Reply #3: It has always been this way [View All]

[TayTay]

We just are seeing the 'sausage being made' because we now have blogs like DU. The Democratic Party is a coalition Party formed from many different interest groups. It is not now, nor has it ever been a monolithic front. It is the very nature of the beast.

This goes back to the fight over Northern vs. Southern Democrats, Conservative vs. Liberal and so forth. There have always been knock-down, drag-out fights within the Dem Party as to what we stand for and what it all means. There have always been stress and fracture lines and it has always taken a great deal of skill to hold the Party together. Always. We just get to see the actual in-fighting on a daily basis.

Consider how hard it was for FDR to stitch together a coalition out of Dixiecrats, Northern Libs and Conservatives (Remember, places like New England were Republican until the 1920's & 30's) and midwestern progressives to form his New Deal Party. The cracks didn't go away during the Depression, or during WWII. They burst out into the open again in the 1950's (when Dems did NOT fight McCarthy until after he had had a reign of terror that went on for a couple of years) and so forth.

Trying to grab hold of the Dem Party is like trying to wrestle with a wriggling bag of snakes. It is always going to be difficult and kind of obnoxious. It's who we are. I, as a MA Lib have to swallow some of my issues and agenda in order to form common ground with Southern Dems who may think differently and be less Lib on some issues. This is good for the PArty, but can create seething resentments that I didn't get everything I wanted and can create problems down the road. (And vice versa.)

This is politics. This is the Dem Party. It was ever so. It will ever be so.