Who Are These Democrats?
By David Glenn Cox


Times change and political definitions change as well. The Republican Party was born of an anti-slavery plank in the days of Abraham Lincoln. The Republicans were the party of reform and were, dare I say it, liberals. The Democrats were the party of the status quo, supporting slavery and big business. In my childhood I was raised with John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, and all of them basking in the light of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Harry Truman had tried to pass single payer national health insurance, along the lines of modern Medicare, in 1948. He was defeated by the first Republican-controlled Congress since Herbert Hoover. Truman always publicly referred to Republicans as reactionaries; they were the party of no.

“The Republicans believe that the power of government should be used first of all to help the rich and the privileged in the country. With them, property, wealth, comes first. The Democrats believe that the power of government should be used to give the common man more protection and a chance to make a living. With us the people come first." -- A Government as Good As Its People (Harry S. Truman)

Franklin Roosevelt said it like this: “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”

Republicans in that era were considered, in many circles, nuts. So when I see their clients waving posters of Hitler and bringing guns to rallies today, there is nothing new here. When Barry Goldwater ran for President his slogan was “In your heart you know he’s right,” but that was turned around by the Democrats to “In your guts you know he’s nuts!”

The Republicans are famous for using emotional sophistry and fear to convince ordinary Americans to vote against their own interests. Harry Truman once said, “Don’t vote for me, vote for yourself!” The labels of nut ball or whacko are as meaningless to the Republican horde as telling a pig it smells bad. Ronald Reagan was seen in his era as every bit as loony as Sarah Palin is today. The Republicans of that era, and still today, like threatening war with all enemies, real and imagined. Goldwater warned of a nuclear war with Russia and China if they would not give in to our demands. This is why the campaign ad run by Lyndon Johnson of the little girl picking daisies with a mushroom cloud in the background had such an effect.

It asked the simple question: Is this what you want for your children? Goldwater was at the far right end of the Republican Party, the end aligned with the John Birch society. At the other end of the Republican spectrum were the Rockefeller Republicans, people like George Romney and Gerald Ford, and of course, Nelson Rockefeller. They were economic Republicans, Republicans from Democratic-leaning districts who were soft on Republican hot button issues of the day like “forced integration” and strong on limiting the power of organized labor.

“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home-- but not for housing. They are strong for labor-- but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine-- for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing--but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.” (Harry Truman)

But since the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, there has been a shift in the political landscape. Liberal became a dirty word and politicians of both parties ran for office on their conservative values. Since that election the American standard of living has gone only down, and American weapons of war have never grown dusty from lack of use. What we have seen in that time has been Republican wet dreams of cutting taxes for the rich and cutting wages for the working man.

We have a world-turned-upside-down scenario where Bill Clinton’s welfare reform program was more conservative than Richard Nixon’s. Bill Clinton was no more a liberal than Ronald Reagan was a moderate. The media and the Republicans like to label Democrats as liberals, but in point of fact there are very few actual liberals in Congress. We do have Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank and John Conyers, but you couldn’t fill a minivan with the actual liberals in Congress.

When Harry Truman ran for the presidency in 1948, the liberals had split the party because they wanted Truman to step down. The Southern Dixiecrats had walked out of the convention over Truman’s strong stand on desegregation. Truman was a moderate Democrat; Kennedy was a moderate Democrat, so when judged side-by-side, Bill Clinton was almost as conservative as either Nixon or Ford.

But since the election in 1980 we have had endless, and in most cases needless, military conflicts, and the so-called liberal voices were mainly silenced.

“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.” (Franklin Roosevelt)

"I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo." (Harry Truman)

“We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.” (John F Kennedy)

Perhaps it is this generational difference that puts me at odds with so many of my fellow Democrats. I see war in the same light as FDR, Truman and Kennedy, that war is the failure of politics. It is a Neocon wet dream, bogeymen created to feed contractors and bury young Americans. There is no Al Queada. The Taliban are, after all, Afghans, and our troops are not. Just as there were no WMD’s in Iraq, and prisoners were tortured to support the administration’s lies.

