The future of the Democratic Party

[tabs]

As i said under the thread "The Eclipse" the Democratic party is like a ship that has hit the reef and is sinking. It has now been 3 election cycles where the Democrats have been excluded from wielding power. They are on the verge of being a marginalized party. They desperately need to move away form the worn out mantra of the New Deal and find some other platform to hang their hat on.

It is quite obvious that the failure of the extreme Liberal wing of the Democratic Party has set the stage for the modrates to make a comeback. Hilliary Clinton can play the part with the backing of Bill. However Hilliary may have some bagage they might prevent her from beocming the nominee.. her sexual preferences...

Whatever the case Hiliary must face reelection in 2006 for her NY Senate seat. She needs to establish that she is a viable Presidential canidate and not a mere one term fluke...

I would say that John Edwards has a shot at the nomination...however he at the present doesn't hold an elected office that would offer him some visibilty not only to the public but to the party hierarchy. Also he could not even pull his own state into the Blue column.

Obama...Who? and that precisely is his problem no national exposure or track record in the big league.

Kerry was at best a stopgap canidate. Who represented the extreme Liberal wing of the Party. I don't believe he would want to try another run...after all he is having too much fun Snowboarding.

Harry Reid... Is going to take Tom Dascals job as Minority leader in the Senate...He is from what I understand a Moderate Democrat. I unfortunately havn't lived in NV long enough to know of his record...

Perhaps I would start looking at the list of Democratic Govenors from the West or SW who represent a Moderte point of view...Tom Richardson from New Mexico? They would be the best bet to break the stranglehold that the Repblicans hold over the South, and West.

Another point is that the Democratic party has forgone anybody who is strong on National Defense since Scoop Jackson dropped out of the Presidential race in 1976. The Democrats to be viable once again need to don the mask of the hawk.

[cegerer]

Is Ted Kennedy too old to run?

[tabs]

Teddy has a Bridge in his past as well as having his pants down around his ankles when his nephew (william Smith) was popped for date rape in Palm Beach. Also Teddy is a known Boozer...

BTW: Willie Smith has been popped again for sexual assault, this time in Chicago.

[Mule]

That would be a step in the right direction for sure, form orange, botoxed, Lurch to an old drunken murderer. We could dig Nixon up & run his corpse & win.

[gaijinda]

Dont worry, they aint running any of these old war horses. Not any time soon.

But looking at the big picture, I like the two party system, and it does take two to dance. I really hope the Dems get their act together..

[BGCarrera32]

Not likely unless there is a change of direction. Another example being when they "elected" Nancy Pelosi their house democratic leader. Rather than get somebody who would ground the party in reality more towards the center they took the liberal from California's 8th district with the track record of raising big $$$.

[cmccuist]

Why do the Dems keep heading left? I can't understand this unholy and unhealthy slobbering over their fringe (hard-core feminsts, shrieking gay rights activists, abortion absolutists, socialist environmentalists, race baiters, PETA, Christian-haters, class-warfare warriors) Where are these freaks going to go? The Democrats already have those votes.

Every time they lose, they head off further in the wrong direction. Reminds me of the carpenter who says "I cut that board three times and it's still too short." You're heading in the wrong direction.

[tabs]

Let the Dems fail a couple of more times and the money will dry up and then they will be forced to change...actually a new party might rise and suplant them...all though tradition will die hard..

[ubiquity0]

Originally posted by tabs
Let the Dems fail a couple of more times and the money will dry up and then they will be forced to change...actually a new party might rise and suplant them...all though tradition will die hard..

Or maybe the majority will just decide that the hassle of an election is not worth it any longer if the outcome is inevitable (which it will be if the money dries up).

[trj911]

I hope Hillary runs! The republicans will gain even more seats!

[tabs]

If Kerry would have made a bad president....Hillary would make a ruthless President...you don't cross Hill and walk away scot free...she will get U...

She is also an ideolog....with some very Leftist ideas...remember her Health Care idea...but more than that she is amoral and the only mantra she subscribes to is situational ethics...winning justifys the means...

[350HP930]

I think the following is a good analysis about the democratic parties real problems..

Assuming there were no electronic vote counting shenanagans then the democrats only have themselves to blame.

All things concidered I am happy I voted for nader.

Democrats in End Time - Republicans Gain Shattering Victory; Who to Blame This Time?

The crusade that George Bush called for in 2001 against terrorism from abroad came to fruition yesterday in a more homely context as Christians flocked to the polls in stronger numbers than in 2000 to battle against such manifestations of post-modernity as gay marriage.

There are many reasons for what is an overwhelming Republican victory across the board. They range from the disastrous choice of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate to delusions about the potency of electronic organizing (that should have been demolished after Howard Dean's implosion last spring), to the fatal deficiencies of Kerry himself.

The strategy of the Democratic Party as formulated by DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe amounted to belief in the simple potency of corporate cash, plus hysterical demonization of Bush and Nader, represented at full stretch by Michael Moore, who began the year backing General Wesley Clarke and ended it as a pied piper for Kerry. They came to the Rubicon of November 2 replete with fantasies, about the unknown cell phone vote, the youth vote (which actually remained unchanged from 2000), the galvanizing potential of Bruce Springsteen and Eminem.

