Posted on 02/03/2005 9:04:20 AM PST by Publius
There is some truth in there, but it was more the cultural revolution of the 1960s than race that drove such voters away from the Democrats. The later economic malaise also had a lot to do with the making of Reagan Democrats. It's certainly true that the races were more divided in the 1960s and 1970s than today, but a lot of the tension over busing had to do with the autocratic, top-down imposition of the thing. Attitudes might have been different had things been done differently. Divisions between the parties, though, weren't quite so clear on this issue: it was Nixon who brought in many of the quotas and affirmative action programs that he campaigned against.
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. The Nineties, like the 1850’s, represents a time when one party ran out of steam and ideas, and everybody noticed it.
True, though it's not always easy to know who was right and who was left. We've taken our cue from the Cold War, and now that it's over and the struggles over communism don't dominate political debates, it's always not so easy to see who's who and what's what in terms of ideology. Prior to that the conflicts of the Progressive era or the New Deal provided frameworks for sorting things out ideologically. Where Theodore Roosevelt saw Hamilton as a far-sighted progressive, Franklin Roosevelt deplored Hamilton and preferred Jefferson. We're in a similar period of sorting things out now so questions about what Washington or Hamilton, Jefferson or Jackson, Lincoln or TR were ideologically aren't as easy to answer as they once were.
The Democratic Party is now restricted to America’s cities and to the suburbs of certain states. It is almost absent from America’s heartland. Its values are out of step with the Great Middle. It has forgotten its economic roots and become lost in the swamps of social change once again, vehement in its insistence on forcing that change down the throats of a reluctant nation.
True, the Democrats are very out of touch on social issues, but how different are states that they carried like Minnesota or Michigan from Iowa or Ohio, which the lost? The strange thing was their thinking that Kerry could actually win. 49% of the vote against a wartime President and for someone who was so obviously a regional candidate with little national appeal wasn't a terrible showing.
You may be right about the Democrats dying or turning into something very different, but this last election wasn't enough proof. It was unique in pitting a liberal from the most liberal part of the country with a conservative from one of the most conservative parts. Neither Bush I v. Dukakis or Reagan v. Mondale or Nixon v. Kennedy was anywhere near as clearcut a contest of regional loyalties. The big test will come when they nominate someone from outside the Northeast.
Yet there was also something typical about the election as well: from 1860 to 1932 the Democrats were locked into the South, and the Republicans controlled the rest of the country, so far as Presidential elections were concerned. Who won depended on swing states like New York and Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey. After forty years of Democratic domination (1932-1972) and a Republican era (1972-1992) we may have come full circle to a system characterized by Democrat control of one region (the two coasts) and Republican dominance in the rest of the country. In a way, it's a return to where we were in 1880 or 1920.
Apparently you are locked into the past.
Gun control as an issue is gone. Ended. Finished. It is an issue on which urban Democrats have accepted that they are outvoted by the rest of the country.
Abortion ? A quarter of the electorate is NARAL all the way. Another quarter is Right to Life all the way. In the middle, flux. Stasis. A lot of hypocrisy, too. That is because, as I taught you, people talk right-to-life but when their own kid gets pregnant they want that socioeconomic escape hatch of abortion.
In 1992 Perot didn't get the hard core Right to Life vote. But he was still the frontrunner in early spring. Bush lost because he was reduced to the Right to Life vote. So there is plenty of room for another Perot party. After all, they won in 92 because most of Perot's supporters broke for them after Perot dropped out of the race. When Perot dropped out Clinton moved from third of three to first of two.
Let's not lose sight of the fact that Iraq was a mess and the absence of WMD's led to many people feeling lied to. Without these factors Bush would have won in a landslide.
No, I don't do this for a living. I work a regular job like everybody else.
Click on "Publius", and it will take you to my FReeper home page.
Pliny would be proud.
One foot note. A very powerful faction with nowhere else to go is the Plaintiff's bar. War against them has been formally declared.
Huh? Perot didn't join the race until late Spring 92 and then dropped out, when he said that clinton was gaining momentum, and then Bush came back into the lead, and all of the sudden perot got back in and was on CNN saying "Larry"(this is before FR, Fox News, and the internet blogs, BTW).
But that doesn't really matter, since that is all water under the bridge, and the country has a person who you despise in office, GW Bush.
Dude I think you all in hillary's basement are misinformed and delusional if you all think you can bring back a second coming of perot like candidate, especially with the gift of the invention Al Gore gave us all, the internet.
