Outside view: Emerging Democrat minority

UPI ^ | 11.24.03 | Horace Cooper

[pbear8]

An excellent contribution but it wants another of your great works of art to help illustrate the situation. Perhaps small Ted and Hillary next to regular-sized Reps.

[DeFault User]

The sense that the party promotes the agendas of elite liberals, caters to minorities at the expense of equality of opportunity and fails to treat national security issues seriously undermines the electoral prospects of the party.

One of the best one sentence summaries I've read.

[Yardstick]

What eery logos they've chosen for themselves! Those big hands around the earth.

I read somewhere that the Soviets posted a sign at the from gates of their concentration camps that read "Leading the word to happiness with an iron fist". And isn't that exactly the slogan that the rose-and-fist of the Socialist International communicates symbolically.

These people drop hints about their true nature right in front of our faces.

[DeFault User]

That follow-up article deserves to be posted too:


Outside View: Emerging Dem. minority II

By HORACE COOPER, A UPI Outside View commentary

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- It's been a year since the November 2002 midterm elections.

At this time last year, the serious erosion of the Democrats' national political support was obvious for all to see. The 2002 election was an almost across-the-board loss for them, leading some to suggest the results be taken as a wake-up call, an indication of the need to recalibrate the party's philosophy and message.

No such action occurred and, a year later the problems are even more pronounced.

Relying on indicia such as predicted demographic changes in the United States in the 21st century, the so-called expert opinion is that America is a 50/50 nation, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, aggressive Internet activity and fundraising by leftist organizations such as MoveOn.org and a nascent anti-war movement, most party leaders have determined that no course correction is necessary.

In fact, many have argued that they are winning. As Texan and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey would say, "You can't be this wrong by accident."

The 2002 midterm elections revealed a 53-47 national preference for Republicans over Democrats. A crushing blow, it resulted in the GOP retaking control of the U.S. Senate, maintaining and increasing their control of the U.S. House and taking control of a majority of statehouses and maintaining a majority of governorships.

What's changed since then? The GOP has added three governorships to its majority -- in California, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Going in to the 2004 election close to 60 percent of Americans now reside in states with Republican governors, including the four largest -- California, Texas, Florida and New York.

Sadly, the nation's oldest political party's prospects look more like the short-lived Whigs of the 19th century than that of a thriving national organization capable of governing a nation.

A "values gap" that aids the GOP and hinders the Democrats has accelerated the decline of the venerable party of Jackson and FDR.

Some centrist Democrats and party elders including retiring Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., have sounded an alarum, time is quickly running out. Like the Whigs, the disparate groups that make up the Democratic Party -- union leaders, racial group activists, environmentalists, feminists, economic populists, etc -- find cohabitation with moderate and centrist Democratic Leadership Council types unpalatable and dissolution seems inevitable.

The party faces a Hobson's choice. It can ill-afford to reduce its political coalition to an even smaller level while it tries to remake itself into something more acceptable to the vast center.

For the better part of three decades, the Democrats have faced a structural disadvantage in the Electoral College, the so-called "GOP electoral lock" consisting of states in the South and Southwest that traditionally tilt right in presidential elections.

Although they were able to pick the electoral lock three times by running southerners at the top of the ticket -- Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 -- they've only received a majority of the popular vote for president twice in the 40 years since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Al Gore in 2000, who ran up the vote in places like California but failed to win the states he needed to create a majority in the Electoral College.

On the other hand, the GOP has prevailed six times in the same period, winning a majority of the popular vote four times.

Furthermore the GOP's late 20th century "electoral lock" is becoming nearly impregnable and the troublesome trend for Democrats is that it is expanding to lower ballot offices, starting with the U.S. Senate and spreading to state and local elections.

Just 20 years ago -- even in the wake of losing national presidential elections -- Democrats controlled outright 32 state legislatures and Republicans 11. The ominous winds of change have been blowing ever since. Today Republicans control 21 legislatures outright and Democrats 16, exactly half the number they once did. And the gap looks likely to expand rather than contract.

