Democratic Party: On the Ropes?

NationalJournal.com ^ | 9/5/03 | Julie Kosterlitz

[Tribune7]

The Dems have bent over backwards to chase away men and get themselves stigmatized as the anti-God party in a nation in which over 90 percent of its citizens believe in God.

It's turning out, too, that most women are strongly pro-life, and as the Republican message starts reaching the blacks most of them will go Pubbie too.

Most importantly, the Dems hammerlock on information has been shattered. Network news and urbane dailies no longer have a monopoly on the media and are in fact dying.

[Pikachu_Dad]

Ah yes, us Republicans are so much smarter. That's why the party spends 3 times what I send them sending me back junk mail requesting that I contribute even more. Why it is just great when I get 5-10 requests for donations a week!

[Nonstatist]

Democrats and liberals need to replicate not only the campaign-trail savvy of the Republicans but also the GOP's large network of think tanks

How many think tanks do you need to state that the solution to every "problem" is redistribution of income? Ho much higher can you make state spending?

[Texas_Dawg]

Ah yes, us Republicans are so much smarter. That's why the party spends 3 times what I send them sending me back junk mail requesting that I contribute even more. Why it is just great when I get 5-10 requests for donations a week!

You are a good example of why Louisiana has 2 Democratic Senators.

[Natural Law]

Other parties have faded into US history before. There is no one alive who voted for a Whig or Bull Moose candidate. The compelling question is what will take it's place. My bet is that something will emerge from the right to further lead the the not so subtle drift in that direction.

[Ed_in_NJ]

"Democratic Party: On the Ropes?"

"In the Sewer," is a lot more like it.

[Reverend Bob]

The secret to the Dems long term collapse (and, yes, they will -- eventually -- be back) is hidden in an odd place in this article. Republicans are cited as having a "mature array of institutions that are partisan" but also independent of the party (or somesuch). This is true. What is unsaid is that the Democrats have their own such institutions (the NAACP, NARAL, NOW, the AFL-CIO). The difference is that, while the Dems' institutions are likewise independent, the Democratic Party is not independent of THEM!

Whenever a political party allows a narrow segment of it's base to exercise a veto over it's candidates and policies it will, by neccessity, begin to shrink. That's why Reagan Democrats, gun owners, pro-lifers, etc have been moving toward the Republicans for the last 20 years. The Republicans are trying to build a big-tent party and a long-term governing majority while Democrats continue to focus on placating narrow segments of their base.

Personally, I think that, barring some major scandal or disaster, we're heading towards a long, several decade run as America's majority party. Then again, I've thought that before. Old voting habits die hard however, and baby boomers continue to be a problem. :-(

[speedy]

It is not true, as this article states, that it took the GOP a long time to bounce back from its supposed post-Watergate low point. Six years after Nixon's resignation, Republicans elected the most consciously Conservative President of the century, and the first Republican Senate since the mid-1950s. With an occasional backward step, the US has been trending Republican since the Dems most dominant majority in the mid-1960s. Nobody was talking about an "evenly divided" country until recently -- the Dems always had an enormous numerical advantage. The percentage of voters identifying themselves as Democrat is now lower than at any time since the 1920s.

Sometimes we have to reflect on how far we have actually come since the dark days of the Great Society.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

"Government is dominated by right-wing conservatism. And the media is increasingly dominated by an extreme right-wing minority.

Well, not exactly! If the government were truly dominated by right-wing conservatism, we wouldn't see an honorable, well-qualified judicial candidate such as Miguel Estrada give up in disgust after two years of liberal stonewalling denied him a floor vote and certain confirmation. We wouldn't see an out-of-control budget (I'm not talking about military spending, either) and the specter of prescription drug coverage about to make the situation worse.

As for right-wing media domination--what a crock! Yes, we have Rush and the editors of the Wall Street Journal. They have the NY Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, LA Times, and nearly every other newspaper from Maine to California, with AP and Reuters feeds that make most local papers read like Pravda.

The democrats are delusional! If they believe the problem is that the media is biased against them, they haven't even begun to assess the paucity of their argument. It's like a guy who is convicted of murder blaming the jury, and there are seven of his relatives on it. Hey dems, read the following--it could actually help:

By and large, the citizens of this country want lower taxes, a strong defense, less immigration (both legal and illegal), more God in public life, fewer abortions, less yapping about the rights that adhere to those of a particular color, gender, sexual preference or country of origin, and more concern for the rights of individuals rather than members of these groups. Do these preferences seem like they might make the platform of the democrat party? The reason your party is floundering is not because the country doesn't hear your message, guys. It's because it does.

[Brilliant]

In 1861, the Dems sided with the Confederacy, the enemy of America. Today, they are siding with the terrorists.

[autoresponder]

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[dalebert]

Just remember to go vote.

[TennesseeProfessor]

There are several reasons in my opinion why the democrats have long-term
problems.

First, they are a victim of their success. America in 2003 looks very much like
the realization of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program; virtually all of the
social ideals the liberals came up with in the 1960s and early 70s have now
become law. It is not just "The democrats don't have any new ideas"; it is
"All of their ideas have already been tried".

Closely related is that their ideas are not popular. It isn't just that
Americans support George W. Bush, or that most of them support and approve
of the Iraqi policy. It is that a majority favour tax reduction. A majority
are opposed to gay marriage. A majority --including a majority of minorities--
favour school voucher programs. A majority are opposed to partial birth
abortion. In short, although the democrats are in deep denial, a sizeable
majority favour Republican ideas and programs to democrat ideas and programs.

