So this is progress?

"I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." "the first words of newly elected Democratic NC Rep. Heath Shuler's victory speech Hope is no small commodity in an election campaign. Every candidate, aspiring and incumbent alike seeks to tap into, harness and mobilize the unrealized spiritual and material desires of their constituents. But in today's unreformed, high-financed national campaigns, the expropriation and exploitation of hope is a strategic matter best left to party leaders. The candidate is secondary. Like any product, what's more important than the product's utility is its marketability: exposure, brand name recognition and consumer demand to yield the most returns for its corporate parent. This mid-term election cycle was no exception to this ritual, and in fact, the Democratic Party may have broken new ground. The media has been flooded with euphoric pronouncements all but heralding the total resuscitation of US democracy itself in the wake of what many are referring to as a "referendum" on President Bush, the Republican Party and the war in Iraq. The overall effect might be best expressed as: "You see? The system really does work!" Not so fast. To leap to the conclusion that this election somehow marks a progressive turn of events is to invest faith in a very willfully distorted larger political context which seeks to prey upon voter desperation, disenfranchisement and an ever-shrinking collective memory span. It is akin to taking anxiety medication. In the post-electoral hubris it might be easy to mistake sacrificial lamb Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Democratic dragon-slaying, which it was not. It might also even be easy to forget six years of the bipartisan decimation of the Constitution, as exemplified by the USA PATRIOT Act. With few exceptions, the Democratic Party quietly helped usher in a new era of Congressional irrelevance by ceding to Bush autocratic powers heretofore unthinkable in a true democracy. To break this "democracy triumphant" spell of redemption one need only repeat the question to oneself: "What is a signing statement?" Though many of us here at AGR engaged in strategic voting, we have no illusions about what's really transpired and feel it's worth mentioning. We've been here before. What's important is that the public was treated to a spectacle of self-cleansing, whereupon the system proves that it is self-correcting by shuffling staff positions, and in which ultimately ineffectual internal investigations and hearings are sometimes subsequently held mainly for their psychological value. This time, both parties–and most importantly, the republic itself–got to take a bath. The Republicans got a phony reprimand in a display of pseudo-humility, while the ineffective Dems received rare praise for effectiveness. All parties involved were gifted with sorely needed makeovers. In some instances these makeovers took on rather bizarre features. According to the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and other leading daily newspapers, nowhere was this more evident than in our own backyard. Freshman Congressman Heath Shuler is cited again and again as the exemplary "new Democrat." While acknowledging that many demoralized voters tactically voted against Shuler's infamously corrupt incumbent opponent rather than for Shuler himself, it's important to look at what "progress" was purchased in exchange. Shuler ran on an anti-abortion, anti-immigrant platform, while paying lip service to the environment. The ex-NFL player's talking points rarely strayed from tossing the ambiguous and self-conscious sound byte "Mountain Values" at whatever topic was lobbed in his direction. For the uninitiated liberal transplant, such phraseology is euphemistic language which typically connotes: white, patriarchal, gun-toting, private property-coveting, anti-abortion, anti-gay and Christian. Sound Republican? Maybe it shouldn't be surprising considering Shuler's recent political background in Tennessee, where his voting record shows a history of having only voted in four elections, including a Republican primary in 2002. Shuler, taken by Republican Congressman Van Hilleary's anti-abortion stance in his race for Tennessee governor, was scheduled to hold a fundraiser for the candidate. After Rahm Emanuel, the chairman of the national Democratic campaign to win back the House of Representatives, badgered a reluctant Shuler to run, he finally obliged. This prompted then-North Carolina GOP chairman Ferrell Blount to issue a mocking press release last April saying: "Heath Shuler has some strong Republican credentials in Tennessee, and we look forward to his many years of work in support of Republican candidates now that he has moved to Western North Carolina. The conservative, pro-life positions he has endorsed in the past lead me to believe that he will strongly support our own WNC Republican candidates who have been fighting for family values and conservative principles for years." 