Dems Took A Pounding...Did It Have To Turn Out This Way?

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Now that Democrats have lost the House, pundits will likely declare a mandate for a right-wing agenda. Don't believe a word of it. What we witnessed tonight was a protest vote by an angry sector of the electorate, encouraged by hundreds of millions in spending by corporate-funded groups, that has attributed its falling fortunes to a cultural change in Washington. People who are not like them are running things in Washington, and everything really sucks.

The final results of the 2010 mid-term elections have yet to be tallied, but progressives have already begun their soul-searching.

Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Lynne Woolsey, congresswoman from California, told Pacifica News Radio that the Democrats lost the House because "we weren't bold enough." If they had started off with a jobs bill, Woolsey said, their position would be different tonight. And, Woolsey said, "We could have done a much better job of letting people know what we had accomplished."

At an election-night event broadcast by Free Speech TV at a progressive gathering-place in Washington, D.C., longtime labor activist Bill Fletcher complained that progressives left the right a wide opening when, after the election, the leaders who had put together the coalition that elected President Barack Obama sent those activists "back to the barracks."

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