I know you must find it threatening to be reminded that your sort of 'free trade at all costs', OBL ideology has the financing of the K street hustlers but not the support of most Americans. That is why NAFTA was disastrous for the New Democrats because it drove away Joe Sixpack and Kerry lost because an economic nationalist agenda could have easily swept the suffering Rust Belt.
And you fail as ever to see the salient point. Perot was leading in the polls until he dropped out of the race. And not because of fear of Clinton because Clinton remained third of three. Because he just plain didn't want it bad enough. After all, people who run for president these days have been running their entire lives. When he reentered the race he saw that most of his support had gone to Clinton after Sistah Souljah. His agenda of economic nationalism is a winner. Every voice of elite opinion, all editorial boards of all major publications, every mainstream economist, all living ex-Presidents supported NAFTA. But it still barely passed because Joe Sixpack smelled a rat. After illegals, after outsourcing, after obscene trade deficits the ground has shifted. Maybe "free trade" is just textbook theory and textbooks need to be adjusted. Ricardo's point about England not trying to create a protected, subsidized wine industry was one thing. Watching your capacity to make advanced industrial goods migrate overseas is another.
LOL! Perot dropped out in 92 and all of the sudden got back in with the massive help of CNN. Perot was never serious, except to get the contracts from hillarycare.
Like I said before, you can go on with your covert democrat ruse on FR, just don't get all hot and bothered when people on FR point it out.
At least according to the Alberto Gonzalez groupies around here.
No matter, you all in hillary's basement must be feeling mighty low right now, especially after GW's speech last night, and of those on FR bringing the light of day to the covert hillary supporters on FR.
It is well written and makes me AGAIN wonder why I allow my father and I to be associated w/ a group that threatens & torments Lars Larson & his family, goes after the Rossi family, believes more in the UN than the US, and bashes our troops...
It is also worth noting that Howard Dean is from Vermont and therefore New England.
I am about to call 1-800-JOIN-WSRP and join up!
Because since when did stealing elections, harassing soldiers, and tormenting spokespeople of the other side become okay?
Bump.
I saw the 'split' growing during the campaign... many wanted Dean bad, but were cajoled towards Kerry after-the-scream. That loud, crazed scream was actually the hopes of the wild-eyed' being dashed on the rocks.
After the election, it was painfully apparant(to the 'wild-eyed') that Reid was no Daschle... Pelosi, Kennedy, Boxer and Kerry began acting on their own ... the mornings talking-points were either not getting out... or not being read.
I forsee a 'Progressive Party' coming out of this Democrat confusion... almost half of them call themselves 'progressives' anyway.
...since when did stealing elections, harassing soldiers, and tormenting spokespeople of the other side become okay?
These violations of fair play all stem from Mr. Gore's decision in 2000 to attempt to win an election in court. It marked a huge departure from the usual rules of conduct. It showed just how desperate and outside the mainstream the Democratic Party had become. Rather than functioning as an American political party, in its desperation the Democrats had become a revolutionary force.
Stealing elections in America is old hat, and we've winked at such misconduct ever since Aaron Burr founded Tammany Hall in the 1820's. But when the occasional vote stealers were caught, they understood that what they had done was wrong, and they took their punishment like men. Now there are ideological justifications for stealing election, all of them stemming from 2000. Of late we've heard a number of Democrats in this state justify their theft as tit-for-tat because of our "theft" of Florida in 2000. One even dared to write an op-ed in the Seattle Times making this case.
Harassing soldiers is a return to behavior during the late Vietnam era, when most people had given up on that war. Places like Seattle, Berkeley and San Francisco have substantial remnants of that old radicalism still alive and well, whereas most people who behaved that way 35 years ago have some sense of shame for their behavior.
Tormenting spokespeople of the other side is the part of political guerilla warfare that happens just before one side takes up arms and drives the conflict to the next level. We have to go back to the period just before the Civil War to see that behavior in our history.
The more radical elements of the Democratic Party, i.e. the "Deaniacs", are pushing events to the edge of violence. What they've forgotten is that it's their adversaries who have all the guns.
This is the most accurate analysis of the current political landscape and the state of the Democratic party that I have ever read!
After the election, it was painfully apparant(to the 'wild-eyed') that Reid was no Daschle... Pelosi, Kennedy, Boxer and Kerry began acting on their own ... the mornings talking-points were either not getting out... or not being read.
Very astute observation. Party discipline has collapsed, and new, more radical leaders are emerging from the ashes of 2004. Either no one is issuing talking points, or people are no longer heeding them.
You are watching the center collapse.
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