These current entanglements are Neocon fantasies for unipolar domination, Iraq to control the oil market and Afghanistan to limit Russia’s ability to sell her oil. So when I see Barack Obama buying into this, I am less than pleased. Obama ran for office as a progressive but so far has governed as a conservative. He has sought bipartisan support for health care reform when history and logic would tell you that it is not there.

"I don't like bipartisans. Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know that he's going to vote against me." (Harry Truman)

It is as if Obama began the health care debate with a first down on the fifty yard line and has been angling for field position to kick a field goal ever since.

“About the meanest thing you can say about a man is that he means well.” (Harry Truman)

“We shall be judged more by what we do at home than what we preach abroad.” (John F Kennedy)

“It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.” (Franklin Roosevelt)

So when I see Hillary Clinton advocating military bases in Colombia or when Barak Obama says, “By moving forward in Iraq, we're able to refocus on the war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March -- a strategy that recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base from the remote, tribal areas -- to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan,” I have to ask myself, who are these people calling themselves Democrats? I guess they mean well but they don’t sound like the Democrats I remember.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else. (Franklin Roosevelt)

"Liberals" have never (as a political group) been against wars of aggression and imperial dominance. Truman, John (and Robert) Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, Carter, Clinton and now Obama are all in a line of imperial war-makers. I think you are making the label "Liberal" into something it is not. Liberals are for the status quo - just one that is slightly more gentle with the under classes. The very reason that "Liberals" are gentler with the underclasses is so that imperialistic capitalism can continue without interference from the oppressed. The New Deal and the Great Society were both endeavors aimed at shoring up and continuing the exploitations of the poor and working classes. Democrats have never been any different than Republicans in the ends they desire or the means they use - only in their manner and their public relations...

Roosevelt did what he had to in order to save capitalism and the good stuff that came out of the New Deal was mostly the result of reds nipping at his heels. I don't understand why anybody has any respect for Truman, sumbitch put the country on permanent war footing. Kennedy we have spoken of recently, people speak much of his 'good intentions', that and a buck will get you some foul coffee at the quik stop. Johnson, all of the potential of the Great Society lost to the red ink and blood of Viet Nam. jimmy Carter lost me in Central America.

There is no longer a need to pretend even a little, the unions are busted, the people divided and confused with no leadership. It is Woodrow Wilson's party.

only that the political ground under our feet has shifted until people who call themselves Democrats support Republican policies and don't know the difference.

Obama's policices on the depression are closer to Hoovers than Roosevelts
Clintons were worse than Nixons

That modern Democrats are unrecogniisable from moderate Republicans.
Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the bench by a Republican she voted in favor of business intrests 87% of the time and her appointment was supported by the Wall Street Journal. Yet she is proclaimed as some great liberal justice to establish balance on the court.

If McCain had been elected Sotomayor might have been his first choice as well.

It is sometimes difficult in our post cold war world to judge political actions during the cold war. The cold war was real. That's not to give a free pass but to establish a proper lens to anylise their actions.Only that the political ground under our feet has shifted until people who call themselves Democrats support Republican policies and don't know the difference.

:shrug:

In their policies, the Democrats have been unrecognizable from the Republicans for some time.

support the oppression of the poor and working classes in this country and around the world. The "Cold War" may have been "real", but it was and continues to be used as an excuse for the oppression of working people all over the world. The Democrats have always been just as oppressive and murderous as have been the Republicans. It is a false juxtaposition to say they differ in any significant way...

I do not miss the "good old days" when "Liberals" were really Liberals - Liberals have always been slavers and they continue to be. We do not need the return of Liberals, we need an end to the political system that breeds them...

It seriously distorts our view of history, and makes it very difficult to talk about politics if we insist on seeing everything through the lens of electoral politics and Team Red versus Team Blue. You are writing as though you were a "homer" for a sports team. It further distorts our view when we narrow it down to presidential politics, as though we were talking about the Czars. We can hardly expect to see democracy when it is dead in our own hearts, and when we embrace the Führerprinzip - expecting a strong leader to embody the will of the people and placing all of our trust and hopes in that one leader. The political history of the United States is not a tale of presidents. The history of the wealthy and powerful and their agents is not the history of the country.

