The Bipartisan Myth: Democrats Won 35-0

by Cenk Uygur

I keep reading in the mainstream press about how the 2006 election was about the American electorate wanting more bipartisanship. Really? Based on what?

I haven't seen any exit polls from the elections that showed that anyone voted based on bipartisanship or centrism. I have seen many polls that said they voted based on corruption, Iraq and change.


But the real proof is in the numbers. Twenty-nine House seats and six Senate seats changed from Republican to Democrat. None changed from Democrat to Republican. Not one.

That's not bipartisanship. That's a 35-0 blowout.

The American people spoke loud and clear - we want to go in the direction of the Democrats. There were no mixed messages about the Democrats going halfway to meet the Republicans. If anyone has to move towards the middle it is clearly the Republicans.

I don't want to see one more "news" story about how the Democrats should move toward the Republicans or meet them halfway because that's what "people" want. What people? The voters were clear and that is not what they said.

This would seem to be an ironic post since I am a centrist. I want the country to be in the center. And I think the press is also quite centrist and their inclination is to try to bring the country into the center. This is partly because of their neutrality fetish but partly because they have a sense of where the American people stand generally.

But here is the big difference. I recognize that the center is NOT between where the Democrats and the Republicans stand now. The center has stayed the same but both political parties have moved way to the right. So, now the center stands squarely where the Democratic Party is currently. That's partly why many liberal activists complain about the Democratic Party these days.

You know who understands this best? The American people. That's why they gave the Democrats the 35-0 victory last month. Because the Democrats are now exactly in the center, where the American people want to be.

This is why I have written in the past that the American people are not dumb, as many claim, but they are a little slow sometimes. In time, they know exactly where they want to be and always find a way to punish extremism and get back to the sensible center.

Unfortunately, the press is a lot slower. The people have spoken and they still haven't heard it. They are still under the delusion that the midpoint must be between the two parties and have not noticed the political landscape shift underneath them.

I have made the sports analogy before on media neutrality, but it is perfectly fitting here. It would be unacceptable for sports journalists to have the same kind of nonsense neutrality fixation that political news coverage has these days. You can't say the Cowboys and Redskins were both just as good if the Cowboys blew out the Redskins. You have to report the actual score.

Saying the Cowboys won doesn't mean you have a Cowboys bias. It means you watched the game. In this case, I watched the 2006 elections. The Democrats won 35-0. Reporting anything other than that is misleading at best. There was no tie -- or bipartisanship -- here. Stop pretending there was and report the damn score, please.