Chris Good: The Democratic Majority: A Brief History
[Chris Good is a staff editor at TheAtlantic.com, where he writes for the Politics channel. He has previously reported and blogged for The Hill newspaper.]
After Republicans disgracefully bowed out of power at the tail end of President Bush's White House tenure, the new members gathered for the first time in January 2007 to coronate Nancy Pelosi as the first female House speaker in the history of the country. This was two years, of course, before the U.S. elected its first black president, and the historic nature of the event was not lost on anyone: Pelosi became the highest ranking woman to hold office in the U.S. government, ever, at a moment of broad-based changes in what people thought about where the country should be headed.
That was the exuberant moment at which Democrats took power for what could be a short-lived majority, if it ends today in a Republican takeover as it's predicted to.
The significance of the Democratic House majority can't be understood without this context: It's a group of new Democratic lawmakers who won in areas the party hadn't held in at least a decade, and in some cases a lot longer. Western North Carolina. Southeastern Arizona. Southwestern Indiana. They're pro life and pro gun, many of them, almost all still there, even more having entered in 2008. The coalition is broad. The conservative Blue Dog Democrats skyrocketed in size over those two election cycles.
So keep that in mind when considering what the Democrats accomplished....
Read entire article at The Atlantic
After Republicans disgracefully bowed out of power at the tail end of President Bush's White House tenure, the new members gathered for the first time in January 2007 to coronate Nancy Pelosi as the first female House speaker in the history of the country. This was two years, of course, before the U.S. elected its first black president, and the historic nature of the event was not lost on anyone: Pelosi became the highest ranking woman to hold office in the U.S. government, ever, at a moment of broad-based changes in what people thought about where the country should be headed.
That was the exuberant moment at which Democrats took power for what could be a short-lived majority, if it ends today in a Republican takeover as it's predicted to.
The significance of the Democratic House majority can't be understood without this context: It's a group of new Democratic lawmakers who won in areas the party hadn't held in at least a decade, and in some cases a lot longer. Western North Carolina. Southeastern Arizona. Southwestern Indiana. They're pro life and pro gun, many of them, almost all still there, even more having entered in 2008. The coalition is broad. The conservative Blue Dog Democrats skyrocketed in size over those two election cycles.
So keep that in mind when considering what the Democrats accomplished....