Democrats, We Hardly Knew Ye

[Skwmom]

I want to write about the future viability of the Democratic party.

As Lisa Lockwood has so brilliantly shown, stuff happens. Resolve weakens, ideals soften, gate crashing becomes less fun than being on the inside. Things that used to be considered true gets watered down, or forgotten entirely.

It’s not just that Markos has shifted awkwardly to the right. Slowly, over decades, the whole party has:


http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/17/1497378/-Oh-Democrats-We-Hardly-Knew-Ye-Part-One

[DanTex]

1. Naderite nonsense. Obama has been a great president and Hillary will continue

and preserve all the progress he's made. All this melodrama because the great savior Bernie lost.

The problem is the GOP, not the Democrats.

[JoePhilly]

8. + 1

[Smarmie Doofus]

24. Really? Which GOP? Nancy Reagan's?

Or Kissinger's.

[DanTex]

25. The current GOP. Do you follow politics much?

[bkkyosemite]

29. Constant disrespect for Senator Sanders will not get Clinton elected.

[DanTex]

40. Umm, I didn't mention Sanders at all. The OP linked to some loony nonsense about how

the Democratic party is somehow dead now. Idiocy like that gets nobody elected except for Trump.

[Chan790]

80. Dan, in all kindness, I've met few people in life as resistant to reality as you are.

The great Democrats of the 20th century...both Presidential (FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ) and non-Presidential (Paul Wellstone, Tip O'Neill, Adlai Stevenson, Abe Ribicoff, Mario Cuomo, Shirley Chisholm, ...) would not recognize this party as the Democratic party they served as it has strayed so far from its ideals.

If they did, it would only be so far as to realize that the loonies and fringe-jobs from their eras of the party like Al From and Scoop Jackson (and their acolytes) somehow managed to wrest the direction of the party away from being the party of the public interest of all Americans they so vocally strove for.

It may not be dead, but the modern Democratic party will remain an embarrassment until we can stop shooting ourselves in the face by electing and nominating individuals we should be finding ways to purge from the party...like Hillary Clinton.

[quickesst]

34. Plus+1....

... and plus 1 for good measure.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

36. The facts are simple. President Obama has performed

beyond that of our wildest expectations having been left the worst economy in history other than the great depression and he has to perform these miracles in the face of the greatest obstruction in political history.

[Skwmom]

75. Can you list the steps? n/t

[Jackie Wilson Said]

78. Steps?

[noretreatnosurrender]

68. I voted for Gore

and boy was I wrong. I should have voted for Nader.

[EndElectoral]

86. All things change. This is certainly no longer the party of FDR or even the Kennedy's

The party began moving strongly right in the 80's. Extremely high inflation and the Iran crisis sapped the energy from the Carter administration despite his success in the Camp David Accords.

The 80's lead to the Reagan Revolution, yes they called it a Revolution, and it cemented a philosophy the GOP has continued to embrace. Mondale and Dukakis were trounced, and a new Democratic ideal began in the 90's. One that was an attempt to retreive those Reagan Democrats by moving further right. It worked and Bill Clinton was elected for eight years, but policies such as trade, incarceration and welfare took big hits. The 2000's brought terrorism, and renewed nationalism, and deregulation. Obama, ran on a campaign of Hope and Change. It excited the voters and then when legislative gridlock set in it's pretty well now moved to an acceptance of "No, we can't, because...(insert a thousand reasons here.)

This is where we are. It is a party so far away from FDR who said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, or Kennedy who got America excited with making the impossible possible touting civil rights, and medicare and medicaid and even getting a man to the moon. It took Johnson to put those social policies into action but by the end of the decade America began to believe change could happen.

Now, instead of believing change can happen, we're told the reasons change "can't" happen. It is a pragmatic party now. Feels more "grown up" and less idealistic.

But as a pragmatist would say, it is what it is.

[truedelphi]

2. Markos uses the Greek family name of his mother, to cover up the

Fact that his father was part of the Death Squads in the Eighties!

[geek tragedy]

3. complete horseshit. the party is further to the left than it was two decades ago.

[Armstead]

7. Damning with faint praise

[geek tragedy]

10. It's kind of funny that people bash Bill Clinton's bad policies from 1996 and then

act like of course those were the good old days of the Democratic party, when every national Democrat was a card-carrying member of the DLC.

Kind of like self-described FDR Democrats whose main issues are civil liberties and opposing trade liberalization. Whoosh.

[Armstead]

11. Depends on what level you look at and what you care about

If you want to focus on "winning" and superficial appearances, they were the good old days. No worries. Everything is great. We will never have any recessions again. (Remember that one?)

If you want to admit there was long-range rot that was occurring below the bright shiny surface that is still bedeviling us today, it's a different story.

