Democratic Party

The Democrats hope to make foreign policy a key issue in the coming campaign ... Unfortunately, the Democrats do not attack the global interventionism of the Administration ... Thus, the Democrats prepare to justify the historic label which unmerciful critics have tried to fasten on them: "the party of socialism and war." These critics say that war spending and war inflation give socialism and the bureaucracy a shot in the arm. What's more, they point out, the mass base of the Democratic Party—the labor unions—stand to prosper in the glow of inflation and armament contracts.

Yet the Democrats can present no real issues, because they cannot offer the voters any alternative to present Republican policy. The Democrat promise of 100% parity to farmers is matched by the equally socialistic Republican Soil Bank. All the Democrats can do is complain that the Republicans don't New Deal enough: "not enough" highways, foreign aid, schools, social security, ... minimum wages, etc. ... The left-wing Democrats ... have seen their views and policies become coin of the realm. But three issues stir them: "civil rights" for Negroes; civil liberties for Communists; and immigration barriers.

When the American people caught on that the "war on terror" was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime's warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.

[The] Democrats' program has government providing things to people directly ... The Democrats want government to dispense schooling to the nation's children. They might like the federal government to do it, but they'll settle for the state and local governments, as long as from their Washington perches they can dictate what goes on in the classroom. If parents don't like it, they can lump it ... Another example is prescription-drug coverage for the elderly ... The Democrats are honest. They say they want a monster government bureaucracy controlling drug prices and giving orders to the pharmaceutical industry.

The Bushian doctrine of the "unitary executive," which gives the occupant of the White House monarchical power in wartime, has now been approved by the Democrats, who can't wait to wield it themselves. Of course, they would exercise such unholy power only in a good way – say, if a state refused to cooperate in enforcing or implementing federal legislation instituting a draft, or, more likely, federalizing a state National Guard unit to be shipped to the Middle East ... Just wait until the Democrats get their hands on all that power: then you'll see the real collapse of the movement to preserve civil liberties in America.

Just how much success is evidenced by the complete inability and unwillingness of the Democrats to stand up against this systematic assault on our liberties at the most crucial point: that is, at the time it was initiated ... Sen. Jay Rockefeller is coming out in public against the NSA eavesdropping only now that it is politically popular to do so. When it really counted, however, those few congressional Democrats who were let in on the secret unauthorized wiretaps, such as Rockefeller and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said nothing ... Could a wimpier "opposition" even be imagined?

Both the Democrats and Republicans are so concerned with "winning" that they are almost rabidly hostile to the idea of candidates who would "rather be right than President" ... Richard M. Nixon ... is now virtually indistinguishable from his 1968 opponent Hubert Humphrey. The Democrats, by virtue of assiduous efforts, have managed to make themselves even less appetizing [than the GOP] ... Such third-party efforts as may materialize on the "left" are also unlikely to offer much. At best they will be hyped-up versions of the Democratic Party (e.g., a Lindsay-Gardner ticket) ...

After all, Democrats have been more belligerent than the Bush administration when it comes to Iran ... Democratic Party national chairman Howard Dean opined to Chris Matthews that ... Iraq ... diverted attention away from the "real threat" – Iran. Asked by Matthews if we ought to go to war with Iran, Dean – like the big-time Democratic presidential wannabes – refused to take it off the table ... the political atmosphere would certainly change – to the Democrats' advantage – if the price of oil were to truly skyrocket, say, to $200 a barrel. This would virtually ensure a Democratic victory in '08.

In spite of using the war issue to take control of the House and the Senate, Democrats for the most part oppose any kind of timetable for withdrawing our troops from Iraq ... Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party's leading presidential candidate, flat out opposes withdrawal ... Now she's talking about "phased redeployment," in tune with the Democratic caucus majority ... The Democrats, having run – and won – on the failure of the Bush administration's foreign policy ... have clearly stabbed us in the back. The much-vaunted "100 hours" of the Pelosi-ites doesn't so much as touch on any foreign policy issue, let alone Iraq.

Whatever benefit accrued to the working class from the New Deal was purely a side effect of promoting the economic interests of the segment of organized capital represented by the Democratic Party. The Democrats, admittedly, generally oversee a lower overall rate of exploitation by capital under their watch. Part of the reason is that the wing of organized capital behind the Democrats is just a little bit smarter than its Republican counterparts ... The Democrats ... tend to limit exploitation to the maximum sustainable level, like a farmer who feeds his livestock well and works them only in moderation.

[L]ook at the crew the Dems have assembled for this year! What a mess of hucksters, victim-group politicos, and anti-capitalistic wackos ... [T]he problem is ... the ideology that underlies the raison d'ętre of the modern Democratic Party ... Human relationships are characterized most often as cooperative ... Such propositions are entirely rejected by most of the Democratic hopefuls ... [P]arty elites among the Democrats regard regular Americans as the problem and not the solution, so it is no surprise that they continue to have problems finding candidates for whom people are willing to vote.

