Posted on 11/01/2003 1:51:20 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BOOK EXCERPT This is the first of two excerpts from "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat" by Zell Miller. Stroud & Hall Publishers, Atlanta. Copyright 2003, Zell Miller. The second excerpt will appear in next Sunday's @issue section.
Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, "I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell."
Too harsh? I don't think so. Consider these facts. In 1960, the state of Georgia gave the Democratic nominee, John F. Kennedy, a higher percentage of its vote than JFK's home state of Massachusetts. Only the percentage in Rhode Island was greater.
And Georgians were not disappointed in Kennedy's performance as a chief executive. He stared down the Russians over Cuba and he cut taxes in a significant way that stimulated the economy. Had he not been assassinated, he could have carried Georgia a second time.
In the past nine elections, except for 1976, when regional pride was a huge factor and native son Jimmy Carter lost only Virginia among the 11 states of the old Confederacy, the scoreboard read like this: In 1968, Hubert Humphrey carried Texas because of Lyndon Johnson, but no other state. Jimmy Carter in 1980 carried only Georgia; the others left the incumbent. In 1992, another native son of the South, Bill Clinton, carried four: Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. In 1996, Clinton carried Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida. So, four times -- 1972, 1984, 1988, and 2000 -- the Democratic candidate couldn't carry a single Southern state. Not one! Zero! Zilch! And two times, 1968 and 1980, only one Southern state favored the Democratic candidate.
Either the party is not a national party or the candidates were not national candidates. Take your pick. But there is more to this sorry tale. Most recently, in the mid-term elections of 2002, not a single national leader could come to the South to campaign without doing more harm than good. They were strangers in a foreign land. No, not exactly strangers -- they were too well-known. That was the problem.
National Chairman Terry McAuliffe couldn't come. He was too liberal. Clinton couldn't come. He was too liberal. The party's titular head, Al Gore of Tennessee, who two years earlier had put up a big fat zero in the region, couldn't come. He was too liberal. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle couldn't come. He was too liberal. . . . House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt couldn't come. He was too liberal.
Little has changed, except that Nancy Pelosi has taken the place of Gephardt, which makes it even worse. In 2004, none of the leadership can come. When it comes to romancing the South, they bring their flowery bouquets wrapped in old, dried-up carpetbag containers.
So, if this is a national party, sushi is our national dish. If this is a national party, surfboarding has become our national pastime. These people leading our party and those asking to lead our country are like a bunch of naive fraternity boys who don't know what they don't know.
Albert Einstein reportedly once said that someone who keeps doing the same thing over and over, thinking they will get a different result, is insane. Einstein said it, I didn't. But it sure applies to the Democratic Party of recent vintage.
. . . The biggest problem with the party leadership is that they know nothing about the modern South. They still see it as a land of magnolias and mint juleps, with the pointy-headed KKK lurking in the background, waiting to burn a cross or lynch blacks and Jews.
They are like Shreve McCannon, the Canadian in William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" who asks the Southerner Quentin Compson, "Tell me about the South. What's it like there? What do they do there? Why do they live there? Why do they live at all?"
The modern South and rural America are as foreign to our Democratic leaders as some place in Asia or Africa. In fact, they are more so. At least the leaders go to those other foreign lands on "information-seeking CODEL" (congressional delegation) trips. I'm sure each one could explain the culture and economy of Pakistan, Taiwan or Kenya better than that of the American South.
. . . After being involved in or observing elections for more than 40 years, I've learned a few things about Democrats in Washington. They always act as if the last election never happened.
They also believe in purity. Do they ever! Like that old Ivory Soap commercial, 99.44/100 percent pure is all that will do. You cannot agree on just seven of their 10 issues, or even nine. All 10 must be embraced and ostentatiously hugged to your bosom with slobbering kisses.
Remember how Democrats wouldn't let Gov. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania even speak at our national conventions because he was pro-life? That was keeping the convention "pure."
National Democratic leaders are as nervous as a long-tailed cat around a rocking chair when they travel south or get out in rural America. They have no idea what to say or how to act. I once saw one try to eat a boiled shrimp without peeling it. Another one loudly gagged on the salty taste of country ham.
Democrats have never seen a snail darter they didn't want to protect, but sometimes I think the one endangered species they don't want to save is the Southern conservative Democrat. However, they do want to use us every so often, usually in the fall every other year. We're like that alcoholic uncle that families try to hide in a room up in the attic.
But after the primaries are over and the general election nears, Democrats trot out the South and show us off -- at arm's length, of course -- as if to say, "Look how tolerant we are; see how caring? Why, we even allow people 'like this' in our party of the big tent. We still love that strange old reprobate uncle. He's still a member of our big family."
Then as soon as the election is over, the old boy is banished to the attic, ignored for another two years, when we go get him and crowd him up under the party tent that now has shrunk to the size of a dunce cap.