The third in my list but perhaps most crucial in importance is the rise of
the alternate media. Democrats have had numerous internal discussions
about the need for a "counter" to Rush Limbaugh or Fox news. Yet they don't
acknowledge the bias shown by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and likely
many other left-leaning media stations. The phenomenon that democrats are
seeing is not the rise of a right-wing media machine; the phenomenon they are
seeing is the fall of the left-wing media machine. Talk radio and internet
rooms have allowed Republicans to organize and publicize their ideas for the
first time in a way that Democrats have been able to do for decades. The
behavoir of democrat Presidents have been examined for the first time with
the same scrutiny formerly reserved for Republican presidents. And the
response -- "Oh, we didn't tell you this at the time, but other Democratic
Presidents were just as bad" -- did not help their cause. Facts inconvenient
to the democrats are now being publicized: middle class Americans (including
married women) are more likely to vote Republican than democrat; the only
way Gore could have won Florida would be to change the election laws after
the election; more people donate to Republican causes than to Democratic
causes; .....

Finally, there is Clinton. Just as Nixon's activities caused several people
to abandon the Republicans, so Clinton's activities caused people to abandon
the democrats. In particular, the democratic party showed that it would
tolerate open perjury as long as the perjurour was "one of us." Clinton
managed to single-handedly discredit the National Organization of Women,
and shattered the illusion that democrats "cared" about women. The same
"win at all costs, the laws be damned" attitude appeared in the Wellstone
funeral, in the Texas Chicken-Ds, in Gore's attempts at election fraud, in
Condit's evasions about Chandra Levy, in the after-deadline candidate switch,
and who-knows-how-many other examples. More than one ethical person has
been so repulsed by the democrats that they have left the party. But in
addition to Clinton's moral failings, his policies have failed as well.
The infantada brought on by Clinton's search for a legacy of mid-east
peace continues. The "vast right-wing conspiracy" is able to remind voters
that Clinton refused Sudan's offer to arrest the mastermind of 9-11. And
the one aspect of his legacy remaining -- "At least the economy was good"
has now been discredited with the massive accounting fraud violations
which occurred under his watch.

I don't think the democrats are "dead". But I do think they are in denial
and have far more significant long-term problems than they are ready to
admit.

[jmstein7]

Exactly

[freedumb2003]

God, where to start, where to start?

The liberals can't win in the long-run because their message is structurally and forever fatally flawed. Liberalsim is the belief that people are stupid and need the elitists, in the guise of government, to guide every little thing in the average person's life. It is the belief that Man is an evil creature and that, absent the checks put in place by the elite, will only do evil.

Liberalism taken to its logical extreme was called the Soviet Union. Liberalism and Capitalism cannot co-exist. To destroy all the good that comes from abundance, allow it to flourish. The great garden and utopia of California today is the flower of liberalism.

The idea that the conservatives have all the money is, of course, crap. Hollywood alone has more money combined than most captians of industry. The difference is that, by and large, the conservatives are willing to part with money to prove the courage of their convictions. Babs Streisand, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon and their vacuous pronouncementsare about as good as it gets on the left. But actually put their money where their mouth is? No way.

[Rubber Duck]

I wouldn't wish Bustamante on California, but if he does win, Gray Davis will seem like the model of competence and moderation by comparison. The wishy-washy wing of California politics will reap a whirlwind and possibly bring down the curtain on one-party politics in 2004.

[dwills]

"Democrats, . . . would do well to study the way that conservatives, starting in the 1950s, worked to build a national movement and the way that Republicans plotted their return from political exile after the Watergate scandal.
. . .
Why have liberals so often floundered where conservatives have succeeded in building institutions to bolster their ideas and voices?"

The answer is obvious and not cited in the article (which is a very good one as far as it goes): Their ideas dare not speak their name, refuting American exceptionalism and being anti-capitalist.

The only way we can be diluted to the level of a Canada or co-dependent Euro-state, is if the experiment to allow the wealthy to distribute resources instead of the government is not permitted to continue or if Buchanan's predictions regarding anti-American citizenship come to pass. It could begin next year if rich folks continue to hoard their cash through to a Bush defeat, and will happen with certainty if we continue our immigration policies and fail to assimilate those who become voters.

[spokeshave]

"The Democratic Party bounced back after the Civil War, when its southern Confederate and northern Copperhead wings reunited, and it will bounce back once again."

Yeah...Dead Rat Bounce

[Zack Nguyen]

Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY's List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights.

Liberal social groups are funded massively, more so than conservative ones.

The war has brought out the stark diffeences between Republicans and Democrats that have always been there. Liberal Democrats believe American military might to be inherently immoral even in pursuit of national security. Republicans believe it to be inherently useful. The people are on the Republican side.

[goldstategop]

The basic problem the Democrats have is the absence of a theme or a message around which not just the party's core but the general electorate is attracted to. A stream of anti-Bush invective isn't a theme or a message. It may let party activists vent anger but it doesn't address the Democrats' problems of what to say to the country as to what the party stands for. I mean like Ally McBeal used to remind herself, have a "theme song" so you know where you're going. And until the Democratic Party does know where its going, its not going to win elections.