Rather than acknowledge the structural political disadvantage they face, the Democrats seemed poised to pursue even more insularity and division. In less than six months the Democrats are likely to exacerbate the developing split within their party when its dominant liberal/leftist wing flexes its muscle and selects one of their own as a nominee.

This impresario will likely run on a campaign of revulsion for our nation's mainstream anti-terrorism policies and adopt an enthusiastic embrace of the left's divisive secularist liberal social agenda. If 1994 was America's temper tantrum, 2004 is gearing up to be America's drive-by. Woe unto other Democrats running at the local and state level, because they'll likely get taken out as collateral damage.

The Republicans have a much easier time selling lower taxes, individual responsibility, traditional values and a strong national defense to the typical voter than Democrats have explaining a strident secularism, social schemes that cater to minorities at the expense of equal opportunity, counter-cultural value systems and a remarkable unwillingness to promote America's national security interests.

The headwind that the Democrats faced in the midterm elections may seem like a tsunami if trends continue.

The South, once a stronghold for the Democrats, is fast becoming the GOP's permanent base. Republicans now hold nearly two-thirds of southern House and Senate seats. In 2004 Senate seats held by Democrats in North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia are in danger of flipping to the Republicans.

Due to population growth and related demographic changes, the 12 Southern states including Tennessee that denied Gore a stay at the White House will be worth more -- 168 electoral votes this time -- and will take Bush three-fifth's of the way to re-election, all before winning a single non-Southern state. In Texas alone, the new GOP-controlled Legislature's redistricting plan will likely extend the GOP margin in the House of Representatives.

Things are not much better elsewhere. The Democrats may have established a stronghold of their own in the Northeast, but it is a poor trade. Recent GOP gubernatorial victories in Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire show that even here the extremism endemic to the Democratic Party can be a big loser.

Rather than respond to the alarm, some suggest this is the low-water mark for Democrats and they are about to start the climb back up. In fact, things can and may get a lot worse.

According to a recent Pew Research Center report, fewer and fewer people wish to associate with the Democrats. Once the overwhelmingly dominant political party in the United States, only 31 percent of Americans now see themselves as Democrats, the weakest position of the party since the dawn of the New Deal. A national Harvard University survey found that 61 percent of college students -- normally a liberal-leaning bloc -- support Bush and the GOP.

And many of these former Democrats have become Republicans. Worst still, these switches have taken place in key swing states that will likely turn an electoral squeaker into an electoral nightmare. Consider: in Minnesota where Democrats traditionally outnumber GOPers, now Republicans have a 3-point registration advantage. In Michigan what was formerly a 7-point Democrat registration advantage has turned into a 3-point preference for the GOP. Similar changes have occurred in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Florida. Except for Florida, these are all states that Bush lost in 2000 in his successful presidential race.

In November 2003 in nearly two-thirds of the country -- the areas that some Democrats deride as "flyover land" -- Democrats face significant political headwinds that will be nearly impossible to overcome. A victory plan in 2004 predicated on an agenda of pacifism, tax hikes and counter-cultural liberalism sets up all the needed elements for a perfect storm. Yet Democrats continue to console themselves with the Pollyannaish notion that America is still a 50-50 nation.

--

(Horace Cooper, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow with the Center for New Black Leadership.)

[dead]

The truth is that unless the party can convince the public to change its view on these issues, the decline of the party will continue.

Good luck to them in that effort, but I just don’t see a groundswell of support rising up for things like partial birth abortion, fisting classes in grade school, total disarmament of the citizenry, more confiscatory tax rates, government run health care, and slavery “reparations” to people who’ve never even met a slave.

[dead]

If 1994 was America's temper tantrum, 2004 is gearing up to be America's drive-by.

Network news anchors will be jumping out of windows that day.

[Hank Rearden]

Great, more Republicrat victories ahead.

More unrestrained spending. More pork-laden squandering of our money. More pandering to Welfare Farmers, Greedy Geezers and Big Steel.

No vetoes. More debt. Higher taxes.

What a wonderful future ahead. I can't wait.

[onyx]

Hey Meek, you have every reason to be proud!

Note to dems: "Don't mess with Texas."

[onyx]

Fabulous article --- fabulous post. What a perfect way to start the morning with a smile, a very big smile. :)

[MeekOneGOP]

Isn't that amazing ?? Sneaky devils getting bolder !! ...