Many of the congressional races were won by Democrats who pushed a protectionist, anti-globalist agenda. As the Wall Street Journal reported on the eve of the election, "[I]n more than a dozen districts up for grabs, trade issues are giving them [Democrats] an edge over Republicans. ... Protectionist sentiments and economic nationalism appear to be emerging as symbols of a broader but less well-defined sense of economic unease, which is particularly apparent in the Midwest this year." The day after the election, Jacob Weisberg of Slate.com, wrote ... His article was titled "Lou Dobbs Democrats."

The rise of the "libertarian Democrats" comes in the nick of time. At this moment of crisis, why not reclaim the party of Thomas Jefferson for his beleaguered heirs? ... The great advantage of the Jeffersonian Democrat project, however, more than outweighs the negatives. The Democratic Party is out of ideas: ideologically, their leaders and "theoreticians" are remarkably barren ... These people need to be educated, and, what's more, many of them are educating themselves: Moulitsas' essay proves that ... All hail the Jeffersonian Democrats–and let the Democratic reformation begin!

Mike Gravel ... has joined the Libertarian Party ... "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." ... Gravel was a Democratic presidential candidate, though forced out of national debates by Democratic Party leadership and the media.

After the 2004 presidential election, many Democrats went on the warpath over alleged voter fraud and manipulation in Ohio and elsewhere ... A handful of Democratic members of Congress formally challenged the seating of the Ohio electors when Congress reconvened in early January 2005 ... Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) explained the purpose of the Democratic challenge ... Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal.) complained that many states used "more sophisticated technology" for lottery tickets than for elections ... Democrats who questioned the election results automatically became terrorist supporters or at least sympathizers.

Kerry, in keeping with the Democratic Platform in Boston, said they would tax the rich, those making more than $200,000 a year, and thus it would not be necessary to increase taxes on the middle classes ... This has been a longstanding Democratic strategy for getting votes, but that is all it is good for. It won't raise revenue even though ... it should, but in the real world, it is just a political ploy ... If Kerry is elected and is able to get Congress to go along with this latest Democratic plan ..., we can expect a flood of deferred compensation plans covering earnings above that figure ...

In 1933 a group of sincere and ardent collectivists seized control of the Democratic Party, used it as a means of grasping Federal power, and enthusiastically, from motives which many of them regard as the highest idealism, began to make America over. The Democratic Party is now a political mechanism having a genuine political principle: national socialism ... A vote for the New Deal approves national socialism ... Defeating the New Deal at the polls might possibly check our country's back-sliding, but it is not enough to set America on its forward way again.

Gore's address is the first sign of leadership from the Democratic party in six years. This alone makes it a major news event. But not even his own party took notice. According to reports, only one Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein (CA) was in the audience. One would have thought the entire Democratic congressional delegation would have turned out in support of Gore's challenge to Bush’s extraordinary claims of power ... With the US media now highly concentrated in a few corporate hands, has the Democratic Party reached the conclusion that opposition is no longer possible?

Most Americans have failed to live up to their responsibilities ... This includes most Democrats who, throughout these past five years, have done little more than opportunistically await the day that they might recover the White House in order to continue the same statist agenda "under new management." You will not find the Democrats proposing repeal of the Patriot Act—or any of the other recently enacted additions to police-state powers—or the dismantling of the Homeland Security system. Neither will they do what any morally decent person would do in the conduct of a war against wholly innocent people: stop the killing.

[In 1821, a] new Democratic Party resuscitated the old Jeffersonian alliance between planters of the South and plain Republicans of the North, united behind the charismatic hero of the West, General Andrew Jackson ... The ... Jackson presidency had slowly and painfully brought ideological definition to the Democratic Party ... the Democracy would stray in significant and reprehensible ways from the principled course [Van Buren] had charted ... The Democratic Party remained the political alliance with the strongest affinity for laissez-faire, personal liberty, and free trade until almost the turn of the century.

Arrayed against Murtha was a united front of the Democratic Party establishment, from a George Soros-backed "liberal" consumer-complainer group to an anonymously run YouDontKnowJack.org ... To hear some Democrats, adherents of an ideology that revolves around the pork barrel, denounce Murtha as "corrupt" is the ultimate in unintentional humor ... the knifing of Murtha was done quickly, in the dark – a secret ballot of the Democratic caucus, and then that phony photo-op ... Given a mandate for peace, the Democratic Party leadership has effectively rejected it and reversed the election results.

