December 09, 2010 06:59 PM UTC

The Democratic Party: Past, Present... and Future?

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• by: JO

This diary is really based on Dwyer’s comments in yesterday’s Open Thread:

I am no longer a Democrat. I wish the party well; but, I cannot support it in good faith. … As for leaving the Dems, I have been a registered Dem for almost fifty years.  Right now, I don’t know WTF they are doing; I don’t know who is charge; I don’t know what the strategy is. I am tired of fighting the apathy and the crap.  I need a break.

I know there are others who also wonder for what and for whom does the Democratic Party stand, after November, with its new coat of shellac, where is it going from here? Others who feel tired and in need of a break. BUT, can we afford the luxury of a break? Can we let others answer his question: WTF is the Democratic Party?

Dwyer’s questions need answers lest the troops begin drifting off the field of battle.

The Democratic Party for a long time has focused on getting as many people as possible for vote for its candidates — the Big Tent theory. That has meant crossing class lines, or at least perceived lines. It once meant embracing the Dixiecrats and their never-ending struggle against Abolition and its malformed twin offspring, Segregation and Discrimination. For a long time, this did not conflict with the Social Democratic trend of the North, whose apogee(s) were the New Deal and the Great Society.

Republicans, on the other hand, for a least a century-and-a-quarter have had a laser-like focus on one idea: Protect Private Property from the People. Thus have they diverted attention from economic class warfare to a set of non-economic issues. Their biggest single success in this never-ending campaign came in 1968, when Richard III Nixon persuaded Dixiecrats to pour their jugs of poisonous racism into the the malodorous River Stinx upon which he was floating to the White House.

Things have never been the same since. Carter succeeded as Not Ford. Clinton won thanks to Perot (twice) while embracing some vision of GOP Lite. Gore won, but missed out in the Supreme Precinct that had just nine votes.

Until Obama. For some, perhaps many, he was another Carter: Not Bush. For others, he was a match that relit a fire some thought had been snuffed out one ghastly June night in Los Angeles 40 years earlier. No, he was not, is not, Bobby, nor is he Jack, whom he more closely resembles. But neither is he any of those now eagerly gunning down caribou in hopes of being invited to host the Tea Party.

But back to the present and the future of the Democratic Party. We are tired. We are down. Feels good to say, Enough! I quit!

[Following comes from Everyman’s Book of Cliches: Easier Than Thinking, c. Always.]

–The finish line in this race keeps getting pushed two years ahead every 24 months.

–The winner’s name is neither “Republican” nor “Democrat.” The winner is named Persistence; the loser is Quitter. Never changes.

The answer to Dwyer’s question — my answer, at least — WFT is the Democratic Party, what does it stand for? — is this: The Democratic Party is what the people in the arena make it. Resting is a luxury we cannot afford, no matter how long we’ve been in the arena, no matter how frustrated (and I’m talking pound-the-table Goddamn It to Hell frustrated, front page after front page after front page).

Will the Two Party system, and the Democratic Party in particular, survive the digital revolution, the Great Transfer of wealth that has occurred over the past three decades, the end of the Cold War and the American Empire, the demise of pure capitalism as a viable means of organizing society?

I vote Aye for its survival for this reason: Politics is about one subject: property–who has it, who benefits from it. For Democrats, the answer is: the people who create value–people who work. For Republicans the answer is: people who have sticky-notes with the word “Mine” written on them that they can paste on as many things as they can find.

Thomas Jefferson said it best (even if he didn’t live it at Monticello): “All Men Are Created Equal…endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…that to protect these rights, governments are instituted…”

John Locke had mentioned property; Jefferson changed that to Pursuit of Happiness. And therein lies all the difference.

So to Dwyer I say: Back to work, brother. No time off. The next campaign is well underway…has been since before you joined the Democratic Party…will be long after you have left this vale of tears. Your resignation is not accepted.