I did notice that a while back I was posting a rant about the CPUSA (Communist Party) was linking MoveOn.org on their website. MoveOn is an activist group that (you probably know) organized to fight the clintoon impeachment. They failed to 'Move On' after he skipped free.

Anyway, the CPUSA and/or (more likely) MoveOn.org must have caught he** over that because that link was removed a few weeks ago ...

___________________________________

CPUSA/MoveOn.org Anti-war Activism.

Communist Party USA

MoveOn.org

[mwl1]

The RATS will be consigned to escalating permanent minority status until they fully repudiate Clintonism. This is the karma coming back to them for propping up a filthy sexual predator and liar.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks ! ...

[onyx]

I hope they continue to be led by the Clinton's and Terry McAwful at the DNC. :)

[mwl1]

Yes, for the foreseeable future, consign them to deserved oblivion, but ultimately we need two rational, functioning, healthy political parties for American democracy.

[Constitutional Patriot]

"On the other hand, there needs to be a real examination among the party members as to why issues important to core Democrat constituencies prove to be losers nationally."

Hmmm...could it be that views held by Democrat constituencies are not representative of the views held by the majority of Americans?

[section9]

If the decline began 40 years ago, it is only because the bargain that FDR made was, in the long run, a reward of fool's gold.

The meat of the modern Democratic Party has always been the brokering of rewards and favors to constituent groups in return for their support of the Party elite. Once, it was the Kennedys, then the Clintons. Some day it may be someone else. But power in the Democratic Party always centered around the old Eastern Establishment. Later in history, the Democrats would become controlled by the dot.com zillionaires of the New Economy and Trial Lawyers. In their turn, the party elite doled out favors to Labor, immigrants, and after 1960, blacks. What held this coalition together was the mastery of the tax code by Democrats and the mastery of the House, where spending programs began. But something happened.

Political power is all about the ability to dispense patronage to supporters and withhold it from opponents. To succeed at patronage, Democrats had to cobble together a coalition each time elections occured. When victory occured, Democrats would create pork for their constituents or long term entitlements to benefit target demographic groups (such as federal support for state welfare programs to buy off blacks, poor whites, and Hispanic immigrants).But what happened when members of the coalition began to split apart?

It was the twin occurance of the Goldwater Campaign and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that first broke the coalition.

The Goldwater Campaign, despite the feckless myopia of Barry himself, gave rise to a new generation of anticommunist Conservative activists. These people were centered around the permanent campaign of Ronald Reagan and the intellectual activists at National Review, Encounter, and the Committee for a Free World. They would eventually turn the Republican Party from a reactionary, "me too" force, into an intellectual powerhouse that not only produced ideas for governance but created in the vehicle of that party the instrument for the demise of the Soviet Communist Party. These facts alone gave rise to the new decisive actor in American politics: the Republican Conservative white southerner, who had to have something more than opposition to Civil Rights to hang his hat on. Anti-communism and an advocacy of lower taxes, smaller government, and robust national defense would replace petty racism as the driving force of the "white south".

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became the Great Myth of the Democrats and cemented their hold on the black community. In truth, the Act would not have passed without the leadership of Everett McKinley Dirksen, Jerry Ford (then a rising young Turk in the House), and Prescott Bush, among other Republicans, who formed a coalition with Johnson and Dr. King to push for passage of the Bill. Most Democrats in the Senate opposed the bill. It was Johnson's Bill, however, and it was used as the ultimate act of patronage to hold blacks to the party. It was also the beginning of Racial Identity politics that would drive white southerners from the party in droves.

Democrats had to play favors to keep blacks and latinos loyal. For instance, a limited program to correct past slights against black contractors in Federal programs, Affirmative Action, metastasized to effect virtually every aspect of American economic life. This was done intentionally by liberals to keep their voters loyal to them, and remains a totem of loyalty in the black and latino communities, even though the importance of AA has been reduced over the past decade. Once the white ethnic voters who made up part of the Democrat's coalition began to rebel against identity politics, it was a matter of time before they were scooped up by Reagan. Remember, white ethnics were told by the ruling elite that if they paid their taxes and voted Democratic, they would be rewarded. Democrats were surprised, therefore, when their white ethnics started realizing that Democrats had created a system in which some Democrats were more equal than others. Reagan was there as an alternative; they defected to him en masse.

