutional quandary: government or opposition, compromise or confrontation, policy or politics.

Despite a national tide for the Democrats in the 2006 midterms that increased the number of competitive congressional races, national voter turnout rose only slightly. Consistent with previous findings, higher turnout in some states reflected increased competition in statewide races for Governor and U.S. Senate. Unexpected surprises, however, lurked among individual congressional races. Voter turnout in highly partisan and closely contested congressional races frequently exceeded turnout for the Senate or Governor's races, suggesting that partisan control over Congress motivated participation. But because there were few competitive races overall, particularly in the three most populous states, national turnout suffered. The 2006 midterm election does not signal a return to voter apathy as much as reflect an ailing electoral system, which requires reforms to increase the number competitive congressional seats to boost overall turnout.

Throughout the 2006 midterm elections, the press wrote about the conflict over campaign strategy between Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and his counterparts in Congress, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emmanuel, the heads of the Senate and House campaigns, respectively. Schumer and Emmanuel, as well as other Beltway strategists, disagreed with Dean's "fifty state strategy" to build the party across the nation, arguing that DNC funds should focus on the races targeted by the congressional parties. This essay explains, in part, why Dean's popularity suffers in Washington – even after decisive Democratic victories – and why he continues to have support outside the Beltway. It also provides preliminary evidence that Dean's fifty-state strategy paid off in terms of increasing the Democratic vote share beyond the bounce of a national tide favoring Democrats.

Were the 2006 midterm elections a Big Deal or No Big Deal? On the surface, the outcome seems ordinary: a setback for the president's party in his sixth year, and a return to divided government. Taking a longer view, these elections are historically important. Democratic victories interrupted the work of a sustained Republican "revolution" rolling back the bipartisan Progressive project of the 20th Century in regulation, public provision and civil rights.

Do political elite operatives differ by party affiliation? This article explores the extent to which political differences between the parties are reflected in cultural differences among elite party actors. Using interviews of political operatives published in the National Journal's daily newsletter, the Hotline, we look at differences between the parties on political questions such as political heroes and favorite television news show, and more purely cultural questions including favorite magazines and music. The data suggest that differences between the parties do persist on cultural issues, and that Democrats retain more internal differences than Republicans. We conclude by calling for more research into party culture.

For only the sixth time since 1900, control of both the House and Senate switched during a midterm cycle in the 2006 congressional elections. Although the magnitude of the changes was not as great as 1994, the results from 2006 more fully aligned the two parties' control of Congress with their presidential performance in the Electoral College. Democrats now dominate the Northeast in the same way Republicans dominate the South. For the first time in decades, Democrats will govern as a solidly non-Southern party. At the same time, Republicans face the challenge of overcoming the perils of regional over-representation and a drift to the right, as suggested by the recent comeback of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott. In coming cycles, election battles will focus most fiercely on the 20 competitive Midwest and Interior West states.

This paper begins by exploring the impact of the 2006 midterm elections on the distribution of policy preferences within the U.S. House and Senate during the 110th Congress. We then consider the consequences of the new political configuration in Washington for the distribution of power between party leaders and the committee systems in both chambers, the patterns of bargaining that will occur between congressional Democrats and the Bush White House, and the likely contents of legislative outcomes during 2007-08.

This essay is an effort to delineate an important factor shaping the context of congressional and presidential leadership—the results of midterm elections—and to investigate the responses of leaders in the dramatic situation of the loss of majorities by the president's party in both houses of Congress.

For the quagmire of Iraq, the three-state solution is a good one right now, and always has been the best choice. To recognize this inevitability, however, requires that the Bush Administration and its critics alike have an enduring and cohesive explanation for the emergence of the violent instability we see in Iraq. This essay suggests, first, a way to combine the basic elements of the three main streams of international relations in order to understand how individuals and groups may come to find violence acceptable and destroy civil society. Second, this theory of action helps explain why the circumstances particular to Iraq dictate a three-state future as the most powerful way to disrupt the underlying circumstances which fuel violence in Iraq.

This essay reviews two books: Todd Gitlin's Intellectuals and the Flag and Eric Lott's The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual. The views of Gitlin and Lott represent a broad and contrasting section of contemporary left-wing opinion. The conflict between them raises deep and unresolved questions about the Left's status in America. The ongoing strife among intellectuals on the left suggests that the Democratic Party has a long way to go before embracing a set of core principles that can unite the party, forge a new coalition, and provide a rationale for governing.