Democratic Party in the Bush Administration in the United States
Democratic Party Bush’S Second Term
Introduction to Democratic Party in the Bush Administration
Nevertheless, Bush won the election with 51 percent of the popular vote, and the Republican Party widened its majority in both the House and the Senate. Bush’s victory stirred considerable soul-searching in the Democratic Party, which failed to carry a single Southern state and only one of the Great Plains states.
Following the 2004 presidential election, the party regrouped under the leadership of Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and a presidential candidate in 2004. Dean advocated campaigning in every state, reversing a trend in which the Democrats focused almost exclusively on Democratic and tossup states and failed to campaign in areas considered secure for the Republicans.
The ongoing war in Iraq became a pivotal issue as the 2006 midterm elections approached. Polls showed that voters disapproved of Bush’s handling of the war and that most voters favored a pullout of U.S. occupation forces. Bush’s public approval ratings fell to their lowest ever with more than 60 percent of voters voicing disapproval of his job performance. The Republicans were also harmed by corruption scandals, which led to indictments of several congressmen. The Bush administration’s delayed and ineffective response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster cast further doubt on the competency of the Republicans’ leadership. Just weeks before the elections, Republican Mark Foley of Florida resigned from Congress after it was disclosed that he sent inappropriate messages laced with sexual innuendos to teenage congressional pages. Bush tried to link the war in Iraq with the war on terror and at a campaign rally said that a victory for the Democrats would represent a victory for the terrorists.
In the elections the Democrats regained control of the Senate and won a majority in the House. They also won a majority of the state houses with upset victories over Republicans in six gubernatorial contests, including the battleground states of Colorado and Ohio. Democratic candidates won key Senate races in Montana and Virginia, states that had previously been considered Republican territory, and in Missouri and Ohio, which are traditionally seen as bellwether states. Some polls indicated that independent voters went Democratic by a 2-to-1 margin and that nearly a third of Christian evangelicals, considered the core of the Republican base, voted for Democrats. The midterm results appeared to reinvigorate the Democratic Party.” (1)
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Guide to Democratic Party in the Bush Administration
In this Section
Democratic Party, Jacksonian Party, Democratic Party in the North-South Conflict period, Democratic Party in the Lincon Administration, Democratic Party Divisions, Wilsonian Era, New Deal, Democratic Party After Eisenhower, Democratic Party in the Carter Administration, Democratic Party in the Reagan Administration, Democratic Party in the Clinton Administration, Al Gore, Democratic Party in the Bush Administration, Barack Obama.