Where's my "OLD DEMOCRATIC PARTY" ?

[John Barrett]

Political and economic interests usually coincide. That's been the basis of political party’s time immemorial. It's straightforward self interest. If you are an average working American you have 2 political choices, the Democrats or Republicans.

The Republicans support the corporate elitists and wealthy America with every bone in their body. Even with that overt one sided policy they have been able to bamboozle many on the lower rungs of the economic ladder to vote GOP using religious issues.

The "new" (as opposed to old) Democratic party has muddled the issues for those of us who place the needs and security of all working Americans ahead of most everything else (including illegal immigration). Unfortunately, the new Democratic Party only intermittently subscribes to values and issues that benefit poor and working Americans.

I'm looking for the "old" Democratic Party that CLEARLY supported working people and had no ambivalence about it? There would be no question on which side of the illegal immigrant issue that the old party of FDR would have taken. There would have been none of this squirming and weasel wording such as "we don't want to send the wrong message with border walls" that our “namby pamby” political leaders freely espouse. We wouldn't have legislators like Sen. Tom Harkin who almost called them illegals today while speaking to the floor (but he caught himself after the first syllable). The laws of our country and the needs of Americans would have clearly taken precedence instead of the wishes of 11-20 million uninvited visitors.

Edit for spelling

[NoPasaran]

1. This is going to be good

:popcorn:

[Fenris]

2. Si, amigo.

Bueno. :nuke:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Need extra butter?

A frosty adult beverage? Kevlar loungewear?

[xmas74]

7. Please pass the popcorn.

I have some Jack and Coke, if you'd like a drink.

[Mass]

24. Yes

:popcorn: :beer:

[radio4progressives]

4. that party no longer exists... it's gone... hasta luego and all that..

:shrug:

[Cocoa]

6. the "golden age" ain't so golden

see below...

[Cocoa]

5. FDR and immigration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

<snip>

Interior Secretary Ickes lobbied Roosevelt through 1944 to release the Japanese-American internees, but Roosevelt did not act until after the November presidential election. A fight for Japanese-American civil rights meant a fight with influential Democrats, the Army, and the Hearst press and would have endangered Roosevelt's chances of winning California in 1944. Critics of Roosevelt's actions believe they were motivated in part by racialism. In 1925 Roosevelt had written about Japanese immigration: "Californians have properly objected on the sound basic grounds that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population... Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European and American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results". In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of the executive order in the Korematsu v. United States case. The executive order remained in force until December of that year.

<snip>

Roosevelt's complex attitudes to American Jews were also ambivalent. Franklin's mother Sara shared the conventional anti-Semitic attitudes common among Americans at a time when Jewish immigrants were flooding into the U.S. and their children were advancing rapidly into the business and professional classes to the alarm of those already there. Roosevelt apparently inherited some of his mother's attitudes, and at times expressed them in private. Paradoxically some of his closest political associates, such as Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch and Samuel I. Rosenman, were Jewish, and he happily cultivated the important Jewish vote in New York City. He appointed Henry Morgenthau, Jr. as the first Jewish Secretary of the Treasury and appointed Frankfurter to the Supreme Court.

During his first term Roosevelt condemned Hitler's persecution of German Jews. As the Jewish exodus from Germany increased after 1937, Roosevelt was asked by American Jewish organizations and Congressmen to allow these refugees to settle in the U.S. At first he suggested that the Jewish refugees should be "resettled" elsewhere, and suggested Venezuela, Ethiopia or West Africa — anywhere but the U.S. Morgenthau, Ickes and Eleanor pressed him to adopt a more generous policy but he was afraid of provoking the isolationists — men such as Charles Lindbergh who exploited anti-Semitism as a means of attacking Roosevelt's policies. In practice very few Jewish refugees came to the U.S. — only 22,000 German refugees were admitted in 1940, not all of them Jewish. The State Department official in charge of refugee issues, Breckinridge Long, insisted on following the highly restrictive immigration laws to the letter.

