Mitt Rmoney, by virtue of his terminally inept campaign, has effectively resigned as the GOP candidate. (He may disagree, which only highlights his cluelessness.) The rats are streaming for the gangway to escape the sinking ship. Even his running mate is pouring money into his campaign for reelection to Congress—what does that tell you? Barring an extraordinary blunder by President Obama or some cataclysmic political event, Mitt will be choking out his concession speech about 11:00 PM on November 6.
Mission accomplished for the Democrats? Not by a long shot. Follow me beneath the fold for my answer to the question in the title.
We must be magnanimous in victory pile on; we must ruthlessly run up the score. Our goal should be to seize the speaker's gavel and increase our majority in the Senate. Another four years of Republican obstruction would be disastrous for the nation.
But since we cannot, by numbers alone, break the filibuster in the Senate, we must rely on putting the fear of FSM into GOP. If they are soundly repudiated at the polls, we might finally be able to return to governmental sanity. Under what pretext would the honorable Senator from Kentucky treasonous bastard Mitch McConnell be able to obstruct job creation in the face of a Democratic landslide? President Obama, with a decisive electoral win and no worries about reelection, could bully (as in 'bully pulpit') the GOP into doing what is right for the country.
So, what is right? First, let the Bush tax cuts expire, and then define capital gains, carried interest, dividends and inheritances as ordinary income. Set a flat ceiling on tax deductions at something like $100,000, which would leave the middle class unscathed, but expose the income of the very wealthy to the full effects of the progressive tax code.
Second, using the increased revenue, pass a massive infrastructure bill to put ALL our unemployed to work rebuilding our country. There is so much to be done: Roads, bridges, transportation, energy grid, wind and solar, education, the list is endless. Full employment would have the added benefit of giving ALL workers more leverage in the management-labor struggle.
Yes, I concede that these ideas are ambitious, but an arrow cannot soar higher than it is aimed.