Not bad. These factions in the Left just had to go to war with each other sooner or later.
And I'm loving every minute of it.
Andrew O’Hehir does not recognize Obama as a grifter.
I enjoyed reading this, thanks for posting it. And thanks go to the author for identifying the weak joints through which we will drive steel wedges this fall. By the time we get done with this Democrat, whichever of the two is finally nominated, they are going to look like chopped meat on a Philly cheesesteak.
I think it’s definitely a Salon article. 3 snoozies.
Here’s what I think - A) Is this the longest post ever, or does it just seem so? B) What is this guy doing on this board? and C) It’s always amazed me how the Dems decry wars, blaming the big, bad Reps, yet historically - overwhelmingly, it’s been Democrat presidents who’ve gotten us into them. Hmmmmmm.
The rest of what I think of this is too lengthy to mention.
I think it’s a pretty good analysis, agree with a lot, disagree with some.
This point:
“It has robbed the United States of an effective opposition party for four decades, with no end in sight.”
I think is very true and very tragic for the country. Honest opposition, arguing different ideas toward the same goals is very healthy and helpful.
Lately we have the Power Hungry Traitors vs. the Incompetent Wanderers
Oh, come on Andrew! The real question is “Do we want to lose because we nominated a Marxist or because we nominated a Marxist?”
OUCH!
It is very important to understand the disastrous ramifications of the above point concerning the extent of the support that FDR got from the Democratic coalition.
Given that the Founders required federal government powers to be enumerated in the Constitution, in order to establish his New Deal federal programs FDR first needed to do the following. He needed to rally the states to exercise their Article V power to amend the Constitution to essentially add his spending programs to Sec. 8 of Article I. Otherwise, the USSC would have to find FDR's programs to be constitutionally unauthorized, aka unconstitutional, if the states were to challenge them. And the states did indeed challenge them.
Astonishingly, instead of campaigning for the states to properly amend the Constitution, FDR showed appaling ignorance of the Constitution by encouraging Democratic-sympathizing justices to give carte blanche approval to his New Deal programs, the Constitution, especially 10th A. protected state powers, be damned.
Thus began not only the politically correct ignoring of the requirement for constitutionally enumerated federal government powers by big-shot Democratic spenders in Congress, but also the erosion of 10th A. protected powers, particularly the power to address religious issues, by pro-Democratic majority justices. Indeed, pro-Democratic majority justices have been short-changing USA citizens their religious freedoms for decades now.
This post (<-click), while addressing taxes, provides more details as to how USA citizens lost control of their wallets to the Democrat-controlled federal government, thanks to FDR and pro-Democratic justices who had no more respect for state powers than FDR did.
Again, given that the 10th A. protects state power to address religious issues, this post (<-click) tells how secular-minded, pro-Democratic justices, having FDR's politically correct license to ignore the 10th A., slowly began limiting our religious freedoms whenever religion-related state power cases came along. The resulting string of 10th A.-ignoring cases includes the USSC's scandalous legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade.
The bottom line is that the people need to wise up to the fact that the federal government hasn't been operating within the restraints of the federal Constitution since the days of FDR's dirty Democratic politics. The people need to get in the faces of the feds, demanding that the feds not only eliminate constitutionally unauthorized federal spending programs while appropriately reducing federal taxes, but also demanding that the feds respect 10th A. state powers, particularly powers which help to protect our religious freedoms.
If the shoe fits.
Liberal fantasizing.
I lived thru this but missed the dems divides.
Would he have called Nixon a "popular incumbent" at the time?
Indeed, the Democrats have to decide between losing due to blacks or women, whether to run a pathological liar or an anti-American Muslim sympathist.
Which way lies madness? The way to Denver. I'm betting on the Donner party.
Not bad. These factions in the Left just had to go to war with each other sooner or later.
And I'm loving every minute of it.
semi-mythical gun-loving lumpenproletariat
A. I’m not lumpy.
B. I’m not semi-hysterical.
C. I am gun loving.
D. I’m not no paroletariat.
In his recent Salon article, Michael Lind identifies the split between dueling Democratic wings of the 1950s, specifically between hard-headed pragmatist (and Cold War hawk) Harry Truman on one side and liberal idealist (and Cold War dove) Adlai Stevenson on the other. Like almost any comment anybody makes about this split, that's an invidious comparison, and Lind is clearly advocating one side of the equation. Truman won an election as the nominee of a divided party (against the odds) and Stevenson lost two of them (against even greater odds). But let's let that stand, since Lind's dating of the emergence of this division is clearly correct: The last president to command enthusiastic support from all sides of the Democratic coalition was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
There is that split in the Democratic Party. But nobody's ever going to do as well as FDR, who managed to bring together African-Americans and segregationists, Communists and Catholics in his various runs.
Truman did respectably. The breakaway elements were on the fringes: fellow travellers for Henry Wallace, and state's righters for Strom Thurmond.
Stevenson couldn't have won against Eisenhower. But for an egghead, he did succeed in carrying some states that are very Republican, "red," and rural today.
His problem wasn't that he only carried intellectuals. It was that Eisenhower won just about everywhere outside the Deep South and a few other pockets around the country.