Election Eve Analysis

Today the nation's unemployment rate dropped to 4.4%. That rate has only been lower for 28 months out of the last 30 YEARS (during the final quarters of the dot-com bubble). My point is, on the domestic front, it simply doesn't get any better than this. Five years ago the Democrats, alongside numerous newpaper editorials and the broadcast media, claimed that lowering tax rates would somehow drive the American economy deeper into recession, would increase unemployment, and would explode the state and federal budget deficits.

All of these people couldn't have been more wrong. Incomes are rising, millions upon millions of jobs have been created, and the deficit is shrinking by the day. Tax receipts are higher now than at even the height of the late 90s boom. Just imagine the surpluses we'd have if it wasn't for 9/11, 2 wars, the most costly natural disaster in history, and the enormous surge in welfare and pork-barrel spending.

Now good people can disagree over Iraq, and just how effective our plan has been there, because that's what Tuesday is mostly about. But just about every leader of Al-Qaeda says it's the central front of the war on terror. Our president tends to believe the same. So Democrats must either believe 1) somehow it's not the central front, or 2) it's the central front, but the war on terror simply isn't worth winning.

All of this having been said, I still understand why people want change in Congress. I've stated a million times my disappointment with the Republican leadership in Washington. They've failed to deliver on a number of conservative promises, and have acted like liberals on issues of spending and expanding the welfare state. I'm just not sure a Democratic house would be any better. In fact, I think it'd be far worse. Some say gridlock would be good thing, as it would help to limit runaway spending. But in the 80s we had divided government and this still didn't stop the Democratic Congress from spending money like UGA sorority girls, so I'm skeptical of this argument.

All in all, I'm not as pumped up about this election as previous ones. If the Dems win the House, and they likely will, this will force much-needed leadership changes on the Republican side who have been corrupted by power. But it will also mean a San Francisco Speaker of the House who, like the rest of the party she leads, is a Keynsian socialist. She'll make it 100x harder to keep Bush's tax rate cuts (currently set to expire in 2010) permanent, and she'll try to further expand the size and scope of government at a faster rate than Bush ever did. Thank God for the veto.