[geek tragedy]

13. the party is further to the left today because it's demographic coalition

allows it to be.

Personally, I'm not willing to blame the damage done by Bush on Clinton.

[Armstead]

14. Clinton set the table....Bush served the meal

[geek tragedy]

15. no, Bush enacted massive tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy

and, the whole Iraq war thing.

[Armstead]

27. I'd be a little careful about that Iraq war thing....

and if you think those were the only cause of our economic and related social and political problems.....well, go ahead and believe that.

[geek tragedy]

31. well, there was the Commodities Futures Modernization Act.

Have a roll call on that handy?

[Armstead]

47. Yeah Sanders along with everyone else voted for it as part of overall Omnibus budget

Wasn't a lot of choice

Phil Gramm snuck it in with the tacit support of Bill Clinton.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/18/hillary-clinton-attacked-bernie-sanders-for-voting-for-a-bill-her-husband-signed-into-law/

Not only did President Bill Clinton sign that bill into law, but key officials in his administration were also credited with helping to craft it.

The Sunlight Foundation, as part of their "Read the Bill" effort to demystify the legislative process explained it this way:

Leading the charge in Congress were Sens. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Rep. Thomas Ewing (R-IL). In May of 2000, Rep. Ewing introduced his Commodity Futures Modernization Act. While Ewing’s bill sailed quickly through the House, it stalled in the Senate, as Sen. Gramm desired stricter deregulatory language be inserted into the bill. Gramm opposed any language that could provide the SEC or the CFTC with any hope of authority in regulating or oversight of financial derivatives and swaps. Gramm’s opposition held the bill in limbo until Congress went into recess for the 2000 election.

Throughout the better part of the year Gramm, Lugar and Ewing worked with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets—most specifically, Treasury Secretary [Larry] Summers, CFTC Chairman [William[ Rainer and SEC Chairman [Arthur] Levitt—to strike a deal on the bill.

The final version of the bill included stronger deregulatory language, but it isn't clear whether many lawmakers knew that it was in there. (This was around the time that the country was embroiled in a contentious presidential vote recount in Florida.)

The CFMA made its way through Congress on the back of a must-pass, 11,000-page bill to fund the government that year. This is where Sanders comes in, he joined a majority of Democrats and Republicans in approving the omnibus bill, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton.

[geek tragedy]

50. notice, btw, how all of this awful shit happened when Republicans controlled Congress.

Fortunately, we didn't get a repeat of that with Obama. they got none of their ideological wish list passed.

[Armstead]

53. I'm not defending Republicans. They suck moose shit big time.

[geek tragedy]

55. point being, we probably ought to keep in mind that Congress plays a very large role in this nt

[truedelphi]

62. This ^^ nt/

[DanTex]

19. Exactly. Or LBJ Dems who complain that Hillary is too hawkish.

[Octafish]

28. Yeah. Remember that time he repealed the New Deal law that kept Wall Street out of the Treasury?

Now he works in Wealth Management for former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and the Banksters at UBS.

After his exit from the US Senate, Phil Gramm found a job at Swiss bank UBS as vice chairman. He later brought in former President Bill Clinton to the Wealth Management team. What a coincidence, they are the two key figures in repealing Glass-Steagal. Since the New Deal it was the financial regulation that protected the US taxpayer from the Wall Street casino. Oh well, what are a few hundred million in speaking fees compared to a $16 trillion bailout among friends?



It's a Buy-Partisan Who's Who:

President William J. Clinton
President George W. Bush Heh heh heh.
Robert J. McCann
James Carville
John V. Miller
Paula D. Polito
Anthony Roth
Mike Ryan
John Savercool

SOURCE: http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

One of my attorney chums doesn't like to see his name on any committees, event letterhead or political campaign literature. These folks, it seems to me, are past caring.

Some of why DUers and ALL voters should care about Phil Gramm.

The fact the nation's "news media" don't should also be of great concern.

[vintx]

48. *crickets*

[k8conant]

33. You mean when Bill Clinton pulled it to the right? nt

[geek tragedy]

39. the party was between a rock and a hard place in the late 80s

Three straight ass-kickings (1980, 1984, 1988). 4/5 if you count 1972 (only win was Carter winning the post-Watergate election.)

So, facing that dynamic, whaddya do? Say, hey Mondale and McGovern were really onto something?

[k8conant]

44. Stick with principles

and know that there are many of us out here who support them.

Don't try to become like the union-buster Reagan or the silver-spoon Bush.

[geek tragedy]

46. if they had done that, we'd have Scalia clones on the SCOTUS instead of RBG and Breyer nt

[k8conant]

76. You're assuming the good guys always lose

and I'm saying becoming a bad guy to win isn't good.