Voting and elections are the effect of political forces and events, not the cause. The Democrats - 80 years ago now - responded to pressure from the Left, and they did so for the sake of harnessing that political force for their own gain, not because they were the good guys. Ought not some politicians somewhere represent the interests of the working class? Why do we see that as noteworthy, as some great thing and why do we settle for such pathetic results and praise the weak and vacillating efforts by the Democrats as though that were some glorious alternative? Why the desperate need to have a "horse in the race," to fit the white hat on some group of politicians, to lionize and admire them? Why the need to identify so strongly with one of the two teams?

What you are describing is the myth of American politics, the fantasy, the illusion. It serves the purpose of distorting and corrupting our thinking, co-opting us into speaking for the ruling class, and paralyzing and confusing us. Promoting this fantasy is our role as house Negroes, mouthpieces for the wealthy and powerful, defenders of and apologists for the existing conditions, and potent enemies of our own class. That work is the most vital service we could provide, and is required by the ruling class to hold onto their power, and no amount of liberal or progressive sentimentality slathered over it changes that. As enemies of our own class, we are consigning millions to hardship and suffering.

They can rely on the gentrified and aristocratic liberals and progressives to keep the masses down. Any "cause" that nominally is in opposition to the ruling class is made so exclusive, so esoteric, so gentrified, that it becomes irrelevant to most people at best, and often extremely antagonistic to them. We are to believe that WalMart shoppers and American Idol watchers are the cause of our problems. This condescending and hostile attitude toward the people by liberals and progressives alienates the people from the Left much more powerfully than anything done or said by the right wingers.

These days, they openly talk about about who they need to pander to and who not, lie openly about it with a wink while discussing the tactics of it all on cable television, and then immediately sell out their own supporters within minutes of their election victory. This is certainly as true for the Republicans as for the Democrats. This isn't just "MSM" or whatever... It is some seriously degenerate disconnnect between the evolved business of elections and "politics".

You almost have to read Weimar literature to understand it...

That sums up the Obamatrons perfectly. Good thing they're a bunch of wankers.

Where do you get the 'umlaut'?

"Where do you get the 'umlaut'?"

They come as prizes in the bottom of cans of sauerkraut.

;)

It isn't that the elite know best what is good for the peasants and the hired help, it is that what is good has become that which "may be best". And that is an inside joke that we peasants aren't intended to get and mostly we don't try...

Your are either politically naive or just spoiling for a fight. The standard of living for Americans was at it’s highest under, Truman and Kennedy. The end of the cold war brought about the new reality. There was no need to maintain workers standard of living no need to show the advantage of Capitalism over Communism.

I don’t know exactly which oppression your talking about but I do know that Truman desegregated the military by executive order at great political cost. He also denounced lynching and the poll tax and for 1948 in America that was on the edge. Truman proposed a 40% increase in the minimum wage, not a nickel or a dime but 40%! Plus national health care. Sounds pretty good in my book.

Kennedy outlawed redlining and segregation in public transportation as well as discrimination in all federal home loans. Kennedy like Truman did this with executive orders. No one forced him or added them to legislation the President picked up a pen and said effective immediately this is the way it is going to be!
Kennedy raised the minimum wage by 25% in three years, he was elected during a recession and the economy prospered until Nixon.

You wouldn’t have the world you live in without FDR. FDR’s Boondoggles as the Republicans like to call them were such items as sanitary sewers, storm drains and paved streets perhaps you should read about Roosevelt and then come back and tell me all about his oppression

Rot Kohl. I was so pleased with myself when I realized that "cole slaw" must mean "Slavic cabbage."

It was pressure from the unions and the political Left that was responsible for the things you are crediting FDR with. Without that there would have been no FDR or New Deal.

Yes, there was a desperate need to maintain workers standard of living to show the advantage of Capitalism over Communism. The political Left was growing and getting stronger and stronger.

