The View From Here . . .

Now that the Democratic party will be in the political wilderness for at least the next three and a half years, the party and its allies are mounting a spirited counterattack on the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress.

The Democrats have assailed the Republican majorities in Congress as, in the words of a recent New York Times article as "drunk with power, overreaching on issues like Social Security and judicial nominations, ethically challenged, and profoundly out of touch with their constituents".

One principal target of the Democrats is Tom DeLay, the House majority leader. Perhaps taking a cue from the Republicans' attacks on Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright in the late 1980's, the Democrats have sharply criticized on Mr. Delay's ties with lobbyists, his fundraising practices and employment of family members in his office.

Mr. DeLay certainly did not help himself with remarks about federal judges that the White House had to disavow last week.

More substantively, the Democrats are eager to make the case that the Republicans are captive to Christian fundamentalists. They have seized upon the sad case of Terry Schiavo, and the willingness of Republican leaders to pass quick legislation enabling federal review of the case, as evidence that Republicans are more interested in the agenda of the Christian right than of the concerns of ordinary Americans. And of course they will make this charge of pandering to fundamentalists in what looms as the major political battle this year - the effort to eliminate the filibuster of judicial nominees in the Senate.

It is difficult to know if these tactics will work, either in terms of derailing the agenda of the second Bush Administration or in reducing or eliminating Republican Congressional majorities in the 2006 elections.

The President's last Gallup approval rating is at 50%, fairly low for a reelected president but on a par with many periods of his tenure. It is not clear whether the Democratic attacks are taking a toll. One suspects that the President's Social Security initiative, which is hard to explain and necessarily likely to engender concerns and fears, is dragging down his numbers. Somewhat ironically, the better news in Iraq recently and generally around the world may have eroded the traditional Republican advantage on foreign policy issues since they are less pressing concerns. The ratings of Congress have likewise been in some decline, but certainly not to disastrous level.

Obviously, the Democratic hope is that they will be able to engender the same sense of outrage that the Republicans created prior to the 1994 election, when the GOP unexpectedly took control of both houses of Congress. The Republicans were able to capitalize on a scandal involved bounced checks, ethical problems surrounding a key Democratic Congressman, Daniel Rostenkowsky, as well as a general sense that Democrats, who had controlled the House for 40 years, had simply been in power for too long. Also, relatively low Clinton Administration job approval ratings hurt the Democrats.

One difference, however, is that the Republicans, in addition to railing against "scandal and disgrace", ran on a substantive platform in 1994. Labeled the "Contract With America", the GOP set forth a ten point program with fairly specific proposals on budgets, welfare, crime, taxation and a number of other subjects. One would imagine that the current Democrats, in addition to articulating a sharply negative campaign against their opponents, will need to propound a very coherent, specific vision for the future if they are to improve their fortunes materially in the next few years.