Predicting that the Republicans will lose is not the same thing as believing that the Democrats deserve to win. The Democratic Party has inflicted unconscionable damage ... Their history is replete with militarism, statism, and socialism. They lied us into WW I, WW II, Korea, and Vietnam. They've been indefatigable in their promotion of ever-bigger government. They've overseen the creation of several gargantuan and unsustainable entitlement programs, and they've inflicted the plague of mindless political correctness on our culture. The Democrats are, in short, a pack of shameless, government-worshipping charlatans.

In a recent discussion on the economy with a faculty colleague, I reminded her of some of the absurdities of New Deal economic policies ... She reminded me that Franklin D. Roosevelt is a "hero" to her and other Democrats, which, translated, means that the New Deal cannot be criticized in any form ... Democrats today may think of themselves as belonging to a "modern" political party, but Roosevelt still is its central figure and any policy "innovations" that come forth from party intellectuals ultimately must be in line with the New Deal.

That collision came on January 25, 1936, when [Al] Smith delivered a fiery anti–New Deal speech before the Liberty League, a mostly conservative group organized in opposition to Roosevelt's policies ... Deriding FDR and his brain trust for their "betrayal" of the Democratic party's principles, Smith declared: "It is all right with me if they want to disguise themselves as Norman Thomas or Karl Marx, or Lenin, or any of the rest of that bunch, but what I won't stand for is to let them march under the banner of Jefferson, Jackson, or Cleveland." Unfortunately for Smith, most Democrats saw things differently.

The Founding Fathers rejected the parliamentary system ... They intended for Congress to act as a check against attempts by the executive branch to usurp power, and they intended for the president ... to act as a check on Congress. The modern two-party system has nullified this safeguard. Both Democrats and Republicans act like slaves to the man in the White House if he shares their party label, thus nullifying the most important of the checks and balances ... built into the Constitution. By acting like lap dogs when their man wins the White House, both Democrats and Republicans have imposed a parliamentary system on us.

[T]he Iraqi phase of the war is over, and one way we know this is the sudden attention being paid to the Iraq issue by the ... leadership of the Democratic party. The moment House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to strip out a provision in her omnibus "antiwar" bill that would have required the President to come to Congress before attacking Iran, the Iranian chapter of this long and bloody saga was semi-officially opened ... Isn't that just like the Democrats: they come out against the Iraq war only when it's too late–and even as they signal the administration to go ahead with the next war.

As the oldest political committee in the world elects a new chairman ..., the Democratic Party faces a problem common to venerable institutions: a loss of brand equity ... The Democratic Party label—a two-century-old moniker—is suffering a branding dilemma ... The Democratic Party story was refashioned in the industrial era, particularly with arrival of the New Deal ... People still vote Democratic, of course—they still buy the product—but the old-time Democratic religion has lost its revivalist energy ... We need something radically different from those too tired story-lines.

It's reasonable to conclude from the election results that most voters felt the Republicans had been in power too long ... In the voters' view, they had only one group to turn to: the Democrats. But even if this was largely a negative vote, it doesn't mean people won't warm to Democrats' activist agenda. Americans, sad to say, are not opposed in principle to activist government ... Most people welcomed ... the Medicare drug program, a massive expansion of the ... government medical retirement plan. Why shouldn't they applaud the Democrats when the new majority begins promising expanded middle-class entitlements?

All this is not to say that the Democrats are any better. Their political cowardice and fear of being called "terrorist-loving cowards who hate America" has dissuaded them from opposing consolidation of federal power by the Republicans. But while Republicans and Democrats share the same big-spending, big-government philosophy, there is one big difference between them: Democrats make no bones about being advocates of big spending and big government, while Republicans continue to wrap themselves in libertarian limited-government rhetoric.

"What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak and the peoples voice is unambiguous–but nothing happens?" It is a question that needs to be addressed to the leadership of both parties, not only the Republicans ... but also Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. These two Democratic Party bigwigs were propelled into power by rising antiwar sentiment, yet they have just signed on to a war funding bill with no timelines, no preconditions, and no real congressional oversight. It's just another blank check–drawn on an account long since drained dry.

A conservative is someone who wants to keep things pretty much as they are, dubbing any major shift in direction a "risky scheme." By that definition, who in Washington today are more conservative than the so-called liberal Democrats, yapping like protective bitches, should anyone approach their overgrown brood of social welfare programs? ... [T]he Democrats will have none of it, shrieking that even a modest plan to allow workers to shift some small part of "their" Social Security "contributions" into privately owned accounts would "leave children and cripples and old people starving in the streets!"

The question now is: what will the Democrats do? The Democrats clearly have no mandate for their pet issues of gun control, homosexual marriage, and higher taxes ... If [they] are to make a real difference, their first task is to repeal the Orwellian-named "Patriot Acts," the torture legislation, the detention without court evidence legislation, and the right-to-spy and invade privacy without court warrant legislation ... Can Democrats restore American liberties and leadership, or will a lust for power corrupt them, too, and cause Democrats to retain the police state powers Bush has created?