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It’s Up to Us |
On Nov. 7, a handful of voters will decide if we will have another two years of Republican corruption and abuse of authority. The outcome of these races will determine the political environment for the 2008 presidential election and years to come.
Easily forgotten is how close 15 of the Republicans’ victories were in 1994. Had Democrats in key districts won a combined 52,000 more votes, there would have been no “Speaker Gingrich.” That failure continues to devastate our country.
Yes, the Mark Foley/Dennis Hastert scandal has the Republicans on the defensive and has opened up unlikely districts with only weeks to go. But we can’t get carried away with premature celebration—it’s still a very tough fight that will be decided by a few thousand votes in a dozen districts.
Take a look at this list. You can be sure that on Nov. 8 there will be another list of races decided by such small margins. It’s up to us whether those names will deliver change or more of the same.
This is our responsibility.
Mike Podhorzer
Deputy Political Director
AFL-CIO
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[…] The only thing that I know about the Novemeber elections is that they are going to turn on a few thousand voters in dozens of districts across the country. Mike Podhorzer who is the deputy director of the AFL-CIO’s political department shared the most meaningful piece of information about what the upcoming election was about in a blog post on the AFL-CIO’s blog. Simply put the Republican majority that we’ve had to deal with over the last few years is accounted by 51,321 votes in 15 districts in 1994 with no single district margin larger than 6,444 votes, and several at around 1,000 votes. That’s it! The point of the 1994 numbers is that a Democratic majority in Congress is going to be built with similar number in 2006 if it happens. That margin as Mike points out is something that labor voters will have to make up in the upcoming elections. For over a dozen years Repbulicans from Geingrich to Delay and Bush have kicked around working Americans. People who more times than not live paycheck to paycheck and worry about their income and health insurance have become even less secure. […]
[…] Because in 1994, when the Republicans swept the House, 15 seats were decided by razor thin margins. […]