<snip>

After 1942, when Roosevelt was made aware of the Nazi extermination of the Jews by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Polish envoy Jan Karski and others, he told them the best solution was to destroy Nazi Germany. At Casablanca in 1943 Roosevelt announced there would be compromise whatever with Hitler. In May 1943 he wrote to Cordell Hull (whose wife was Jewish): "I do not think we can do other than strictly comply with the present immigration laws." In January 1944, however, Morgenthau succeeded in persuading Roosevelt to allow the creation of a War Refugee Board in the Treasury Department. This allowed an increasing number of Jews to enter the U.S. in 1944 and 1945. By this time, however, the European Jewish communities had already been largely destroyed in Hitler's Holocaust.

[mike_c]

8. are you talking about the dixiecrats, by any chance...?

The KKK wing of the democratic party? No thanks.

[onehandle]

9. I found those folks. Here--->

www.gop.com

[John Barrett]

11. May I ask why you made that comment?

Now why would you go and throw in the KKK comment? There are millions of Americans like me that want a political party to represent our interests? Nothing complicated there or alterior motives.

Some of us are poor, some of us are educated, some of us are both, but we all have one thing in common...we only want a fair shake from our government.

We're not elitists, we're not racists, we're patriots, we're simple minded family people that represent a large portion of this country. We're from the north, south, east and west.

But we have one thing in common, we get no respect from either the Democrats or Republicans and get screwed regularly from the power brokers on both sides...AND WE'RE PISSED.

[QC]

21. Well, openly calling you a racist is against the rules,

so he's doing it slyly. It's a popular little McCathyite tactic here to associate people with racists, especially when one hopes to shut down discussion of a touchy issue, like this one, and has no facts or logic to work with.

[mike_c]

22. QC gives me credit for far more subtlety than I deserve....

I meant it explicitly. The dixiecrats were democrats of precisely the old stripe you describe who opposed racial integration so deeply that they considered it unpatriotic-- they used language similar to much of that we hear today describing immigrants, particularly latino immigrants. After Strom Thurmond's failed presidential candidacy they were progressively recruited into the GOP, which played on racial tensions to appeal to them. That's largely the reason the southern states are mostly GOP strongholds today. They were once solid democratic party strongholds, but they left the party shouting Strom Thurmond's campaign slogan "Segregation forever!"

Much of the furor over hispanic immigrants is xenophobic and racist masquerading as patriotism. Patriots "put America first," but xenophobes "put americans first."

[The Magistrate]

36. For The Record, Gentlemen

The O.P. is no longer among us....

[Douglas Carpenter]

39. hmmm. I thought there was something just a bit fishy about the O.P.

I'm also a bit curious about one matter regarding the history of the Democratic Party. Was not the Democratic Party for the most part and through most of its history the party of the Immigrant; whether it was the Irish in the 19the century, then Jews, Eastern Europeans, Italians and others in the early 20th century? If my history is correct on this matter, why was that the case?

[Zhade]

30. Yeah - funny how some DLCers around here bemoan the loss...

...of the "coalition of Southern Democrats" that we lost in the 60s - which, of course, were the racist Dixiecrats.

They actually don't have a problem with RACISTS being in the party if it means a 'win'.

:puke:

[The Magistrate]

10. It Is Not Quite So Simple As That, Mr. Barret

The politics of this issue are very dicey.

My personal view is that illegal immigration in particular acts to drive down wages, both by increasing the pool of laborers, making the commodity of work they sell more plentiful and hence cheaper, and further by ensuring that a portion of the labor pool is both innured to living with less than those born and raised here, and reluctant to make much of a fuss about anything because they must necessarily fear any act that draws the attention of the authorities. Thus on purely economic grounds, that matter presents a cut and dried outline it is hard to quarrel with.

