Entries for October 17, 2006

If the public-opinion polls and online betting markets are correct, Democrats will be running one or both houses of Congress come Jan. 3, 2007. But if that moment does arrive, will their congressional leaders find themselves repeating the famous question asked at the end of the 1972 Robert Redford film The Candidate, "What do we do now?" Let me quote from an E-mail I recently got from Jacob Hacker, a Yale political science professor and author of The Great Risk Shift, a new book in which he identifies growing income volatility as the prime cause of widespread worker angst. His bleak take on the Dems' economic agenda in the upcoming 110th Congress: "One thing that's clear is that Democrats are focusing right now on taking down the GOP and very little on what they might do once elected–which may work as an electoral strategy but is going to leave them with a pretty blank slate if they actually win one or both houses."