Interesting post. Having lived in America and watched the politics for 40 years, I will give you my opinion:
1) The Democratic Congress see themselves as having been elected in large part because Americans are fed up with the futile military adventure in Iraq. It was a horrendous act of hubris for the Bush administration to engineer the invasion and they've been unbelievably incompetent in managing the country after they conquered it. While I have some sympathy for the notion that having gone in and created chaos, America ought to stay and fix things, it's become more and more aparent that there is "no fixing of things" that America, as an occupying power, can realistically accomplish. The Democrats in Congress are doing what they can to either end the debacle as soon as possible or--failing that--make it blatantly clear that the albatross hangs around Republican necks--where it fairly belongs.
2) The "value voters" are certainly a real phenomena, but as to their party affiliation, I think they are more up for grabs than previously. This is due to the blatant corruption shown by the Republicans in power over the last 8 years, moral as well as political corruption in many cases. While there will always be hard--line religious conservatives as well as hard-line anti-Government ideologues, in the last eight years Americans have experienced a Government in their dual image and mostly not liked the results.
3) There are growing populist sentiments in the U.S. that you fail to mention--spearheaded by commentators like Lou Dobbs and percipitated by the illegal immigrant issue, the miserable state of our health care system and the general economic squeeze on the middle class--which has gotten severe, believe me. Whatever their religious or polical values, Americans tend to vote based on their sense of security and their pocketbooks, and for the majority, these feel very threatened.
no subject
1) The Democratic Congress see themselves as having been elected in large part because Americans are fed up with the futile military adventure in Iraq. It was a horrendous act of hubris for the Bush administration to engineer the invasion and they've been unbelievably incompetent in managing the country after they conquered it. While I have some sympathy for the notion that having gone in and created chaos, America ought to stay and fix things, it's become more and more aparent that there is "no fixing of things" that America, as an occupying power, can realistically accomplish. The Democrats in Congress are doing what they can to either end the debacle as soon as possible or--failing that--make it blatantly clear that the albatross hangs around Republican necks--where it fairly belongs.
2) The "value voters" are certainly a real phenomena, but as to their party affiliation, I think they are more up for grabs than previously. This is due to the blatant corruption shown by the Republicans in power over the last 8 years, moral as well as political corruption in many cases. While there will always be hard--line religious conservatives as well as hard-line anti-Government ideologues, in the last eight years Americans have experienced a Government in their dual image and mostly not liked the results.
3) There are growing populist sentiments in the U.S. that you fail to mention--spearheaded by commentators like Lou Dobbs and percipitated by the illegal immigrant issue, the miserable state of our health care system and the general economic squeeze on the middle class--which has gotten severe, believe me. Whatever their religious or polical values, Americans tend to vote based on their sense of security and their pocketbooks, and for the majority, these feel very threatened.