Democratic Gains in Congress Spell Trouble for Bush
Democratic gains in the House and Senate are likely to further entrench the nation's divided government and escalate partisan strife between Congress and President Bush through the 1992 presidential election.</br></br>While the number of new Democratic seats is relatively modest-one in the Senate and at least nine in the House (including one independent who will caucus with Democrats)-the victories are expected to embolden Democrats to take on Bush more often in the second half of the president's term.</br></br>"It's likely to be more confrontational, more conflictual, more partisan and less oriented toward getting legislation through than differentiating their positions," said Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution.</br></br>"The differences will be brought into sharper focus in the next Congress," Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) pledged yesterday.</br></br>Democratic leaders attribute their electoral advances to the way they painted Bush and the Republican Party as defenders of the rich and themselves as champions of the middle class during this year's prolonged debate over reducing the federal budget deficit. They hold that view even though interviews with voters leaving the polls Tuesday suggested that while voters tended to identify the GOP as the party of the rich, the perception did not appear to be a major factor in any races.