I think it was earlier, more like the Johnson administration.
Posted on 09/14/2004 9:43:05 PM PDT by 68skylark
The Democrats are no longer the majority party. Is this the year they'll finally admit it?
The Democratic Party is in descendancy. It's not just that John Kerry's campaign is sinking like a stone, or that George W. Bush is turning out to be a resilient politician. The Democratic leadership is in electoral denial, failing to grasp a profound shift among American voters and therefore on the cusp not of winning back control of one of the branches of government, but of handing control over to Republicans for a generation or more.
This denial has been fed by moderate electoral victories, most notably Bill Clinton's eight year control of the White House, Al Gore's popular-vote plurality in 2000, and what turned out to be transient congressional gains in 1996, 1998 and 2000. Democrats still seem to believe they can win back the White House without making any significant modification to their party's policies--that they are the natural majority party just waiting to be given back control.
A broader look, however, reveals a much different electoral landscape. Somewhere during the Carter presidency Americans lost confidence in the ideas of the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton ran and won as a "third way" Democrat in 1992, when it seemed safe not to worry about foreign threats. When he took office, he tried to move the country to the left, raising taxes and rolling out a plan to socialize medicine.
The flaw in Mr. Clinton's belief that the country was ready to swing left again was revealed in the congressional elections two years into his presidency.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
I like this article.
Very good analysis
Democrats are going the way of the Whig party
I think it was earlier, more like the Johnson administration.
> The Democrats are no longer the majority party.
> Is this the year they'll finally admit it?
And will the various loose parts flying in close formation
stay in the Party if the Party does admit it?
The Democrats rely on a spectrum of voters whose
interests are far from mutual.
AARP victims,
alternative lifestylists,
America haters,
Bush haters not in any other category,
Clintonitas,
Communists (card carrying, but smart-voting),
crooked CEOs (some of them, anyway),
dictionary vandals (marriage re-definers),
felons (in or out of the slammer),
government workers (excluding military),
greens (card carrying, but smart-voting),
human haters not in any other category,
impressionable students,
inhalers and non-inhalers,
islamiscists,
Libertarians not actually interested in liberty,
legacy media employees,
minorities (gullible only),
NEA,
one-worlders (universal servitude),
pacifists (violent variant only),
professional protesters,
raw power seekers not in any other category,
trial lawyers,
second-amendment haters,
sex offenders,
Socialists (card carrying, but smart-voting),
starving artists,
unions,
university professors, and
welfare moochers
They only hang together because the Dems sometimes win.
The party's fortunes have been in a steady decline since
Clinton took over, and if 2004 is a landslide for Bush,
the glue is going to fail.
They're only in it for the power, and once that's seen as
out of reach, they'll go play elsewhere.
And all other blacks,
Bill Buckley rocks!
The dem party is actually a coalition of smaller groups who join together to defeat the evil conservatives. Alas, when you base your whole platform on so-called marginalized people and issues, the rest of us americans in the normal world just can't relate. And slowly the coalition starts to crumble as each interest grabs for whatever crumb falls to the floor.
You have nicely outlined America's enemies within. The Democrats represent the people who should technically be interned for the duration of the current conflict - for national security as well as for their own protection should we suffer another terrorist strike.
The REAL democrats need to take back their party and then the democrats that are residing in the republican side, can go back to their true side.
We can then, together, rid our country of all our enemies starting with the socialists, the communists, the anarchists, and all those who would destroy our way of life.
If they would live here peacefully, they will be allowed.
pro choicers
A very well-written and interesting column.
No, it was sometime after the Reagan presidency that the GOP adopted the ideas of the Johnson administration. That left the 'Rats with the radicals who disrupted the '68 convention, and the true conservatives are unrepresented.
A very flawed analysis because incomplete, which you have gone a ways to correct.
The analysis is flawed because it is written from the perspective of an economic conservative and fails to recognize the ugly truth that in American politics, all politics are not local, or economic (i.e. entreprenuial), but enthnic.
Any analysis of American political trends is idle so long as it omits the effect of black and hispanic block voting, as this analysis has done. No matter that it makes us conservative, entreprenurial, white, suburbanites feel good about the future, we, sadly, are not the future.
As the hispanics go, so goes the nation.
I've been posting this point for a few weeks on FR now but no one seems interested. But I agree with the article; a conservative realignment began in the U.S. in 1980 with the appearance of Ronald Reagan. It continues today.
You hear that? Thats the sound of the Democratic party going up in flames.
bttt
> A very flawed analysis ...
Actually, it was only intended as thought-provoking humor.
I'll sign up for remedial mirth-making straight away.
> The analysis is flawed because ...
If you want peer-reviewed, this isn't the place.
Beer-reviewed is more the norm, with many instances
of informed insight.
> ... it is written from the perspective of an
> economic conservative ...
Actually only a partial simulation thereof. I left out
some known lightning-rod interest groups.
> ... all politics are not local, or economic (i.e.
> entreprenuial), but enthnic.
More specifically than ethnic: parental and tribal.
> ... we, sadly, are not the future.
I'm working on an agreeable future, one that cuts
through traditional them-vs-us mentalities, but first,
the Kerry threat must be deflected.
It's not your analysis that is flawed, it's his.
Bump
> It's not your analysis that is flawed, it's his.
That thought occured to me,
naturally, right after I hit [Post]
But the question is still open on just how
much more decline the Democrat Party can
stand, and still stay together.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.