Posted on 02/03/2005 9:04:20 AM PST by Publius
In 1896, when the Democrats and Populists merged, and with the fraying of the Republicans' Civil War coalition, the current wisdom was that a new period of Democratic hegemony was beginning. Marc Hanna disagreed.
The Populists were an agrarian party that was socialist on economic issues but biblical fundamentalist on social issues. They were anti-black, anti-Catholic and especially anti-immigrant.
The Democrats were already America's urban party and the natural home of first-time immigrant voters. But the marriage with the Populists now meant that the Democrats had to give up their urban advantage. Further, with people leaving the farms for the cities, the urban landscape with its immigrants was the place where elections would be won.
Hanna responded to the challenge by creating ethnic-American Republican clubs. He sent Italian, German, Polish and Lithuanian-speaking organizers into the cities to expedite getting immigrants naturalized and registered to vote -- as Republicans. This was a way of assimilating foreigners into the American way, by empowering them politically, teaching them the ropes and helping them wield power.
Hanna's plan worked so well it created a new Republican governing coalition that lasted until 1932 when the Great Depression destroyed it.
My late father's (Sicilian) side of the family was greeted by a Republican organizer when they came to Philadelphia in 1908 and promptly joined the local Italian-American Republican Club. They prospered during the Depression, so that side of the family is still staunchly Republican.
My late mother's (Neapolitan) side did poorly during the prosperity of the Twenties and even worse during the Depression, so they became (and still are) staunch New Deal Democrats.
As immigrants assimilated and moved to the suburbs, their interests and viewpoints changed, and so did their polical allegiances.
1. When Mayor Frank Fizzo switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, he stated that it was a "homecoming to the party of his immigrant father."
2. When King Richard I of Chicago was looking for neighborhoods to bulldoze to build the U of Illinois at Chicago, he chose the near west side Tri-Taylor district. The reason being that the Italians who dominated the area did not vote for machine candidates and, despite being in a gerrymandered ward with Poles and blacks, still often voted GOP in local elections.
You can only get rid of them by shutting off the faucet.
Fizzo=Rizzo. Too much Cava for me last night.
And, it's a beautiful thing!
We splintered in 1992. Your essay completely ignores Perot and his con job that got Clinton elected.
Also, never forget the impact the coddling of murderous maniacs and the abolition of the death penalty by activist judges had on the conservative movement. By the late seventies, crime was a much bigger issue than busing.
Once the dust settled after the 1992 election and the pollsters were able to reconstruct what happened, they concluded that Ross Perot did not elect Bill Clinton. He did, however, deny Clinton a popular vote majority and thus any claim of a mandate.
May I toss in 2 cents from the peanut gallery?
The Left's power is waning, and although their last refuge is in the academy, judiciary and bureaucracy, their fangs are being pulled.
My theory is that the Left is losing power because it has worked its way out of its job. There was a time when a good chunk of the Right (or maybe you could say the American mainstream) was racist and sexist and homophobic and insensitive to the poor (I'm stating this in rough, unqualified terms for the sake of brevity). The Left had a valid argument against these things and had staked out a position against them. Rational, healthy people knew the Left had a point, that the Right had a problem in these areas, so they gave the Left a certain measure of power in order to act as a necessary corrective. Well, time has passed and the Right, thanks to pressure applied from the Left, has accepted this correction. The Right is no longer bigoted in its attitudes towards blacks or women or the poor. In these areas the Right is now healthy. Thus the Left can wither away and die. It has done its work.
On occasion in American history, concepts like Left and Right become blurred, parties run out of steam and ideas, and a wing of one party wraps around a wing of the other party. Sometimes one party will even splinter. Then the two parties re-form when a new issue arises.
One thing we can all be sure of is that new issues will emerge over time. Economic and social circumstances change, and eventally two sides will form, one favoring stasis and the other favoring change.
After the Cold War ended, Francis Fukayama proclaimed "the end of history." Well, we all know he got a rude shock on 9/11. As did all of us.
From the immediate post-Civil War period to 1951, Philadelphia was controlled by one of the most corrupt urban Republican machines anywhere in the country. The Vare and Penrose machines in the early 20th Century vied hard with Tammany Hall 's New York for the title of worst city government.
My late aunt was a schoolteacher and Republican committeewoman who was marked for a judgeship had the party held on in the 1951 elections. It's frightening to think of a woman with no legal experience and who hated blacks on the bench. A lot of black folks were lucky the Democrats won in '51.
Joseph Clark was a good mayor but went on to the Senate. Starting with Richardson Dilworth, the corruption crept back into City Hall, and only the party labels had changed. It took only a decade for the Democrats to become as corrupt as their Republican predecessors.
"But my guess is that by 2008 there won't be a Democratic Party for either of them."
While I like your words and essay, I think you are being much too optimistic.
he Dems will not go away that easily. Remember Perot? 10 years later there's nothing left of his movement, one that reached 33% of the vote in some states. Why? Because both of the major parties co-opted his message. Neither party speaks with one voice and so neither can be eliminated by destroying one voice.
They may fall into a long and bad lull, like the GOP in CA and IL, but they won't go away, and their base bought by your's and my tax dollars isn't going to give up and go away easily either. Still, I hope you are more right than I.
I've always heard that there were several small riots in Philly during and after WWII. I know that they even banned night high school football games in Philly due to the high level of interracial violence that occurred at such events in the 1950s. I also know that the worst violence occurred in places like Kensington, Fishtown and West Philly as blacks entered those areas.
That is the key sentence. I don't think that any of the many voices that make up the Democratic Party will be destroyed. The larger question is whether these factions can still work together and whether certain factions will walk away when the dangerously strident take control of the party.
In 1985 the MOVE incident, where the Philly PD bombed a house, occurred in exactly the same neighborhood.
Some things don't change.
Thanks for the ping, sweet!
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Good points. Thanks for your thoughts, Publius.
BUMP
I agree. There were over 50 million that indicates such. Unfortunantly I see The Hildabeast winning this. We need to start today to make this not happen. There is something inside of me that tells me since the election of Jimma Carter - RR the exception - that all presidents were selected long before the primaries begun. It's the witches time & to then fill the Supreme Court with leftist for the next 40 yrs. Finally, those states that were not contested were part of the influence of the elites/internationalists who run this nation & will not let true conservativism control this nations agenda.
I enjoyed it immensely. I will re-read it later more critically.
Regards.
Bump.
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