The Democratic Party (a rant)

[Einzige]

In the good old days, one could be a self-described "progressive" while remaining a stolid Republican through-and-through. My great-grandparents were good examples of this (despite their Catholicism), and one of their parents apparently was a local worker on Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Presidential campaign. That's a tradition they held to firmly, and passed down to my grandmother and her brothers.

Talk to my great-grandmother - her husband having passed away in 2007 - and she sounds very much like a Democrat, though she still takes issue with the notion of abortion. Gay marriage doesn't bother her. She loves Social Security, for obvious reasons. She doesn't like the War in Iraq. She's lukewarm on the death penalty. Despite this, she voted for John McCain last year, and for George Bush before him, and Bob Dole before that, and has voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1944, the first year in which she was eligible to vote, when she cast her ballot for Thomas Dewey.

But political loyalties have a funny way of changing over time. My Uncle Louie, who loves to talk politics with me, is also a Republican, and has been all his life. He was first eligible to vote in 1968, when he voted for Richard Nixon. Like his mother, he hasn't ever voted anything save a straight Republican ticket in his life. And yet, entirely unlike her, he is an arch-conservative, which he says he owes to having spent his formative years in the 1960s. They vote for the same candidates, for the same Party, and yet are worlds away on virtually every issue.

I'm not going to speculate which came first: my uncle's conservatism or his Republicanism. Would he be a conservative today if the Republican Party were still left-of-center? I doubt it. His Republicanism is wholly hereditary; conservatism is a secondary characteristic of this basic fact. And I wonder -- does this inability to forget our political past afflict America as a whole?

Abject nationalism is, and always has been, the defining characteristic of the GOP, and that has been the case since its first national convention in Pittsburgh in 1856. Wrapping yourself up in God and the flag, as it were, has always been part-and-parcel of Republicanism. "Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling through the vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored", and all that. Lincoln, Bush, and all Republicans in-between were abject nationalists, and the Democrats, although an older party, are best defined as counter to whatever the GOP has on offer. In the 1860's the opposition to nationalism meant sectionalism; in the very early part of this millenium it meant "multilateralism".

And so I wonder: how many of the problems of the Democratic Party are the result of the actual policies they proffer, and how many are the result of their simply being Democrats? Does the stigma of Democratic "treachery" and lack of patriotism stem from their modern left-of-center incarnation, or is it a hold-over from an older time? And if the Democratic Party is no longer workable, should it be replaced?

[Samuel]

and the Democrats, although an older party, are best defined as counter to whatever the GOP has on offer. In the 1860's the opposition to nationalism meant sectionalism; in the very early part of this millenium it meant "multilateralism".

Actually the Democratic party split apart and fielded two canidates in 1860. After the civil war, the Democrats became virtually the same as the Republicans, except the Republicans treated blacks... I wouldn't say well, but they came off as beacons of enlightnment in comparison.

And so I wonder: how many of the problems of the Democratic Party are the result of the actual policies they proffer, and how many are the result of their simply being Democrats?

Policies. Party loyalty doesn't win national elections- it depends on the middle.

Does the stigma of Democratic "treachery" and lack of patriotism stem from their modern left-of-center incarnation, or is it a hold-over from an older time?

No. The current stigma is from the cold war because leftists were thought to be inbed with the Soviets.

And if the Democratic Party is no longer workable, should it be replaced?

It has. Repeatedly. The current party is a new version- Johnson made sure of that with the Civil Rights Bill.

[Einzige]

Sure, I understand that. What I'm essentially getting at is the psychology of the electorate in the two-party system: in the early 20th century, nobody challenged the patriotism of progressive Republicans, because Republicanism saved the Union. Which isn't to say that leftism wasn't tarnished as unpatriotic; the Palmer Raids were by far worse than any measure taken during the Cold War. But there were no serious efforts made to, say, tie the progressive Republicanism of a LaFollette in with sympathy towards the Soviet Union.

[Patrick Degan]

Sure, I understand that. What I'm essentially getting at is the psychology of the electorate in the two-party system: in the early 20th century, nobody challenged the patriotism of progressive Republicans, because Republicanism saved the Union. Which isn't to say that leftism wasn't tarnished as unpatriotic; the Palmer Raids were by far worse than any measure taken during the Cold War. But there were no serious efforts made to, say, tie the progressive Republicanism of a LaFollette in with sympathy towards the Soviet Union.

They didn't have to. By that point, the last embers of progressivism had been pretty thoroughly extinguished even before the Red Scare hit.

[Temujin]

Jello Biafra said it best:

How many of you out there think this country's a democracy?

Or is it really more of a one-party state masquerading as a two-party state? The Democrats are on the inside what the Republicans are on the outside--each having almost identical financial backers to grease all the appropriate orifices and holes.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Sure, I understand that. What I'm essentially getting at is the psychology of the electorate in the two-party system: in the early 20th century, nobody challenged the patriotism of progressive Republicans, because Republicanism saved the Union. Which isn't to say that leftism wasn't tarnished as unpatriotic; the Palmer Raids were by far worse than any measure taken during the Cold War. But there were no serious efforts made to, say, tie the progressive Republicanism of a LaFollette in with sympathy towards the Soviet Union.

One has to recall that the Left was much more popular, much better organized, and there was a powerful bottom-up, increasingly class conscious working class movement of this time. That means progressives of the LaFollette variety were the "friendly alternative" offered in lieu of the class enemy in much the same way as European social democracy during the Cold War. The working class and Left has just been driven down much more in the last 30-50 years, and consequently they don't have to offer something as far to the left as LaFollette as an alternative anymore. Its that the ruling class has successfully waged class war on many fronts, and has moved the battle lines over, and now they only have to offer tepid bullshit of the Obama "new progressive" variety, that is, a health care reform proposed by Republicans 15 years ago.