Politics of the Mid-Term Elections

Most of the first half of a president’s term is spent in campaigning for the mid-term elections and almost whole the latter half in promoting the national elections. No wonder that the war on terror remains awry because much of it is fought to project the administration’s image against the democrats who are labeled as ‘cut and run’ strategists. The motives of Iraq war, which has started hurting the common people, remain totally ambiguous. How is a ‘victory’ in Iraq war defined?

The campaigning for the November 2006 mid-term elections has completely captured the news media; there is hardly any other news in which they are interested. Their reporting has jarringly become monotonous.

Mark Foley’s scandal occupied their attention for the last couple of months and is still not going away. The Foley story is an old hat since several responsible GOP senators and others knew of it for the last several years. It was released to the media only recently with a full blast because it could seriously impact the forthcoming elections. The democrats are playing cool because some of the Republicans are doing it for them. Many Republican candidates are worried that it would adversely affect their chances to win the elections; others are playing it down arguing that the local issues are more important in the mid-term elections than any individual scandal. The scandal however has its own staying power and refuses to go away because of its sensational and salacious content.

Then there is the “Call me, Harold” ad showing a white pro-Republican bimbo. Harold Ford is black and running for a senate seat from conservative Tennessee against Republican Bob Corker, former mayor of Chattanooga. Ford is a popular candidate by virtue of his family history but he will need white and Republican votes to win the election. Corker also is in an embarrassing situation. According to Newsweek (October 30, 2006), “Stuck with an unpopular president and an even less appealing party, Corker is distancing himself from the White House and the GOP led congress. Yet he also needs the conservative base to turn out to vote – and they are unsettled by his divided loyalties.”

The questionable ad appeared in the above political backdrop.

“A dumb bimbo says, I met Harold at the Playboy party…A creep in sunglasses says, so he took money from porn movie producers. I mean who hasn’t?...An African-American woman says, Harold Ford looks nice; isn’t that enough?”

Then the head of the Republican National Committee (Mehlman) tells NBC’s Tim Russert: “I think that ad talks about a number of people on the street talking about things that Mr. Ford allegedly has either done or a proposal he has for the future. I think it’s a fair ad.” Innuendos and more innuendos.

The NAACP Washington director has denounced the ad as a racist slam.
The campaigning is so weird that another ad showed Michael J. Fox, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, “shaking and rocking as he directly addresses the camera, making no effort to hide the effect of his disease.” He is promoting for embryonic stem cell research which can presumably find the cure for Parkinson’s disease. The White House is against the stem cell research.

Some critics have criticized Fox’s ads as exploitative. Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed “Fox was either off his medication or acting during the ad.” Later he retracted and apologized for his comments. Commenting on the promotional potential of the ad, Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia and director of its Center for Politics, said, “If a tiny ad can change votes, this one ought to. This is real. He’s not playing a guy with Parkinson’s – he IS a guy with Parkinson’s.”

Then there is the war of semantics. Since focus on Iraq war is not favorable to the GOP, the White House is using all its semantic capabilities to divert attention from Iraq to the war on terror. Even thought the war on terror is also in a mess, their emphasis is on that President Bush is actually fighting it while the democrats are recommending “cut and run.”

For quite a long time, Bush emphasized “staying the course” in Iraq in opposition to cut and run. Now, in the face of growing criticism of staying the course, the White House has introduced a new cliché of “benchmarks.” Although the benchmarks stance seems to incline toward cut and run, new meanings are constantly introduced in the propaganda war.

The coming mid-term elections will be historic in more than one sense. According to one estimate, they would cost about $2.6 billions by the election date; this is the highest ever cost in the history of mid-term elections. This is because the stakes are high. At present, both senate and the house are controlled by the Republican majority and the administration has been having a free play in its policies. This control may disappear in the coming elections. The Democrats is likely to control both senate and the house or at least one of them in the coming elections. If this happened, the Republicans wouldn’t have the free play.