Optimism and skepticism on Democratic Congress

Both houses of the U.S. Congress come under the control of the Democrats today, giving rise to both optimism and skepticism.

One the one hand, this is the change that the U.S. electorate clearly wanted when it voted in November last year. There was a broad consensus then that the President had not been listening to the country and needed to be sent a strong message.

On the other hand there is fear that the Democrats will let their new-found power go straight to their heads. That fear seems already to be playing out in the new majority party's announced plan to push their agenda without input from Republicans during the first 100 hours.

And, by the way, "first 100 hours" does not refer to a period of 100 continuous hours. It does not mean that the Democrats take their mandate so seriously that they will not eat or sleep for the first four days and four hours to make up for how little was accomplished by Congress in the past. If that were the case, think how inspiring that would be for the country!

But alas, the Democrats are not about to do anything so drastic as that. In this case, "100 hours" refers to the first 100 hours of "official business," which is expected to be stretched out over a period of about two weeks.

I give them credit for not playing the usual game of lowering expectations. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.