Disappearing that from the story of the past serves the purpose of precluding it as a possibility for the future.

if they are fed better than before, if they are clothed better than before, then the new masters aught to be praised and slavery, itself, be considered not so bad? FDR did what he did in order to protect capitalism, not the working class. Truman, made the black slaves equal to the white slaves? Well thank you, Massa Harry!
You are saying exactly what the elite who are driving the working class to starvation want you to say. It isn't the system, it is the "bad apples" that are the problem. Those Republicans ruin everything! If the Democrats were only like they were fifty years ago everything would be peaches and cream again - like it used to be! It never was like that - and you say I am naive....

with most of your premise! You are praising Democrats of yore, and I disagree that they are deserving of the kind of praise you are giving. Every individual deserves praise and condemnation to varying degrees and various times - I do not argue that. But you are praising a political party that has been, historically, half of the machinery used to oppress and suppress the poor and working class in this country and around the world. Democrats have always been just as imperialistic as Republicans; always as capitalistic; always "American Exceptionalists" and on and on. Democrats are better than Republicans the way Claudius was better than Tiberius - only from certain perspectives and only to some degree...

and its important enough to reiterate. (and Owen, as you know, is not remembered because of his hardscrabble materialist worldview)

and that ain't a bad thing!

:getdown:


(But on this thread: Again, the idea is to make this personal. I am "spoiling for a fight" - wtf? We have got to try and get away from defending our comfy believe structures and try to do a little concrete viewing of our surroundings.)

The Democratic Party plays an indispensable role in society's political machinery. This doesn't mean it has any power, in terms of controlling the state or setting policy. It means that without the existence of the Dem Party, the US could no longer maintain the pretense that it's a "democracy." If the Dem Party disintegrated, the US would be revealed for what it really is -- a one-party state ruled by a narrow alliance of business interests.

In terms of defending the general population against the depredations of this business consortium, the Dem Party gave up the ghost in the mid-1960's. Their threadbare act as the "Party of the People" serves not to defend the well-being of the population, but merely to persuade ordinary citizens that within the official political system's framework, there's at least some faint hope for eventual progressive change. Their focus is not so much being on our side, as convincing us that they're on our side -- without the slightest serious examination of what that might entail.

The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a "democracy."

As long as the Dem Party exists, most Americans will believe we have a "democracy" and a "choice" in how we are ruled. They will not despair, and will not revolt, as long as they have this hope for "change within the system." From the system's point of view, this mechanism serves as the ultimate safety valve -- it insures against a despairing populace, thus eliminates the threat of rebellion; yet guarantees that no serious change to the system will be mounted, because the Dems weren't designed to play that role in the first place.


Aren't the Dems The Lesser Evil?

The Democrats are not the "lesser evil;" they are an auxiliary subdivision of the same evil. To understand the political system, one must step back and regard its operation as an integrated whole. The system can't be properly understood if one's study of it begins with an uncritical acceptance of the 2-party system, and the conventional characterizations of the two parties. (Indeed, the fact that society encourages one to view it in this latter way, is perhaps a warning that this perspective should not be trusted.)

Any given piece of reactionary legislation is invariably supported by a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats. Does this show that the Democrats are "less evil?" If one focuses on the noble efforts of the few outspoken dissenters, it's easy to feel that the Democrats are somewhat less evil. But in the larger picture, Democrats invariably submit to what Republicans more ardently promulgate, & the entire range of official opinion thereby shifts to the right. Thus the overall function of Democrats is not so much to fight, as to quasi-passively participate in this ever-rightward-moving process. Just as the Harlem Globetrotters need their Washington Generals to make their basketball games properly entertaining, Republicans need the Democrats for effective staging of the political show.

The Democrats are permitted to exist because their vague hint of eventual progressive change keeps large numbers of people from bolting the political system altogether. Emma Goldman once said, "If voting made a difference, it would be illegal." Similarly, if the Democrats potentially threatened any sort of serious change, they would be banned. The fact that they are fully accepted by the corporations and political establishment tells us at once that their ultimate function must be wholly in line with the interests of those ruling groups.

