What does this victory mean?

[otherlander]

We control both houses, and Rumsfeld's been fired. Really, it's more than I expected. But it was inevitable. The pendulum swung to the right, and then back to the left. It's the way it always is. Corruption builds, and in one moment of collective disgust, the people vote for honesty, and the rich and influential get angry about it. They get power again, and corruption returns, only to be thrown off. Or the greedy are replaced by the honest, who become greedy and are replaced with the honest who become...
And the powerful continue to play their games. It's practically standard practice for them to sell weapons to someone who once made an attempt on their life, to hang those who were their allies twenty years ago. Those who live in the world of power games can't really be expected to provide good, only the absence of evil.
If this all sounds rather hopeless, it's not meant that way. Because the powerful aren't free. But we are. We don't have to play their games. Congratulations, DU, and congratulations, America. A corrupt Congress and a corrupt defense secretary are gone. Now there can be change. But it doesn't start with Congress. It starts with the people.

[jannyk]

1. Let's hope our victory has more

substance than 'Mission Accomplished'.

[Lexingtonian]

2. Sigh. It's not like that.

There is no secret 'pendulum' that swings, and this implicit theory of inevitability isn't a fair description of what happens.

Corruption is a surficial problem. And people do not 'vote for honesty', because both sides have narratives that are superior to their followers.

The political era now ending, after 38 years, is that of the Nixon coalition of the Republican Party and the promises it made in 1966-68. Those promises were to continue the social and economic colonialism in which the state/country was founded, to prevent equality and preserve the caste/class system of race, religion, ethnicity, wealth, and gender as it existed in the mid-Sixties. The polite names for these efforts to preserve nineteenth century conventions and institutions were Capitalism, religious conservatism, and "strict constructionism".

This 38 year period followed on the 38 year period of power of the FDR Democrats. FDR's agenda was fulfilled to the extent possible by JFK/LBJ, and in our time the Nixon agenda has been fulfilled to the extent possible by George Dubya.

The symmetry hides that there was something far deeper at stake whose realization began with Pearl Harbor, and that happens to be the vision of American society described in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment-

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It's a vision of the citizenship of all Americans. And what has this Republican era been about other than denying or cheating some unpopular minority group of what is fairly due them?

A society in which citizenship is essentially meaningless is either anarchy or authoritarian. The meaning of this election is about rejecting authoritarianism. Having done that, the next step is a dedication to returning meaning and power to citizenship. The Democratic Party now has two years to prove that it is dedicated to that task and doing it right, i.e. is it over its Eighties and Nineties 'conservative' permissiveness of a system of undue privilege and government to benefit only select groups of people.