Week after week Kerry and his boosters displayed an unmatched deafness to political tone. The haughty elitist from Boston probably lost most of the Midwest forever when he said in the high summer that foreign leaders hoped he would win. The applause of the French in Cannes for Michael Moore's 9/11 was the sound of the cement drying over the corpse of Kerry's chances of carrying the Midwest. Soros's dollars were like flowers on the grave. After the billionairess Portuguese-American Teresa Heinz Kerry said in mid-October that Laura Bush had never held a job it was all over.

If there was a visual premonition of why George Bush would achieve a popular majority beyond challenge it was probably the photographs of gay couples celebrating their marriages outside San Francisco's city hall. America is a very Christian country. In the regular national survey conducted by the University of Chicago in 2002, 53 per cent of the adult population identified themselves as Protestant, 25 per cent as Catholic, 3 per cent as Christians of some other denomination, 3 per cent as adhering to "other religions", 2 per cent as Jewish and 14 per cent as having "no religion". That's a lot of Christians, and though many of them may have had a mature tolerance for the preference of Dick and Lynn Cheney's daughter Mary, a strong percentage felt very strongly that state sanction of same sex marriage was going way too far.

There was a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage and it was probably what helped Bush overcome the smoldering ruins of the Ohio economy and the increasing unpopularity of the war.

October surprises? No candidate was more burdened by them than George Bush. Just in the last couple of weeks, headlines brought tidings of US marines killed in Baghdad and other US troops rising up in mutiny against lack of equipment to protect their lives. The president's brother Neil was exposed as influence peddling on the basis of his family connections. The economic numbers remained grim as they have been all year. And this was just the icing on the cake. You can troll back over the past fifteen months and find scarce a headline or news story bringing good tidings for Bush. History is replete with revolutions caused by a rise in the price of bread. This year the price of America's primal fluid--oil--on which every household depends, tripled.

But Kerry and the Democrats were never able to capitalize on any of these headlines, a failure which started when Democrats in Congress, Kerry included, gave the green light to the war on Iraq, and which continued when Kerry conclusively threw away the war and WMD issues in August. When he tried to a chord change at NYU on September 20 it was too late and even then his position remained incoherent. He offered no way out. More tunnel, no light.

It was like that for Kerry on almost every issue. Outsourcing is a big issue in the rustbelt, yet here was Kerry forced to concede that he had voted for the trade pacts and still supported them. All he offered, aside from deficit busting (which plays to the bond market but not to people working two jobs), was some tinkering with the tax code alarming to all those millions of Americans who play the lottery and believe that if they are not yet making more than $200,000 a year they soon will.

Edwards added absolutely nothing to the ticket. At least Dan Quayle held Indiana back in 1988 and 2002. No one state in the south went into Kerry's column. Gore did better in Florida and West Virginia. Dick Gephardt would certainly have brought the Democratic ticket Missouri and probably Iowa and hence the White House.

The Republicans played, on the ground, to the bedrock members of their party, and got them to the polls. The Kerry campaign conducted an air war from 30,000 feet, bombarding the population with vague alarums and somehow thinking that ABB (Anyone But Bush) would pull them through. There was indeed a lot of popular animosity towards Bush but the Democrats could never capitalize on it. The crucial machinery of any political party is organization, its capacity to rally its supporters on the big day. In this crucial area the Democratic Party is in an advanced state of disrepair. The SEIU wasted $70 million of its members' dues money attacking Ralph Nader. A grotesque amount of energy went into trying to suppress the Nader vote. They did suppress it and this achievement gained them nothing, except, perhaps, the destruction of the Green Party.

It's as grim a day for the Democrats as was 1980 when the Republicans swept the board. What will the Democrats do? You can already hear the Democratic Leadership Council cranking up its message that you can only beat the Republicans by outflanking them on the right. The Nader alibi has gone. The Democratic Party and its leaders have nowhere else to look than in the mirror. They would do well to examine Nader's critiques, but we bet they won't.

[tabs]

Unfortunately both political parties have been coopted by soft money.

[fintstone]

The future of the Democratic Party...to whine for another four years....just like the last four. "It's not fair!!!"

Why they seem to think that acting like spoiled children, raising taxes or trashing their President, their country, or their military will gain popularity for them is beyond me. Perhaps if the few Democrats that actually were elected would try to help accomplish something rather than obstruct everyone else who is making an effort....

[tabs]

The Dems can't say it isn't fair anymore....the election was held fair and square as it can be and the majority has spoken...now if they want to do something else like try a coup de tate...thats up to them...

[red-beard]

Originally posted by tabs
If Kerry would have made a bad president....Hillary would make a ruthless President...you don't cross Hill and walk away scot free...she will get U...

She is also an ideolog....with some very Leftist ideas...remember her Health Care idea...but more than that she is amoral and the only mantra she subscribes to is situational ethics...winning justifys the means...

Wall Street Journal had a great article on the threat of the lawyers on America. The articles central point was the way lawyers take a position and then create an argument around supporting that position. Winning becomes everything and "facts" go by the wayside.

This does bear out in the high profile law cases. Instead of all the facts being presented and their relative importance arranged, the cases are deluged with tons of misleading and misrepresented facts which support one argument or the other.

You remember: "That depends on what the meaning of 'is'
is."

This has been going on here. A lot! I spend a lot of time in my job sifting wheat from the chaff. Organizing information and then arranging the priority. This seems to be the antithesis of the legal arrangements. But then, engineers and lawyers never do really seem to see eye to eye...

I, for one, do not want a lawyer President, again.

Or an engineer...again

[cegerer]

How'd the Dems turn into what they are today? Here's the answer:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110005858