Sunday, April 11, 2010

The Downfall of the Democratic Party (written in 2005)

Yet another blast from the past in the form of an old newspaper column I wrote for the Jan. 7, 2005 edition of the Snowdrift. In it I make a mention of Barack and Joe B as being a direction the Dems need to move toward, not avoid. I'm not saying I predicted the future, but I guess even a blind nut finds a squirrel every once in a while, also, it's interesting to see how much it still applies to the BS we're dealing with today.

The Downfall of the Democratic Party

The political climate was primed for change. A faltering economy along with an extended (Which nowadays means unsuccessful) war effort overseas had left President George W. Bush vulnerable to a lot of criticism. He also isn’t the most eloquent public speaker and couldn’t debate his way out of a paper bag. John Kerry had the election within his grasp, then he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

What’s been going on with those Democrats lately anyway? Of course they’ve lost the last two presidential elections with two less than inspiring candidates in Al Gore and “Ketchupman” Kerry, but what about all of the Congressional seats they’ve been losing –With November’s election the Republican Party picked up sixteen Congressional seats to increase their majority to forty— The liberal wing of our political system has been hemorrhaging for years, and there’s plenty of blame to go around.

The biggest problem with the Democratic Party is shoddy organization. In other words they’re like your 16-month-old nephew, no control of when they make a mess of themselves. Would you ever see a member of the Republican Party get on stage at the Democratic National Convention and bash his party’s presidential candidate? Not unless he wanted to endure a few rounds of Chinese nipple torture he wouldn’t.

Okay, so he’d really only lose all of his reelection campaign contributions along with any powers he may have had in the backroom committee meetings (a.k.a. “smoke-filled room shady dealings”) until he would ultimately be replaced come election time, but you get my point. But what happens when Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) jumps on stage at the GOP Convention and bashes Kerry? Nothing, unless you call punishment scratching “Zell Eats Poo” on his office desk with a penknife.

Democrats also have a tendency to try to be too much like Republicans. When Republicans lose to Democrats, do they turn around and say, "Gee we need to be more like them in order to win"? Never. But that's what Democrats do when they lose to Republicans. What does that do? It softens support among the base, it seems phony to moderates, and conservatives are going to vote real-deal Republican, not Republican Lite.

Since when was “liberal” a dirty word? There are great aspects of liberalism, just like there are great aspects of conservatism, yet John Kerry spent his entire campaign hiding from his liberal label and the party as a whole did their best to hide from their more liberal members in Howard Dean and Sen. Joe Biden (D-CT) instead of standing up for themselves and describing what the whole vision of liberalism is about a la Barack Obama (D-IL) ““If there are people in this country that are going to bed hungry and sick and sleeping in the streets, my duty as an American citizen has not been fulfilled.”

If the liberals would wake up from their fantasyland they would see a great opportunity lying before them. There is currently no party that truly, completely and unapologetically represents the interests of working-class Americans who are finding their jobs vanishing, their benefits shrinking, their towns falling on hard times, and their economic interests being ignored. That’s the party of the Old Left, that party is now dead.

Democrats need to return to their roots if they want to win. They have to find their spine. They have to rediscover their purpose and their vision. Because if liberalism is such a bad thing, why should anyone vote Democrat?

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