In return, Reagan reduced their taxes and gave them a strong national defense, and the eventual defeat of Soviet Communism! Reagan gave them what they wanted, while Democrats were figuring out how to divide a smaller piece of the pie among their angry ethnic and labor constituencies. Reagan changed things. Democrats became reactionary defenders of an old order. Only when Republicans became reactionary themeselves, in the person of George the Elder, did they lose.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the Son is no reactionary. He just gave Seniors a huge entitlement, which might lead to Republican control of the senior and older Boomer voters. This may be economically unsound, but it is electorally ingenious. This is a result of the political instincts of a Republican govenor of Texas who came of age with his fellow Republican governors in the nineties, while the Washington party was out of power.

Republicans changed; they learned how to give people what they wanted in more effective packages, while Democrats, and their base voters, remained wedded to a reactionary old order. We would not have been able to take advantage of the cleavage of the old Roosevelt Coalition had we had nothing to offer in return.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[mwl1]

Agree on all points. The real demographic threat to the future of the RATs is not holding liberals, blacks, environmentalists, or labor union members in their coalition; the threat is from Hispanics gravitating toward the GOP. Hispanics are by far the fastest growing segment of the American population. If they lose the Hispanics, they are toast. Pity.

[eureka!]

Great comments, as per usual, Chris. As to "Unfortunately for Democrats, the Son is no reactionary. He just gave Seniors a huge entitlement, which might lead to Republican control of the senior and older Boomer voters," I like the Freeper comment that sure it costs a lot, but it is now a beachhead against what would have come later. Again, thanks for your contributions to FR and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours....

[Coop]

Great, more Republicrat victories ahead.

What a wonderful future ahead. I can't wait.

When I compare the alternatives, it looks wonderful to me. But then again, I live in reality, not Utopia.

[Starrgaizr]

Truth has a funny way of rising to the surface, though the journey is sometimes turbulent. It is not enough for the Dems to "change their views" on some issue or another. They have, in fact, an entirely bankrupt political philosophy.

New Deal economics, spending to prosperity? A costly failure. "Urban renewal" and socialized housing? A scandalous and costly failure. Feel-good, self congratulatory pacifism? A deadly failure. Multiculturalism, all lifestyles as equally valid and moral? The freakshow of Michael Jackson is the result.

One can go on and on, but what exactly does the Democratic Party stand for? The rights of the oppressed? No! If the oppressed is not a unionized worker who happens to be a U.S. voter, let 'em starve and live in squalor. The environment? No, environmentalism in the hands of the Dems it is a ruse, hijacked by radicals who view all life on earth as more precious than what they see as illegitimate human encroachment.

Do the Dem's stand for peace? No, sadly, the Dems stand for surrender to everyone and anyone who hates the United States. In the 1970s only avowedly marxist campus radicals chanted on behalf of Fidel, the Sandinistas, the Salvadoran gueriilas, and the Ayatollah. Now, the entire Democratic party races to denounce US policy, so long as it is being run by a Republican administration.

So there it is -- the Dems have become... dictators. Seeking power merely for its own sake, for personal prestige, wealth, control, and Saddam-like glory. Clinton (or his stupid but ruthless wife) would have loved a statue of himself while he was president, and if the Dems had their way, in a few generations that would no longer shock anyone.

A party that cannot weed out of its nominating debates the joke candidates has become paralyzed by its own insincere philosphy -- one constantly chosen after poll-testing rather than driven by sound moral principles.

So, the future belongs to a healthy and vigorous debate between competing conservative approaches and flavors. The Dems will become the free-spending "compassionate conservatives" on domestic issues and leave radical politics to fringe parties and the Republicans will become even more conservative. Or the Dems will fade away.

But Americans will not long suffer a party that -- not too secretly -- celebrates American losses, tragedies and suffering for the partisan advantage it might bring if it happens on the Republicans' watch.