Democrats will have firm control of the White House and both houses of Congress. With voters clamoring for change, the party will have a tall task to live up to expectations.
By Janet Hook
11:10 AM PST, November 5, 2008
Reporting from Washington -- The nation's capital woke up today to a political landscape upended by voters clamoring for change, delivering to Democrats more raw power than they have wielded in more than a quarter of a century.
With Barack Obama's election as president and Democrats' gains in the House and Senate, the party is now poised to rewrite the capital's agenda and interrupt a generation of conservative dominance.
"There is a wave of hope that swept the country," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told National Public Radio. "We had a historic mandate; not a mandate for any political party or any ideology, but a mandate to get over those things that divide us and focus on getting things done."
The victory unleashes pent-up demand for a host of Democratic causes, including expanding labor union rights, providing universal healthcare and raising taxes on the wealthy. Conservative politicians and interest groups who have been allied with President Bush, for eight years carried by Washington's political tide, now have to swim upstream.
For Democrats, this abrupt power promotion presents vast risks as well as the opportunity to begin undoing the legacy left by eight years of the Bush administration.
But Obama and the expanded Democratic majority in Congress are shouldering a big burden as they try to satisfy the enormous demand for change in a nation where, according to the latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, 80% or more say the country is on the wrong track.
"Obama has to show that he is prepared immediately to take aggressive steps to deal with the economy," said Matt Bennett, vice president of the centrist Democratic group Third Way. "But Obama is a moderate. People who ignore that do so at their peril."
Given the choice between cautious pragmatism and boldness, the party's left wing has high expectations.
"His instincts will be to be very cautious, but the economic situation gives him no choice but to be bold," said Bob Borosage, head of the liberal Campaign for America's Future.
But Al From, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said he was encouraged by reports that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a former advisor to President Clinton, would be tapped as Obama's chief of staff. A Democratic official on Capitol Hill told The Times this morning that Obama has offered the post but that Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Campaign Committee, has not yet accepted.
"He took on all the hard issues," From said of Emanuel, citing the Clinton-era crime legislation, trade agreements and welfare reform, "the things where Clinton had to form bipartisan coalitions."
Hook is a Times staff writer.
janet.hook@latimes.com
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