This election has proved a much different and far more enjoyable experience than the last (indeed, the only strong feeling shared between the two of them was a desire to strangle John Kerry). And yes, I cackled with laughter as the results were finalized…. But then my pessimism sank in. With the Democrats now in control of Congress for the first time since 1994, there is lots of talk of ending corruption and partisan politics; Bush even invited the new House Majority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, and several other leading Democrats to lunch.

But honestly, how much of a change can we expect from all of this? The administration got Iraq wrong in so many ways (starting the war while we were still in Afghanistan, not providing adequate troop levels, no WMDs, no counter-insurgency plan, little oversight on reconstruction), it’s hard to think of anything that can be done to secure this elusive “victory” that Bush keeps talking about. We can either stay and incite further resentment and violence for years to come, or leave with the very real possibility of the country and the rest of the region falling into further chaos. The greatest legacy of Donald Rumsfeld may well be the impossibility of the Iraq situation that he led the way in creating.

But this is an old argument; back to the Democrats controlling Congress. What impact are they going to have? Bruce Bartlett, an architect of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 GOP takeover of the House, wrote in the New York Times: not very much. The President has veto power, and while he’s only used it once (of all things, it was to prevent embryonic stem cell research from going forward), that was more because his own party was running both houses. Just before the election, Nancy Pelosi laid out her “hundred hours” plan, legislation to be enacted in the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress that includes “breaking the link between lobbyists and legislation… no new deficit spending… implementing the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission… raising the minimum wage… fixing the Medicare prescription drug program, putting seniors first by negotiating lower drug prices,” along with promoting stem cell research, cutting student loan interest rates in half, cutting back multi-billion dollar subsidies for oil companies, and fighting for retirees by fighting any attempt to privatize Social Security.

That’s a tall order to fill, if vague (do we really expect Congress to bite the hand that feeds and cut the lobbyists loose?), but it’s certainly ambitious; let’s just hope it’s honest too. I’m still a relative newcomer to this whole politics game, and this is the first time my side has won, so I have yet to be betrayed and have campaign promises broken. I’m not saying the Democrats should go mad with power, but they should certainly stick to their guns. Bush has the veto, but if the Democrats can start outlining a consistent (and good) policy, they’ll get the White House in 2008 and get something done. But in the meantime, they’re going to have to cooperate with the current administration and Congressional Republicans.

Bipartisanship, done correctly, is good. It entails both sides being critical not only of each other, but of themselves, and thereby coming to an agreeable solution somewhere in the middle. So all this talk of bipartisanship should be cause for relief; but yet again my optimism is decidedly guarded. Mutual cooperation may mean true bipartisanship, or it could just mean the Democrats will replace the newly-ousted Republicans as Bush’s fluffers, essentially falling back into the position they were in from the post-9/11 period to the primaries of the 2004 election. To work with the man is one thing, but to let him off the hook because he finally got rid of his most universally reviled cabinet member is, once again, suicide for a party that rode to Washington on a wave of discontent with a bloated White House and complacent Congress.

There’s actually some huge potential for the rhetoric to soften often on the other side of the aisle as well, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the issue of homosexuality. In the past three years especially, gay-baiting has been a tried-and-true method of mobilizing the Religious Right; in the past month alone Bush thought he had come upon a life preserver in the perfect storm of Republican scandals when he vigorously denounced a New Jersey supreme court ruling that declared outlawing gay marriage was unconstitutional and that the state legislature would have offer civil unions or gay marriage within six months. That perfect storm, however, only got perfecter; with less than a week before election day, sometime male escort Mike Jones revealed that evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, who had long preached that “the gay lifestyle” was a sin, had enlisted his services for sex and methamphetamine. I guess the opiate of the masses wasn’t doing it for him.

On its own that might not have been enough to weaken the family values voting bloc, but the GOP was still reeling from the Mark Foley scandal, which revealed that the drafter of a series of child molestation laws was not only gay, but a cyber-pederast to boot (not that these two things are related; look no further than the Van Halen song “Hot For Teacher” and the concept of the MILF for evidence that pedophilia cuts across lines of gender and sexual orientation). This was one of many incidents that had turned the centrists away, but it was the cincher that kept the evangelicals and fundamentalists (yes there’s a distinction between the two, but Lord knows I don’t know it) from coming out, so to speak, in support of the Republicans. The incident has much broader implications, however: it brought attention to a number of dutiful gay Republican congressional workers and staffers, essentially exposing the duality of a party that thrived on gay bashing while installing in key positions the very people it was vilifying. I can’t imagine the strategy working much longer, state constitutional amendments be damned; if not now, then soon these so-called family values folk will have to learn to, you know, value their family members and acknowledge the considerable number of gay people in their ranks.

So maybe this is the beginning of a bright new direction for Congress. Maybe the especially nasty election season was supposed to be a crucifixion of sorts, and we’re in the three day point before the resurrection of decency in politics… maybe. I don’t know if there was a campaign ad with Jesus (it wouldn’t surprise me), but there was one in Colorado about raising the minimum wage that had Moses and the 10 Commandments. Gosh, isn’t it great to be done with November 7?

My name is Ben Verschoor, and I approve this message.