[HooptieWagon]

35. True, Obama is slightly left of Bill Clinton.

Both Clinton's are to the right of Richard Nixon. FDR and RFK would be getting the same treatment by the DNC now as Sanders is.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

49. not on the issues that are most important

...

[geek tragedy]

52. please proceed ... nt

[SoLeftIAmRight]

63. Climate change and the sixth global mass-extinction event is happening now

...

[geek tragedy]

64. what were the Clinton administration's achievements in climate change? nt

[SoLeftIAmRight]

66. we are done

the only response that would move us forward would have been - yes, the world is being destroyed

what can we do?

[Odin2005]

51. On social issues. On economics we have gone to the right.

[geek tragedy]

54. so you think Obama is to the right of Bill Clinton on economic issues? nt

[Odin2005]

60. Both are to the right of LBJ and Carter.

[geek tragedy]

61. what economic triumphs did the US realize under Jimmy Carter?

LBJ=Vietnam war, screw him.

[Chan790]

81. Then we've made progress.

Because, the Democratic party under Bill Clinton, was well to the right of where the GOP was under Eisenhower or Ford.

If there's a better argument against Hillary Clinton than wanting to refuse to return to that ideological and intellectual nadir of the Democratic party, I'm having a hard time seeing it.

[peacebird]

4. The party LEADERSHIP has shifted right since Clintons DLC, now with ThirdWay.

But a lot of the party faithful are still liberal progressives.

[tk2kewl]

5. What can she say?

What can she say? Not much! “I was wrong” on Iraq, on NAFTA, on super predators, on gay marriage, on the private prison industry, on Keystone, on the TPP, on the private email server, and on and on and on.

[HooptieWagon]

38. She says she was wrong....

...but there's no indication she won't continue down those wrong paths in the future. That's why she's not trusted, and why shes a poor candidate for the 99%.

[Armstead]

6. Interesting link to Bob Herbert (NYT) article in that

2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/opinion/26HERB.html


The Clintons may or may not be led away in handcuffs someday. But whatever happens with the criminal investigations, it's time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose. Cold turkey. No more talk about his political genius, his fund-raising prowess, his ability to captivate audiences. He was president for eight years and the bottom line politically is this: For the first time in nearly half a century, the Republican Party controls the presidency and both houses of Congress.

Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing.

There's not much the Democrats can do about Mrs. Clinton. She's got a Senate seat for six years. But there is no need for the party to look to her for leadership. The Democrats need to regroup, re-establish their strong links to middle-class and working-class Americans, and move on.

[JoePhilly]

9. Looks like Bob was there when the indictment fairy was born.

[Armstead]

12. Mark Rich Pardon....One of the scandals I'd forgotton about

[JoePhilly]

17. Oh no ... the Ghost of Scandals Past makes an appearance.

[Armstead]

18. Fasten your seat belt because the GOP will be bringing them up fast and furious

[JoePhilly]

21. So we should bow to the GOP because they'll bring up nonsense scandals?

Sorry, not happening.

Hillary kicked their asses for 11 hours straight ... she'll do the same from June to November.

[Armstead]

23. Maybe.... maybe not. There's a lot of Clinton fatigue out there.

Nor should we bow to the GOP plans to call Sanders a commie if he were to get it

[JoePhilly]

26. Has that "fatigue" given Berie the win? Nope.

Think about it ... some claim their is a "Bernie Movement" and you claim there is "Clinton fatigue".

Bernie should be winning hands down if both of those are true.

[Armstead]

30. TIme will tell. Her prospects in the general are all speculation at this point

If she runs against Trump she may win. If she runs against someone like Kaisich....not so much (IMO)

[JoePhilly]

37. Kaisch won't win the nomination ... and if the GOP pushes Trump aside ...

... and installs some one else ... they will get crushed even worse.

Trump will win the angry GOP white guy, and that angry guy's wife (maybe), and no one else. And the GOP candidates who claim they will support Trump .... Christie, Carson and so ... they won't vote for him either.

[DanTex]

22. Who needs the GOP when we've got our own "progressive" Hillary-hating all-star team

right here on DU.

[HooptieWagon]

41. Who needs the GOP when Democrats have their own neo-conservative candidate.

[DanTex]

42. Well, fortunately, Hillary won, and the NRA candidate lost.

[think]

59. Bernie never took a dime from the NRA. Can you say the same about Hillary and Goldman Sachs,

JP Morgan, UBS, BofA, Citigroup, Comcast, Exxon, ....................

[DanTex]

65. Simply voted for their main legislative priorities. I guess he just sees the world the same

way as they do.

[think]

69. That's why they gave him a D minus aye? And yet you ignore the banksters that still love hillary

Guess those banks just see the world like Hillary does.....

