With great power...

So, the Democratic Party has taken control of both houses of Congress. Overall, a good day for America. It's been a long time since I woke up feeling good on a Wednesday morning in early November. For the last two years of the Bush II presidency, at least, Congress will not be a rubber stamp for undermining the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Conventions. That in itself is an enormous victory, and it should not be underestimated.

Of course, these great victories in '06 potentially set up the Democrats for a huge defeat in '08. A lot of Democratic gains on Tuesday were in districts and states where Democrats do not typically win, and these victories often came for a very simple reason: they were not Republicans. As pretty much every pundit has said, this election had less to do with Democratic mobilization and more to do with disillusionment with the Republican Party over the War in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and a whole slew of ethics scandals. 2006 was not the new 1994. Nancy Pelosi had nothing like Newt Gringrich's "Contract with America" that drove Democrats into office. The party had no coherent platform that it was presenting to the American people.

This election puts a heavy burden on the Democrats. If they don't deliver something significantly better, in the public eye, than the Republicans have been doing, then their momentum will disappear in a heartbeat. The Democrats now have power. They are not in the White House, and they still not the "ruling party," but they have power. If they can't show that they can do more and do it better than the Republican-controlled Congress, then they will not only fail to gain the presidency in 2008, but they will also lose their newly-won control of the legislative branch.

Will Rogers once said, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." Thus far, the Democratic Party has failed to give me any indication that that is not still the case. Let's hope they can step up to the plate.