Al Gore became only the third Democrat since the Civil War to lose every state in the Old Confederacy, plus two border states as well. George McGovern and Walter Mondale were the others. But they had an excuse: they were crushed in national landslides. They didn't just lose the South. They lost from sea to shining sea.
Gore's loss was different. Had he won any state in the Old Confederacy or one more border state, he would be president today. But it didn't happen. Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas and the Democratic bastion of West Virginia. Even Michael Dukakis -- hardly a son of the South -- didn't manage to lose there.
The campaign in the South was a mess, and it didn't have to happen. There were more Democratic than Republican governors in the region, and the Democrats held a majority of state legislative chambers. Largely because of the Democratic debacle in the South in 2002, even that has changed; three Democratic governors also bit the dust.
Chances are it's going to happen again. Given the demographic changes that determine the makeup of the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, it will be worse. In 2004, if we have the exact same popular-vote split between the Democratic and Republican candidates, and if these candidates win the same states, the Electoral College margin for the Republican will get bigger. How much bigger? The Republican candidate would have a majority in the Electoral College not by four electors, as George W. Bush did in 2000, but by 18.
Obviously, Southerners believe the national Democratic Party does not share their values. They do not trust the national party with their money or the security of the country.
If Southern voters think you don't understand them -- or even worse, much worse, if they think you look down on them -- they will never vote for you. Folks in the South have a simple way of saying this: "He's not one of us." When a politician hears those words, he's already dead.
The point I'm making is that for Southern voters, the issues you choose to talk about -- or not talk about -- are as important as the positions you take on those issues. Southern voters may say they're for gun control, and they may well be for gun control, but they simply don't trust anybody who spends too much time talking about it. Bill Clinton understood that. Al Gore did not.
. . . It will be difficult for the Democratic Party to nominate a candidate capable of winning nationwide until it abandons the suicidal compulsion of allowing Iowa and New Hampshire to be the tail that always wags the Democratic donkey. Don't misunderstand me. These are good states with good people living in them and good people representing them in public office.
But not by any stretch of one's imagination can the Iowa Democratic caucus be interpreted as representative of the nation. More to the truth, it is simply allowing labor unions to make this most important first decision. And those first decisions more often than not become the ultimate decision.
Consider this: there are 32,000 unionized teachers and 28,000 members of the American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees in Iowa -- and are they activists! In 2000, with a hot contest between Al Gore and Bill Bradley, the Iowa caucuses drew 61,000 participants. Add up the above numbers and guess who were the ones who turned out.
By the way, there are four counties in Georgia alone that vote more than twice that number. New Hampshire is a great state, but a microcosm of America it is not. Isn't it strange that based on the outcome in these two states, a Democratic candidate will be chosen? No, it's more than strange; it's suicide.
While I have dwelled primarily on the problems of the Democratic Party in the South and rural America, their problem is much greater than that. The national Democratic Party is in imminent danger of being cannibalized, eaten alive by the special-interest groups with their single-issue constituents who care about only their own narrow agenda. This is exactly what happened to the Whig Party as the Civil War loomed on the horizon. With self-interest rampant among a lot of different groups, the center would not hold and the party died.
I own a fiddle that supposedly belonged to Zeb Vance, the great North Carolina mountaineer who was elected that state's governor in 1862. He opposed much of what Confederate President Jefferson Davis was doing in Richmond. He was too young to be involved in the Whig Party at the height of its popularity, but he had been "born a Whig" and many thought this moderate, independent-minded, vigorous young leader might be the one to keep the party alive in the South.
When he was approached to do so in 1865, Vance was typically direct: "The party is dead and buried and the tombstone placed over it and I don't care to spend the rest of my days mourning at its grave."
Like that Whig Party of the late 1850s, the Democratic Party of today has become dangerously fragmented, and considering the present leadership it can only get worse. Compromise will become increasingly difficult and no leader's goal will be to reach consensus or common ground. Instead, they will more than ever blindly champion this group and that group.
The special-interest groups have come between the Democratic Party and the people. The party is no longer a link to most Americans. Each advocacy group has become more important than the sum of the whole. It is a rational party no more. It is a national party no more. So, bang the drum slowly and play the fife lowly, for the sun is setting over a waiting grave.
Chapter 24:
Days of Whine and Rose-colored Glasses|
The trouble with too many Democrats today is that they had rather make a statement than win an election.
That is not true, however, about the Democratic Leadership Council. The week after the election in November 2004, there's going to be a lot of empty-feeling Democrats in their sackcloth and ashes wishing they had listened to Al From, Bruce Reed and pollster Mark Penn, who warned in July 2003, "The Democratic Party is hurt by current perceptions that Democrats stand for big government, want to raise taxes too high, are too liberal and are beholden to special-interest groups. Half a century ago a near majority of voters identified themselves a part of the Democratic Party. Today that number has declined to roughly one-third." Frankly, in my opinion, it's more than "perception;" it's reality.
