I’ve written about this before but it cannot hurt to re-emphasize just exactly what’s at stake tomorrow when we head into the voting booth — i.e., that tomorrow’s vote should be a referendum on President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq and the constitutional separation of powers. As The New York Times wrote on Sunday:
This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.
I live in New Jersey, where the two sides have been waging a television war of attrition that seems designed to suppress the vote.
But it seems pretty clear to me that New Jersey voters should send Bob Menendez back to the Senate. Sen. Menendez, who spent a dozen years in the House of Representatives before being appointed by Gov. Jon Corzine in January to replace the new governor in the Senate, voted against the war authorization in 2003, when it was considered politically unpopular to do so, and has remained steadfast in his opposition to the disaster the president has created.
Just as importantly, he is a Democrat and the nation needs the Democrats to take over at least one house of Congress as the first step in a change of direction nationally. The nation can not afford to continue thumbing its nose at the international community and it literally cannot afford to subsidize the rich at the expense of the rest of us.
The Republican challenger, state Sen. Tom Kean Jr., has raised some valid questions about Sen. Menendez and the political culture of New Jersey. But he has ran a harshly negative campaign that left me wondering what kind of lines he would cross were he elected.
More significantly, he has failed to answer questions about his past stance on Social Securitprivatizationon and remains steadfast in support of the war (though he would toss Donald Rumsfeld overboard). And while he paints himself as a moderate, he is likely to side with his party’s leadership, leaving the same bunch of right-wingers in charge of tax, military and environmental policy — the same bunch that has made such a mess in the first place.
So while he may think of himself as an independent actor, the reality is that he cannot be — there cannot be independent actors in Washington these days.
So I’ll vote for Bob Menendez and hope the rest of the nation follows suit and boots the GOP from its majority status.
That said, I have my doubts that this will happen (even if Dick Morris and Eileen McGann say so). There are a lot of people who want to see the GOP dumped, but not their own GOP Congressman — plus there is the unfortunate tendency of national Democrats to turn strength to weakness. My fear is that the Democrats will come close, but fail to capture either House, and that it will be spun as a Democratic loss, giving the national media cause to minimize what the party actually may end up accomplishing.
So vote early and vote often. It is your patriotic duty.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 