Doesn't the presence of the Dennis Kuciniches, Cynthia McKinneys, et al "prove" that the Democrats are progressive? No. The Kuciniches and McKinneys are indeed significantly different from the Hillary types -- but there are compelling reasons not to get too excited about them, either. First, they are used by the party as a "Left decoration," simply to keep potential left defectors in tow. Secondly, the party power brokers will NEVER in a million years let the Kucinich-McKinney faction have any real power.

In other words, the very modestly-sized progressive Dem faction is cynically used as a marketing tool by the national party. They are dangled before your eyes to make you think that the Dems are the "lesser evil" (since the Republicans offer no such Left decorations). The existence of a few decent Dems makes no real difference in the overall alignment of the party, and they will never be internally influential. They are a distraction.


Can Progressives "Take Over" the Dem Party?

The argument is often advanced by progressives that they might be able to "take over" the Dem Party just as the Republican Party was supposedly "taken over" by the Religious Right and neoconservatives. This is wishful thinking, and ignores the actual history and character of both parties.

The Republicans were always the party of Wall Street & Northern manufacturing. The Democrats were the party of the Southern slaveocracy. When the national Democrats defied southern racism by passing the Civil Rights Acts in the mid '60's, the southern states bolted, destroying the New Deal coalition. The Republicans profited from this by adapting to southern tastes, values, & religious/cultural conceptions.

But this was in no way out of character for the Republicans. The far right was able to take over the Republican Party because that kind of alliance was always very much in the nature of the Republican Party anyway. It was compatible with, not contradictory to, the big-business nature of the Republican party. Forming an alliance with fascists, racists & religious zealots ADVANCED the big-business agenda.

By contrast, for progressives to take over the Democrats would be an unprecedented departure from the party's character. To understand this, one must first recognize that the sole Dem claim to being progressive is rooted almost entirely in the New Deal, itself a response to a unique crisis in American history. FDR recognized that to avert the very real threat of massive social unrest and instability, significant concessions had to be made to the working class by the ruling class. Government could act to defend the weak, and to some extent to rein in the strong, but this was all in the longterm interests of defending the existing social order.

Before FDR, the Dem Party had no progressive record whatsoever; and after FDR, though the New Deal coalition survived until the mid-1960's, it did so with a record of achievement that was restrained compared to the 1930's. After passing Medicare in 1965 the party reverted to its longterm pattern, and since then, there has again been no progressive record to speak of. The party's progressive social reform was thus concentrated mostly in the 1930's, with some residual momentum lasting until the mid 60's. The party's "progressive period" was thus 1) an exception to the longer term pattern; 2) a response to a unique crisis; and 3) has in any case been dead for over 40 years.

The word "progressive" refers to the commitment of a political party to defend the interests of the working class (aka the overwhelming majority of the population) against the depredations of the ruling elite. Not only is the Democratic Party unable and unwilling to engage in such a fight, it is unwilling even to pronounce the fight's name -- "class warfare." Marx is understandably reviled by capitalists for his annoyingly accurate perception that the capitalist class and the rest of the population have a fundamental conflict of interest. Capital seeks only to maximize its return; return can certainly be enhanced by using the machinery of state to transfer costs and burdens to the weak and vulnerable; thus rule by capital is intrinsically inimical to the basic interests of the majority of the population. There is no escaping this reality.

American public discourse attempts to paper over this vexing truth with fatuous happy talk, such as, "By working together, we can make make things better for everyone!" This is a lie. When capital controls government, government is no more than a tool used by elites to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. This kind of arrangement cannot possibly "make all boats rise" over the long term. Only the yachts will rise. If there is no political mechanism for opposing plutocratic rule, the strong will continue to squeeze additional wealth out of the weak until a) the weak become desperate and rebel, b) the weak are crushed and become permanently enslaved, or c) the strong begin suffering more from guilty consciences, than reaping enjoyment from additional wealth -- and therefore relent. (Very few instances of this last are known in recorded history.)

