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Edited on Thu Feb-11-10 06:19 AM by Drunken Irishman
It seems we're not happy unless we're bickering and blaming and fighting. Which serves no purpose, mind you. It only creates larger rifts between every social group within this great party. And yes, I still believe the Democratic Party is great. I guess this is the burden of being such a diverse party.
You know, the Republicans fight, too, but they never cave. They're always there to rally behind their leaders. Bush was not very well liked by conservatives toward the end of his presidency, yet they stuck with him to the bitter end. McCain didn't lose because he failed to get out the Republican vote. They voted for him. They swallowed their pride and went against their better judgement, but they voted for him. He lost because the moderate voters felt more comfortable with Pres. Obama and the liberals finally despised the Republicans so much, they actually went out and voted for the Democrat.
They did that in 2004, too, but it wasn't enough to offset the moderate support Bush received in many key states (Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Iowa).
That's the problem. The Democratic Party has had a rift since the 60s and it isn't healing. We just change each aspect of the divide.
In the 1960s, it was the anti-war activists. I'm not going to debate the merits of their cause, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the division sprung out of the Vietnam War hurt Democrats more than it did Republicans. Even though it was a Republican president who openly lied to the American people about that war. It didn't stop him from winning in a landslide. Yet it stopped the New Deal-era of the Democratic Party cold in its tracks. LBJ was the last New Deal president we've had. RFK might've been able to win had he not been gunned down and Hubert Humphrey certainly was progressive, but he lost. Humphrey got his butt kicked in the electoral college in 1968 and that paved the way for Nixon.
We haven't been the same since.
I've said it many times before, the 60s ruined the Democratic Party. Everything gained from the FDR administration went up in smoke because the party found itself collapsing from within. And it isn't to say all of it was bad. I believe the purging of the southern racists during the civil rights era surely made the party more pure in that regard. But it did hurt. It cost the Democrats the south and when they lost the south, it took decades to recover.
But the civil rights era of the 60s led to racial tension in the 70s and 80s. The Democrats gained a very reliable voting block out of the civil rights movement - but it also once again created a divide among the blue collar whites brought into the party during the Roosevelt administration. Those voters were racist and didn't like the fact the Democrats appeared to advocate more for the poor & minorities than they were for the white working class folk of many northern rust-belt states.
Nixon played this divide well and because of it, slaughtered the liberal McGovern in 1972. The only NE state the Democrats won that year was Vermont. They couldn't even carry Massachusetts, which had solidly supported Humphrey four years earlier.
Let's face it, the only reason the Democrats didn't fall into total obscurity in the 70s is because Nixon fucked it all up. Had Nixon not done Watergate, he probably goes down as one of the greatest presidents in American history and certainly doesn't damage the Republican brand name enough to allow an unknown and quirky peanut farmer from a rural southern state gain the presidency.
Jimmy Carter only won because Nixon damaged Ford so much early on when Ford pardoned him that he was able to build a huge lead. That election the Democrats almost lost and if it weren't for an idiotic gaffe about the Soviets not having control in Eastern Europe by Ford, he probably does win that election. Which, believe it or not, probably would've benefited the Democratic Party far more than had history played out the way it did. Ford most likely would have had to weather an identical storm as Carter and it would've ruined his presidency like it did Carter's. That means it's extremely likely the Democrats pull a Reagan and win the WH due to high disapproval of the course America was heading in.
That means no Reagan.
But alas, we know how history really played out.
It seems the Democrats haven't been a connected party in decades. We just don't rally behind our presidents and leaders like Republicans do. Maybe some like that. Maybe they feel we shouldn't blindly support our leaders. I agree - to a point. I think it's important, though, to know the progressive ideology will die if Republicans exploit this divide.
It was that divide within the Democratic Party in the 70s & 80s that led to Reagan and Reagan undid a good number of policies enacted by FDR. We're still recovering from that.
Are we ready to throw it all away because Pres. Obama might not be doing it fast enough? Because in the end, what's best for the cause: losing it entirely, or achieving small steps toward our ultimate goal? Democrats work best when they realize the latter is the best.
We've got to stop blaming Obama for everything at this ideology's own peril.
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