But as always, most of the national Democratic crowd had rather listen to the politically tone-deaf special-interest brokers who are totally ignorant of the real-world political landscape. Bill Clinton was the exception. But he would always wait until the boat was taking water and listing. Then, right before an election, he would start bailing.
One of the popular declarations of the special interests this political season is "We don't need a Republican lite." As usual, they miss the point entirely; it's not about being "Republican lite" or "Bush lite"; it's about being where most of the voters are, especially as it relates to those all-important electoral votes.
It also has to do with "the sensible center," not the loony left, which is the habitat of the Democrats' special-interest groups.
. . . No Democrat wants to tell the leaders of their party that they have halitosis. But they do, and it cannot be improved with a little mouthwash right before that date they have every other year with the South.
In 2002, the Democrats lost the governorships in Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. Truth to tell, this cannot be blamed entirely on the national Democratic Party. Those three good Democratic governors, Roy Barnes, Jim Hodges and Don Siegelman, will tell you they share some of the blame themselves. But the axis of McAuliffe, Clinton, Gore and Daschle, dominated by "the Groups," created an atmosphere so bad that it is almost impossible for Democrats to be heard in [the South].
Since their defeats in 2002, it has only gotten worse, negating years of hard work on their part and many who came before them who wanted to stay loyal to their party heritage but were left needing oxygen. Trying to win the U.S. Senate seats we now hold in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina is going to be a hard row to hoe. The reason: the poor reputation and the record of the national Democratic Party.
All of this has escaped the party leaders until now that it's too late. They always have their own take on what the problem is and talking with them is like talking to a fence post. Believe me, I've tried. They sincerely believe those Washington-based strategists understand the problem better than those who live in the South and have run successful campaigns there for years.
As much as I deplore my party's reputation for sucking up to these left-leaning special-interest groups, there is another rip in our heritage, in our image, that I regret even more. I fear some of the Democratic presidential candidates are treading on very dangerous ground for the party, and, more important, for the country. I do not question their patriotism; I question their judgment. They are doing what politicians often do, playing to the loudest, most active and most emotional group of supporters, feeding off their frustration while clawing to find some advantage. I've done it myself and lived to regret it.
A demagogue is defined by Webster as "a political leader who gains power by arousing people's emotions and prejudices." Isn't that exactly what some of them are doing? Some of the liberal media excuse these actions by calling them "populism." Populism, my butt! Its demagogy, pure and simple.
Howard Dean, while not alone, is the worst offender, and it says a lot about the current Democratic base that he has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president. He likes to say he belongs to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but I say he belongs to the whining wing of the Democratic Party.
Angry and red-faced, these doom-and-gloomers need to take some "calm-me-down" pills. Over the years I've learned to beware of candidates who yell and scream and jump up and down. Usually what they're saying has so little substance they have to make up for it with histrionics. But they should realize that their overheated rhetoric is dividing the country when they should be helping unite it.
. . . I like the fact that the Bush White House is not timid about making a decision and does not suffer from "analysis paralysis," the malady that is common to those learned people "who know so much and can see all sides." Unfortunately, these mostly well-intentioned persons see so many shades of gray, they often miss the black and white. And that is what is called for today.
They have become a party not of inclusion, but a noisy rabble of competing special interests who are drawn together not for mutual support, but for the purpose of plundering other groups who they despise.
Where we live- the Georgia coast- was perhaps 80% Democrat until Mr. Reagan came along... in those days, Republican office-holders were virtually unknown- you simply could not run for office and win with an (R) by your name.
The salient point, however, was that back then, Southern Democrats were usually more conservative than most "moderate" Republicans, and hence could be supported without violating one's conservative principles.
Sadly, the old-time Democrats from that wing of the party have virtually vanished from sight, being replaced by shifty-eyed opportunists from the Clinton wing.
Yes, indeed. They want to have power and these groups fund their campaigns. No principle, no honor, just show me the money. Unfortunately, too many politicians of all stripes are for sale.
I busted out laughing when I read that.
I didn't think all that highly of Zell when he was Governor, but his face on TV never evoked the visceral reaction I get from most 'rat politicians. I have forgiven him for introducing Clinton as "the ooooonly candidate for President who really feels your paaaaaaiiiin."
LOL. Sounds like the infighting on FreeRepublic.
This is a great article. The Leadership Council, Cuomo, and Miller (have I left anyone out) telling the democrats that their problem is the Clinton and Co. leadership, but they refuse to listen. What Miller is saying here is what most can see coming but arrogance comes before the fall.
Too bad the Dems like this do not see that their party has been stolen by the kooks and they will never let it go. As the environmentalists in CA would let it all burn down to save a single tree, so too is the average Dem-voter.
"Let them eat cake." ended the reign on France, so too will it end here in America. And I am afraid that the GOP is rushing too far to the center that they are hitting the Left wall right now.
Old Patriot
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