But for better or worse, ethnic and racial identity has taken on great importance in out national politics. A great many persons who are immediate descendants of immigtrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants, or who are even legal immigrants themselves, take the view that agitation against illegal immigrants is simply a cover for disfavor to their ethnic community and identity, in the same way most Blacks quite sensibly saw the Nixonian "law and oeder" campaogn as mere cover for appeal to racism against them. There is little room to doubt that the current Democratic ascendancy in California, for example, owes in great part to the hard line against illegal immigration taken by Republicans there in the past decade and more. The Hispanic population of the United States is to some degree up for grabs in the nation's political life today. A strong Republican attack of the nature we see today from the likes of Sennsenbrenner on this subject could well turn that group decisively against the Republicans, and keep them that way for a long time. This could have the effect of gaining states to the Democratic Party column in the southwest, and even put Texas itself into play.

A good line to follow, it would seem to me, would focus on opposition to guest worker programs in any form, using the economic appeal outlined above, and opposition to the excesses of criminalization and fortification proposed by the most extreme of the Republicans, while striving to make that the "real" face of the Republicans on the matter. This would position us to highlight the anti-native worker elements of the enemy's plan, while still being apparent protectors of the Hispanic population against Republican racists.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[doc03]

12. Now you've done it ,you will be called a raciest, fascist and

who knows what. Oh,if they run out of names they will find a word misspelled or a mistake in grammar to point out.

[Hippo_Tron]

13. Time to bring out the wisdom of good old Maddox

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=walmart

And in case you didn't quite understand that, he explains it in more simple terms here.

http://maddox.xmission.com/hatemail.cgi?p=1#CLUETRAIN

[musical_soul]

Amen.

Dupe.

[musical_soul]

14. Amen.

I look forward to when the Democratic politicians think the same way so we can get the elections.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[musical_soul]

23. Keep this in mind.

Bushtard is the one who wanted the immigrants coming. If we can get Hilary in,
she'll put a stop to people who are not Americans coming first.

I don't mind immigrants. I just think Americans should come first.

[Hippo_Tron]

15. The old democratic party also supported segregation

And disenfranchisement of African Americans. FDR was a great President for the 1930s and 1940s but times change. We have an obligation to advance social equality as well as economic equality.

[John Barrett]

17. Which has priority?

The problem as I see it is the Democratic Party DID have economic equality as its agenda for years and as a result won elections. The country was mostly blue in both urban and rural areas.

Then they made social equality and other things as the issues and lost elections and rural America.

Social equality is great but economic equality and security becomes much more important in this new era and rush to the bottom. But hey....if you are financially secure you may not agree. Then the issue becomes academic and idealistic and is removed from reality.

[derby378]

20. I think returning jobs to America will help take care of this problem

Republicans are outsourcing jobs overseas at an alarming rate. Down here in Dallas, we used to have an actual garment industry. Then Tom DeLay worked to outsource all those jobs out to Saipan sweatshops.

We need blue-collar jobs just as much as we need white-collar jobs. While I agree that illegal immigration needs to be addressed, there still needs to be an ample amount of decent jobs in America for those who are already here.

[musical_soul]

Here's the problem.

People work really hard for their money. They don't want to be equal to somebody
who isn't working hard for it. I understand that some people can't help that they can't work
as much as others (like for a disability or something else), but too many people think they're just being lazy, even many Democrats.

What we need are programs to help train the poor for jobs that are higher in demand and pay
well enough to survive off of. That way people don't turn to the system as much for help.

[mrgorth]

26. That's a great idea

but they keep shipping every fucking job overseas. There needs to be laws or tariffs or something to stop the bleeding.

[musical_soul]

27. Isn't it mostly the factory jobs they're shipping overseas?

There are still other jobs that can be trained for. IT jobs?

Not that shipping factories overseas is right. Isn't much we can do about it until we can get Democrats back in.

[mrgorth]

33. No

A lot of IT jobs have gone to India and other places. I'm in IT. I know. You're right about getting the dems back in but I think that part of what the original post was about was how the dems betrayed the contituency by being pro-globalization anyway.

[Zhade]

32. No, what we need is wages indexed to inflation.

And less of the bullshit "lazy welfare queen" lies.