[DanTex]

70. I love how much confidence Bernie fans have in the NRA's ratings.

[libdem4life]

72. Bernie Sanders ... NRA rating ... D- Not exactly a rousing endorsement. n/t

[DanTex]

73. So much confidence in the NRAs ratings on the part of Bernie supporters!

DO y'all care at all about actual votes, or do you just listen to the NRA?

[libdem4life]

83. Well, my guess is that time has passed since those votes long days ago,

and they haven't been getting the support they want. I mean, let's face it...what's in it for the NRA to "misrate" someone who is doing their bidding?

I understand hunting states as I have lived in them, and it's not a cut and dried kneejerk issue, as with all complex issues.

Seems the only folks making this a negative voting issue, are right here on DU. Kind of like forgetting the Democrat in "Socialist" and just going for the hot spot.

[noretreatnosurrender]

67. Sorry Bob

but looks like the Democratic establishment wants to double down and elect his wife to bring on even more misery to our Party.

[seabeyond]

16. 87 percent of Democrats supporting his performance

Overall, 50 percent of those surveyed said they approve of the job the president is doing so far in his final 365 days in office, up from the 46 percent rating he earned in his penultimate year. The 50 percent is also higher than the 47 percent approval average since 2009.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/barack-obama-approval-ratings-hit-three-year-high-220569#ixzz43Cgotun5
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/barack-obama-approval-ratings-hit-three-year-high-220569

I am Ok with where Democrats are sitting.

[wyldwolf]

20. This crap gets repeated in every election cycle

Good example is how Harry Truman essentially ridiculed the ADA at their own event, saying how he would not have been welcome there a year prior because the ADA were "engaged in rather wild fancies about the Presidential nomination."

[Firebrand Gary]

32. +1

[Trust Buster]

43. The Democrats are limited to the extent they control Congress.

Right now, the Republicans control both the Senate and the House. The Tea Party thinks like you. They expect Republicans to ram through their agenda without the numbers in Congress to achieve their goals. You're being just as illogical.

[Csainvestor]

45. Kos sold vox to commcast for a few million i think

i haven't been to daily kos for weeks now, i will never ever go back.

stop writing free content on daily kos to make KOS even more money.

[giftedgirl77]

56. Welcome to DU.

Thanks for your concern.

[Squinch]

57. That's nice.

[Corey_Baker08]

58. Are You Posting This On Behalf Of All The Independents Who Have Tried To Hijack The Democratic Prim?

[Armstead]

74. Hijack or Join?

God forbid people might want to support and even join the Democratic Party, without going though the super secret initiation ceremony.

[Chan790]

82. They make that argument...

after forgetting they spent 30 years co-opting Republican ideology to attract sane conservatives fleeing the insanity of the other tent.

Their argument is the best criticism of their own behavior. They think it's okay for them to recruit Republicans and RW independents into the Democratic party in order to pull it ever closer to where the GOP was under Nixon...but have an issue with us trying to stem the bleed of left-leaning independents and progressives leaving the Democratic tent in disgust of them.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Clinton supporter. The most Democratic Democrat in this primary isn't even a Democrat and the only registered Democrat in this race is a Republican mole running on ideology she stole from the GOP while the GOP went searching for even more fascist ideologies to replace it with; it's fucking silly season is what it is.

[Armstead]

84. Good point

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

71. What an excellent article.

Expresses exactly how I feel.

42% favorable and 54% unfavorable? I really have to wonder what people are thinking. It's like anchoring yourself to a sinking ship just because you really really like it.

[colsohlibgal]

77. The Whole Political Baseline Has Moved Right

Eisenhower, a republican, had a top marginal tax rate above 90% each of his 8 years. In his farewell from the presidency speech he specifically warned us to guard against the Military Industrial Complex gaining undue influence.

Now it is hard to keep the top tax rate much above 30%. Big corporations, Wall Street, and the aforementioned military complex run the show. Big winners, more big losers. Millions, including many seniors, are living in dire straits, often choosing between food, medicine, and shelter. Lots of losers in this economy

Too much money is held by the top 1%, too many are living in dire straits.

We will see what Hillary will do if elected. Obama talked like a socialist running, a real lefty, then once in....not so much, and he tipped that off quickly with his financial team and chief of staff. It remains mystifying that no Wall Street big shots have spent a day in jail.

Obama has done some good but not good enough.

If HRC takes office it will not take long to see if she goes more populist, or sticks to third way.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

79. The Clintons have triangulated the party into something that resembles unflavored pablum.

And, they continue to tell us that collaborating with the Republicans is good for us.

[Dem2]

85. My candidate isn't doing as well as I had hoped

Therefore, the country, the party, everything is going to shit.