For the Democratic Party to even begin to serve as a vehicle for opposing the absolute rule of capital, it would at a minimum have to be capable of acknowledging the conflict that exists between the interests of capital and the rest of the population; and of expressing a principled determination to take the side of the population in this conflict.

A party whose controlling elements are millionaires, lobbyists, fund-raisers, careerist apparatchiks, consultants, and corporate lawyers; that has stood by prostrate and helpless (when not actively collaborating) in the face of stolen elections, illegal wars, torture, CIA concentration camps, lies as state policy, and one assault on the Bill of Rights after the next, is not likely to take that position.

- RichM

Jimmy Carter was a president who claimed that human rights was "the soul of our foreign policy" despite making an agreement with Baby Doc Duvalier to not accept the asylum claims of Haitian refugees. His duplicity, however, was not limited to our hemisphere; Carter also earned his Nobel Prize in Southeast Asia. In Cambodia, Jimmy Carter and his national security aide, Zbigniew Brzezinski made an "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions" by initiating a joint U.S.-Thai operation in 1979 known as Task Force 80 which, for ten years, propped up the notorious Khmer Rouge under the all-purpose banner of anti-Communism. "Small wonder present U.S.-originating stories about the Khmer Rouge end abruptly in 1979," says journalist Alexander Cockburn. Interestingly, just two years earlier, Carter displayed his "respect for human rights" when he explained how the US owed no debt to Vietnam. He justified this belief because the "destruction was mutual."

"Candidates say "vote for me, and I will do so-and-so for you." Few believe them, but more important, a different process is unthinkable: that in their unions, political clubs, and other popular organizations people should formulate their own plans and projects and put forth candidates to represent them. Even more unthinkable is that the general public should have a voice in decisions about investment, production, the character of work, and other basic aspects of life. The minimal conditions for functioning democracy have been removed far beyond thought, a remarkable victory of the doctrinal system."

-- Noam Chomsky

Don't take it personally but you might reconsider the naivete' comment as your ensuing comments puts it all in the box of ironies.

FDR, for starters, was a tremendous act of capital salvation at a time in this country when very real populist agitation and radical alterations were at a fever pitch and FDR was in the business of serving big business and quelling and co-opting the various factions, which did at the time actually have some power hence the concessions, which were aggressively attacking the pillars of big business.

Your comment about the world we live in not being possible without FDR may be true in ways you may wish to reconsider.

Beyond that you may also ask yourself and re-examine your history as to what it actually was that brought about this standard of living you exaly. Not only upon whose backs was it built but where exactly did all of the raw materials that this country obtained to produce that standard of living come from? Where did all that rubber come from? Where did... and how did it get here...

It's not a matter of anyone "not being perfect" it is an important matter of setting the record straight and the democrats, including those you seem to romanticize, part in that record has been consistent and bloody. Kennedy, Roosevelt, Truman and the rest are all in their graves with copious amounts of blood upon their hands.

That was FDR. He actually made a few deals with the left, he lived in an age in which Keynesianism and other doctrines preached "concessions to save capitalism" and he was lucky that WW2 delivered to him a golden age which deified him. There ain't no Democrats for a hundred years before who were worth shit. Name one. Wilson? Jeff Davis, maybe? And we are all aware of what came after.

In truth, it was the Republicans who had the famous "crisis of conscience", not once but three times: once before and during the Civil War, once over abandoning Reconstruction to buy an election, and once after Teddy Roosevelt. Hell, Taft was still struggling with "reform", even as he was struggling to get in and out of the bathtub. In the end, the outcome was certain but they actually struggled with it.

The Dems? FDR was an apparition. Once he faded, they went back to business as usual, which was always selling votes. They are and always have been the true party of commerce... if small-time urban corruption counts as commerce. The confusion comes from the 1960s and Civil Rights... again.

have happened regardless of which "party" was in the ascendancy. It is what the "Empire needed at the time". The Democrats were the "Lefty" party, so they got the call, but it could have gone either way...

I'd never thought of that before.

:hmmmm:

It's fascinating how much of "politics" is just branding and symbolism.

