By Ronald Baygents, KUNA,
Washington : The U.S. election on Tuesday gave Democrats, Republicans and independents a mandate to work together to find big solutions to the big challenges that the United States faces, said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on Wednesday.
In a joint post-election analysis with his Republican counterpart at the National Press Club the day after Democrat Barack Obama was elected president and Democrats bolstered their congressional majority, Dean said Obama would “set this nation on a course to provide the change that we need and that he promised”.
Alluding to the big voter turnout for Obama among young people, Dean said he believed the election of Obama was “a mandate that the political class in this country has an obligation to young people in this country to stop fighting over stuff that might have been a big issue 25 years ago, but it is not anymore. There are a lot of things that have to be done here”.
Dean predicted bipartisan cooperation “because, I think, this new group of voters will enforce that”.
Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said Republicans suffered big losses on Tuesday because of the “near-impossibility” of either party winning a third consecutive presidential term; the grueling toll taken on the electorate by the unpopular war in Iraq; and a sluggish U.S. economy “buckling under the weight of cratering housing”.
The Republican presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin “came up short in a withering political environment, against a history-making opponent who outspent them by ratios of three- and-four-to-one in the battleground states,” Duncan said, referring to Obama’s powerful political machine.
Duncan noted that Illinois Senator Obama promised a tax cut for 95 percent of the Americans; merit pay and accountability for public school teachers; health care reforms that will allow people to keep doctors and drive down costs; an end to wasteful appropriations earmarks; renewed offshore drilling for oil; increased nuclear energy production; and an expanded military presence in Afghanistan.
“Put simply, Barack Obama just ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower (in 1952),” Duncan said.
Obama “shrewdly abandoned his liberal Senate record and embraced a moderate agenda in 2008,” he added.
President-elect Obama leads a center-left party, but now must govern a center-right nation, Duncan said, adding, “We look forward to working with our new Commander-in-Chief to secure our nation, defeat Islamic extremism, and bring our troops home with honor and victory”.