NH MEMO TO WHITE HOUSE:
MISSION HALF-ACCOMPLISHED, TWO SENATORS TO GO

Nobody really expects George Bush to get the message -- even though it was written in dark blue ink and tossed through the White House window on a piece of New Hampshire granite. (Despite the sudden dismissal of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the President still seems clueless that his policy has been a failure from the get-go.) But to everyone else in America, the message was clear. Business as usual stinks.

In one fell swoop, New Hampshire’s mini-Congressional delegation flipped from red to blue. Both Republican representatives to the US House were handed their walking papers and Democratic Gov. John Lynch was re-elected by the highest margin in the state’s history. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the formula that, across the nation, reversed control of the Congress from Republican to Democrat for the first time in 12 years. Ex-Congressman Jeb Bradley got it right in his concession speech when he said he was caught in a "perfect storm" that swept the country. It is a storm, and it has hopefully just begun to blow. As a bonus, NH turned its own legislature blue too -- one of the largest democratic (now Democratic) bodies in the world. Only Republican Senators John Sununu and Judd Gregg are still standing because they were not on the ballot this time around.

Both winners in the NH race stand openly opposed to the destructive policies of the current administration. Representative-elect Paul hodes railed against the "endless war and endless debt" of the Bush administration. Carol Shea-Porter based her campaign on withdrawing troops from Iraq.

American’s are, by nature, pretty passive when it comes to mid-term elections. Not this time. Most of us still don’t have a clue who Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes are. It doesn’t really matter. They are not Jeb Bradley or Charlie Bass – and that is good enough for New Hampshire. Now they have been given the opportunity to create the change they promised us.

The day before the 2006 election, President Bush stood before cheering cherry-picked supporters and gloated over the death penalty meted out to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. It was, he said, a clear symbol that democracy has arrived in Iraq. The crowd cheered. It was a chilling sight. Since when has a sitting President gleefully advocated the hanging of the former leader of another country? Since when has a political party cared more for the demise of a few stem cells than for the lives of an estimated 600,000 foreign citizens who are dead because our nation attacked them – when they did not attack us? We have been led, in six years, down a very dark tunnel to a frightening place by men who did not know their way. With any luck, yesterday’s election was a turning point in one of the saddest journey’s in American history. New Hampshire, finally, has sent two lame runners back to Washington with that message.

Across the border in Massachusetts voters saw another ray of sunshine. Despite some of the most horrific attack ads in state history, Deval Patrick handily defeated Lt. Gov. Kerry Healy for governor. Like Senator Barack Obama, Patrick appears, at first blush, to be a potential leader in a new generation of centrist politicians. Patrick simply did not respond to his opponents attack ads, and with each rebuff, his popularity increased. In his acceptance speech election night, Patrick noted that his campaign strategy was "refusing to build myself up by taking any one down." And the miracle is – that it worked. When Patrick’s pumped-up supporters began to boo at the mention of outgoing Republican governor Mitt Romney, Patrick scolded them saying "that is not what we’re about".

While Republicans immediately began to downplay the 2006 election as merely the ebb and flow of politics, this appears to be much more. Deval Patrick is the first black governor in Massachusetts and the second in American history. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi, if she becomes majority leader, will be the first woman Speaker of the House – one heartbeat and a pace-maker away from the presidency. It appears, at this early point, that not a single Democrat running for office in this election lost.

"Governing by photo-op and sound-bite has failed us," Patrrick said in his acceptance speech. That may never change, but for a majority of voting Americans, the tragic misguided course America has been on may finally begin to turn. -- JDR