Veto Power
But I suspect that the 2006 election was really about the 2008 election. As things stand now, while the Democrats may have majorities in the Senate and House, they still don’t have the White House. Unless they all become as loony as some in the most extreme core of their party and try to impeach George W. Bush, he will have veto power for the next two years.

Whether he would use the veto pen remains to be seen. Bush has not been noted for vetoing legislation. But then, his party has been in power since January 1995 and he has been sitting in the White House for the past six years with a Republican-controlled House and Senate. He could get by with deals among his fellow Republicans and a few Democrats.

Now that’s changed. The opposition controls the legislative process, and both sides recognize that the voters have only given them a short time to show what they can do before the next presidential election.

So important is that 2008 run for all the marbles that both sides will be wary. Look how panicky the Democrats got when their 2004 losing standard-bearer, John Kerry, put his silver foot in his mouth with his remark about the troops. His party remembers that his anti-gun record cost him several states he should have won, just like Al Gore’s record on the gun issue cost him the 2000 election.

Does that mean that Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers, Charles Rangel and Carolyn McCarthy in the House and Schumer, Leahy, Kennedy and Feinstein in the Senate are not out to get all the new gun restrictions they can? Absolutely not! Those hoplophobes and their extreme core supporters are ideologues and dreamers. But they are also politicians, and they know the value of dissembling and laying the groundwork for a 2008 White House victory.

They may very well go easy on the gun issue for two reasons. First, they have been trying to downplay the classic anti-gun Democrat rhetoric in order to move more to the center of the political spectrum, and many of their winners this year are as pro-gun, or more so, than the Republicans they replaced. Second, they don’t want to upset the applecart in the middle of the road before the 2008 election.

In the past, the Democrats have been known for being almost as anti-business and they are anti-gun. You would expect that in that case, Wall Street and the business community would be shaking in their boots at the results of the election.

That’s not the case. The stock market apparently likes inactivity in Washington. Stocks were moving up before the election and, so far, they have continued their gains after the election results were in.

A standoff between a Republican-controlled White House—lame duck or not—and a new Democrat-controlled Congress apparently doesn’t sound that bad to big business and investors.

Doubting Thomases
If anyone doubts that the 2008 presidential campaign has begun, just look at the maneuvering and public statements of likely Republican and Democrat candidates for president. Hillary Clinton isn’t the only Democrat who is coyly moving to the center ring. Joseph Biden of Delaware, John Kerry, and others have already talked about setting up campaign committees.

On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and others—even George Pataki—are flirting with a run for the Rose Garden. I’m sure there will be many more trying to attract support from key players and, most importantly, the rainmakers who finance campaigns.

Politicians are different from regular people. If you or I had a commanding lead in an election we knew were going to win, we wouldn’t be wasting our money and campaign spending. Politicians, however, are always looking to the next election. And Hillary Clinton is a good example of many key Democrats who donated to the campaigns of others in their party. However, she was the big spender.

Clinton spent more money in the midterm election cycle than any other politician running for office this year, campaign finance records show, investing more than twice as much as most candidates in tight races across the country, according to The New York Times.

To secure her Democratic re-election bid in New York, Clinton spent $29.5 million through the middle of October, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), suggesting that she may have her sights on a future national campaign. While much of the amount is devoted to television advertising, it is the bills for catering, flowers and photography that elevated her tally far above other Senate candidates’.

While Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) spent $21.5 million through the same time period, records show, his spending report comprises bills like $30.33 at Papa John’s pizza, $59.50 at Panera Bread and $74.34 at the Olive Garden.

Not so for Clinton, whose campaign reported sending a $6,585 check to Flutterbyes for flowers in Las Vegas, NV, $5,397.50 to Le Petit Gourmet Catering in Glendale, CO, and $80,000 to Tavern on the Green in Manhattan. Those were among the bills gleaned from a page-by-page review by The Times of Clinton’s third-quarter campaign finance report, which showed disbursements of more than $8 million.

Helping Others
The chairman of the FEC, Michael E. Toner, said only a handful of Senate candidates had ever spent more. The spending patterns of the Clinton campaign demonstrated “an extraordinary burn rate,” he said, which was particularly striking considering she did not seem to have a serious challenger in John Spencer, the former mayor of Yonkers, NY, her Republican rival.

“It may be that Clinton is spending so heavily in New York to try to accomplish the kind of landslide that President Bush enjoyed in 1998,” Toner told The Times, referring to the Texas governor’s race eight years ago. “The president’s 1998 race unquestionably helped lay the groundwork for a successful presidential campaign in 2000. History may be repeating itself.”

A review of the Clinton campaign’s filings with the FEC showed that in addition to contributing $2.6 million to other Democrats, the campaign spent more than $2 million on advertising for television, radio and newspapers in the third quarter of the year.

Ah, money; the life blood of politics. No one is likely to rock the boat very soon.