'Phased redeployment' While many voters want to see a drastic change in the US role in Iraq (55 percent said in exit polls that the US should pull out some or all troops), the shift in policy being proposed by the Democratic leadership does not appear to be especially promising. On the heels of their triumph at the polls, the incoming Senate leadership has called for a change of course in Iraq that is being touted as a vast overhaul of US policy in Iraq. The Senators have described their plans for US involvement with the cryptic phrase "phased redeployment." Echoing the Bush administration's call for an increased roll for Iraqi forces in taking control over their country, the lawmakers have said that they intend to push for a policy in which US forces will play more of an advisory roll for Iraqi troops and begin a "phased redeployment," reducing the US presence in the war-torn country. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who has garnered extensive press coverage this week, has said that the reduction in forces should begin in four to six months, while emphasizing that any resolution concerning troop withdrawals in the new Congress will not push for definitive numbers of troops to leave Iraq by specific dates. In other words, if Democrats do push for a "timetable" for withdrawal, it might very well be an open-ended one. Levin, slated to become head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with National Public Radio that a "limited number" of US forces would remain in Iraq to assist Iraqi forces and possibly include "a very small counterterrorist group." A complete withdrawal from Iraq, at least at this point in time, does not appear to be on the agenda. While the new Congress does seem poised to alter the course of the Bush administration's Iraq policy to some extent, the Democrats have pledged not to use their sway in a crucial area: wartime appropriations. In a series of votes authorizing funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the vast majority of House Democrats voted in favor of the spending bills, with near unanimity amongst Senate Democrats. Now, with control of Congress, they have pledged to follow the same course. Impeachment proceedings over the Bush administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence would seem like a legitimate course of action for the new Democratic Congress, given the mountain of evidence pointing to the administration's misdeeds in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. No luck there. Nancy Pelosi, set to become the new speaker of the House, has said repeatedly that impeachment is not on the agenda. One can only speculate whether this is a result of the fact that impeachment proceedings would implicate a significant number of her colleagues in the Democratic Party who voted to authorize force against Iraq in 2002–including incoming Senate majority leader Harry Reid. The referendums Liberals celebrating a supposed ideological shift said to have caused a string of Democratic victories in last week's election cite progress not only at the national level but also at the state level. One point of progress was South Dakota voters' rejection of an abortion ban that would have abolished nearly all abortions and endangered the lives of thousands of women. Other progressives point to the endorsement of stem cell research in Missouri and the approval in Massachusetts of a resolution demanding the Bush administration end the Iraq War. There is no denying that these measures are all steps in a more progressive direction, but this does not necessarily mean that the US is experiencing a leftward shift on a national level. The reality is much more ambiguous than some progressives would like to admit. Perhaps the clearest example of this ambiguity exists in the state of Arizona where a couple of high-profile referendums were passed simultaneously. Arizona was the only state to reject a ban on gay marriage, making it the first US state to do so. While it would seem that this is a clear victory for the progressive community at large, as well as the queer community, it must also be pointed out that seven other states approved similar bans. This brings the total number of states with gay marriage bans to 27, a figure that puts this so-called national "progressive shift" into perspective. While Arizonans were voting down the gay marriage ban they were also voting in favor of four measures designed to make life more difficult for immigrants. These measures made English Arizona's official language, deny bail to illegal immigrants, bar illegal immigrants from winning punitive damages, and deny in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants. These measures each won approval from approximately three quarters of Arizona voters. So, while voters there were protecting the civil rights of some they were also restricting the civil rights of others. The Arizona immigration vote reflects a trend seen elsewhere in the country. Many of the Democratic Party's candidates said to be the heralds of change–such as Heath Shuler–were actually running on platforms whose social policies, especially on immigration, must have been conservative enough to make some longtime Republican voters feel more comfortable casting votes for Democrats. This is yet another indicator that while some progressives praise what they see as a leftward shift in US politics, the reality may be that the Democrats have simply moved farther to the right to court conservative voters.