Coulda gone either way, probably would have happened no matter what, in some form or another.

"And I am convinced that the "Civil Rights Legislation" would have happened regardless of which "party" was in the ascendancy."

Then you don't know much!

Back in those days there were more raging racists in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. Remember the 'Solid South'? Their only gripe would be cost, legislation but without a 'Great Society'.

It was needed to keep the lid on, the Dems went for in because they were less bothered by principle. Is that not apparent now?

it wouldn't have mattered. Consider the case of the republican party choosing Sarah Palin as their VP candidate during the last election. In fact if the republicans were really intelligent they would've grabbed Obama before he was locked into the dem's camp, but they did what they could by offering up a female vp after Hillary was jettisoned to the side. Either "side" is going to do whatever they can to stay in power. We see it going on now as the republicans regroup for 2012 with a very populist sound to their rhetoric.

Good thing that 'victory cabbage' didn't catch on.

My granny used to send me to the store for switzer cheese.

But to compare to our modern political leaders and they look pretty damn good. No society is perfect. FDR was trying to save capitalism I am fully aware of that. I'm also fully aware that the capitalists were attempting a Coup de tat against Roosevelt while at the same time food riots in the streets were the order of the day.

Road and sewer projects were called Boondoggles by Republicans. They were built by the unemployed. In New Orleans they offered free public showers because of the large numbers of homeless. In Detroit two people an hour died of starvation in Buffalo NY unemployment stood at 75%.

Roosevelt's tree army the CCC replanted over three billion trees and established the soil conservation service. This was the first time that any government on the face of the earth had ever look at problems through the eye of environmentalism.

Before FDR America was a backwards as India, No minimum wage, no unemployment, no social security. My Grandfather started working in a foundry as a young man where if you got hurt you went home and you either got better or you died! The company owed you nothing.

The second leading cause of death for the elderly was hypothermia, they froze to death in their beds(Romanticize?) The elderly were the poorest demographic in the country.

Roosevelt left Hyde park to be treated for his polio hear in Warm Springs Georgia
he found a people living no better than midevil serfs. No plumbing, no electricy, no running water. The schools were make shift and opportunities were nil.

In the Tennessee Valley, 15% of the population had Malaria! There was another strange disease that killed residents of the Tennesee valley. The New Deal sent doctors to study it. The strange disease turned out to be vitiman defieceny people were dying and babies were born retarded because they had no access to fruit.

FDR didn't do any of that. It was the communists and the socialists and the union members and the workers in the streets throwing their bodies on the bayonets - they're the ones who did these things. FDR was just putting out fires for the capitalists...

(and I mean that as a compliment ;) )

Throughout our lives we learn history through the perspective of those in power, and basically the only people we learn about are the politicians and military generals and business owners - the 'important' people. It warps our perspective and some of us (myself included) have to consciously rethink just about everything we learned - not just once, but continually check ourselves. Just knowing this is the propaganda isn't enough - it takes effort to retrain our brains.

You are absolutely right about who made these things happen. And who stunted them from being truly successful.

If the New Deal was so great, why don't we have any programs like this now (don't get me started on ARRA, lol)? Why don't we still have guarantees about our working conditions? Why are labor laws getting weaker? It created no systematic change and therefore was destined to fade away.

That damn pendulum swinging. Only right now it's barely moving, despite this language of radical and alarming 'change' in popular media.

and in this case the FLASH! may be literal

Would you say he enacted the reform because he looked around himself and saw all the suffering endured by Americans from lack of healthcare?

Or would you say American citizens demanded it, the time was right, and it wouldn't have mattered who was in office.

(And no, I don't think single payer is on the horizon. In fact, I think Obama's f'ed up insurance "reform" is in direct response to the growing threat of Americans who WILL start demanding single payer.)

There is an interesting thing that happens. The hero worshipers will do anything they can to suppress dissent. "Leave him alone, we need to trust him to do the right thing." Then when the politician is pressured and actually does something in response to that pressure, the same people will say "see? You were wrong. He did the right thing."