[Zhade]

31. Why don't you just say "I don't care if blacks can vote"?

I mean, that's basically what you're saying.

[Hippo_Tron]

35. Social liberalism in the blue states, economic populism in the red states

That's my strategy. We can run candidates who are only populist on economic issues in red states and both socially and economically liberal candidates in the blue states.

[Xenotime]

28. i disagree

I think there should be political equality.

You can have social equality - My life is just as important as yours.
You can have political equality - My vote is just as important as yours.
You can never have economic equality. It's been tried and never works.

[Hippo_Tron]

34. I didn't mean absolute economic equality

Economic justice is perhaps a better word. If you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead.

[Warpy]

18. Working class economic issues were off the table in 1972

and have never been put back on. The party has instead concentrated on the national debt and geopolitical issues, with side trips into protecting the civil rights already won. The party has in effect ignored its traditional base for over 30 years, and it's no wonder so many of them were seduced by the promise of tax cuts sweetened by hate. The Democrats offered Joe Workaday exactly nothing.

Governor Schweitzer showed the party what it takes to win in one of the major GOP strongholds in the country: campaign like an economic populist, an unabashed economic progressive.

Any party that continues to ignore its base like the conservative led Democratic Party has done for so long will find itself out of power, deservedly so.

[bvar22]

37. Word!!

The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

[mmonk]

19. Everytime I look up,

the number given for illegal immigrants goes up. Where do they get these numbers anyhow? Anyway, if you're worried about jobs, you need to look at out sourcing and also our manufacturing jobs going over seas whereby they ship it back (sometimes for finishing work to get a tax break) and the people losing their jobs buy the goods from those lost jobs at the big box store retailers.

[guidod]

25. They're cowering behind a muzzle.

[ClarkBayh 2008]

29. The Old Democratic Party

won elections.

Because FDR offered hope in a time of turmoil for millions out
of work.

The country is not where it was in 1932 or in 1964. Yet the
nostalgia brigade keeps putting up Northeast liberals & thinks
that you can win elections by being just, right, noble, &
on the side of the poor.

Surprise, voters don't buy that anymore. They aren't hiring
social workers anymore. They are hiring CEOs & commanders
in chief. WAKE UP.

[NativeTexan]

38. Exactly.....the working man's party!

That's what my sainted Daddy taught me it was. Illegal is illegal and living in Texas, it ways heavy on my mind everyday.

People are always talking about illegals taking jobs Americans don't want. Well, actually, they are taking jobs that are being paid FAR below minimum wage, illegally. And the employers that are breaking the law in hiring them!

That is the way of the neo-Republican Party.

Democrats have GOT to get back to our roots. Back to the lessons of JFK, if not FDR, and even LBJ. If the Democrats don't look out for the working American.....NOBODY WILL!

THANKS FOR THE POSTING!!

[dolstein]

40. You can thank the limousine liberals and the campus radicals

for transforming the majority party of the New Deal era, consisting of many diverse groups united primarily around a common economic agenda, into a minority party united primarily around a liberal social agenda and a dovish foreign policy agenda. Goodbye Scoop Jackson. Hello Jane Fonda.

[Douglas Carpenter]

41. it's NOT the "limousine liberals and the "campus radicals" that have

been dominating the Democratic Party for the past 30+ years. And the Democratic Party has NOT been promoting a dovish foreign policy for the past 30+ years. And it is NOT the "limousine liberals" and "campus radicals" who how have opposed and undermined the New Deal/Great Society economic agenda.

Otherwise everything you said is historically accurate.

[dolstein]

42. Perhaps in your alternative universe that may be true

But not in this one.

[Douglas Carpenter]

44. so you have no facts to back up your statement????

what a surprise.

[More Than A Feeling]

43. Wow.

:popcorn:

[rucky]

45. I know alot of Democrats

and none of them are as you describe.

[Douglas Carpenter]

46. oh I might have known a few over the many years, but they sure the hell

don't dominate the Democratic Party and never have except in Bill O'Reilly's and Fox New's imagination