If the Democratic Party brand is finally discarded, what should replace it?

Politics & Elections
1

Mods can feel free to move this if it belongs in another forum.

When the Whig Party (USA) finally fell apart, a new party called the “Grand Old Party” or “Republican Party” rose from its ruins.

Well, the Whigs’ rivals, the Democratic Party, sort of kept going, splintering into various factions. Then the Republicans became dominant after the War Between the States, and the Democrats shrunk to a weak minority party. Democrats rose to power again on being reinvented as populist progressives in the 1930’s.

But they lost their way again after 1970. Even after the GOP had a criminal President resign in disgrace, and a chunk of another President’s cabinet end up in prison, the Democrats managed to lose control of Congress in the 1990’s. Things were looking up in 2008, when the GOP was so hated that they simply could not win federally. In four years, however, the GOP (now the “TEA Party” or “Taxed-Enough-Already Party”) had run the Democrats out of the House of Representatives again. In a few years, the Dems had stopped even contesting races in some Congressional districts and some statewide offices.

(Examples: In 2014, in Missouri, they ran no statewide candidate for the State Auditor’s office. In 2016, the Democratic Presidential candidate won a Congressional district in Florida, iirc, where there was no Dem Congressional candidate.)

The Democratic Party is broken. It is sick. It may be revitalized, or split in half, or both; or it may just finally be laid to rest in the graveyard of history. This thread is about that last alternative.

We’ve seen major parties replaced in representative democracies before. In the 1920’s, Labour (UK) overtook the Liberals as the main opposition to the Tories in that country. Modern Canadian Tories are really a reconstitution after the collapse of the previous bearers of that nickname in the 1990’s. Recently, Greece’s PASOK (the Panhellenic Socialist Movement) lost the faith of the people and was substantially replaced by SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left). I will spare you Italian examples.

Is it time to let the name “Democratic Party” go? Is it so bad to let this one part of the legacy of Andrew Jackson die? Rebranded, a modern progressive coalition could give the finger to those, like Dinesh D’Souza, who insist that the modern multi-cultural integrationist party is somehow really still a white supremacist party due to its institutional continuity. A new party could also clarify its own mission for a new century.

I think it’s time. Not to knock Hubert Humphrey, Harry S Truman, or the Democratic Roosevelts. I like those guys. But finding a way to make it clear I follow them, and not Andrew Jackson or James K. Polk, grows harder with the distance of time. I am not a Jefferson Democratic-Republican. I am not here for the party of Indian removal, nor of slavery. I am not quite on board with the agenda of Woodrow Wilson. I am also not quite content with the post-populist “centrist” party of the “Watergate babies,” whether Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, or the Clinton “power couple.” (Joe Biden & Al Gore can stay, I suppose.)

A new Coalition of the Left might find a new base by letting the old leadership go. This might work even if the party splits in two!

We tend to assume a near even two-party split. When the Democrats do badly, we think the GOP have won over a bit more than half the electorate. But in point of fact, many USA citizens don’t vote. The Democrats in their present form severely underperform in elections.

Maybe–not that I am optimistic–splitting into a centrist party and a leftist party would help more than hurt. The Tom Friedmans and Barack Obamas could have their (small but influential) “centrist alternative” party, and the Bernie Sanders types could build a (potentially much larger) “party of the common man.” I can see it working. The trick is getting there.

But in any case, I think it’s time to put a fork in the party of “Clinton Democrats.” We don’t need a duopoly of the party of ExxonMobil & Carl’s Jr. and the party of Walmart & Citigroup. Either the Democrats return to something in the vein of social democracy (like the “social-liberal” economics they had before 1970), or a new party must rise up to take the left.

Thoughts?

2

I think the flaw in your thinking is believing that the “party of the common man” would naturally be leftist, and that the centrist party would be “small but influential”.

If anything, those two would likely be reversed, with the centrist wing/party being the larger one, and the more left-leaning wing/party being smaller, if still influential.

3

I want to see a good pun in the name, so I’m rooting for the Bloc Party who will be popularly known (and occasionally derided) as Blocheads, I’m sure.

:smiley:

4

“Just call us the Democratic-But-Now-We’re-Totally-Cool-With-Gun-Rights Party.”

5

I thought you guys already did this and the smaller, farther-left party was called the “Green Party”.

6

Stonecutters!

7

You could call yourselves the Democrat party.

Regards,
Shodan

8

The trick is that if you look at polling about self identified ideology liberals are less of our population than moderates and conservatives. (Gallup data for 1992-2014.) Despite inching up to a record 24% of the electorate self identified liberals are still the smallest ideological group. Moderates, at 34% and conservatives, at 38%, combine to form the large majority of Americans.

Given current first past the post voting for congress, a third party is at a severe disadvantage in federal government. A new more liberal party would be the one most likely disadvantaged. Think something like a clone of Bill Clinton vs Ted Cruz as the two major presidential candidates. An entirely possible election discussion would be about whether the “New Liberal” voters would hold their nose and vote Clinton/centrist or enable a Cruz win by splitting the vote.

None of it would last though. Over time that new party’s members would have to merge into the centrist party and try and pull it a little left of center. Otherwise they are federally irrelevant. That likely leads us back to something like the current coalitions we call parties.

The American electorate does not have a liberal bias. Overcoming the preferences of 3/4 of the population would be one hell of a trick.

9

This Democratic Party is so sick that it has lost the popular vote for President once in the last 16 years. Sad!

10

Excellent point, despite the unappetizing evocation of the Man-Baby at the end.

11

I’d, uh, advise you to check your math.

12

Oh yeah, it’s once in the last 24 years. Pathetic!

13

  1. The President is not a dictator. Other races matter. Democrats don’t hold most governor’s mansions nor most Senate seats. Mondale losing to Reagan was a reflection on Mondale & Reagan specifically, not necessarily the end of the Democratic Party, nor even a low point. Similarly, the success of Obama over McCain and later Rmoney did not translate into Democratic control more generally.

  2. A “Democratic Party” which places its hopes on one Big Man in the White House should give up the charade and call itself something like the Monarchist Party. Also it should quit politics and get out of the way of those who understand the USA’s division of powers.

  3. Democrats would do better if they were “the party of the common man” again. They would have sufficient turnout to point to real legislative power, instead of whining that they won a specific, small subset of individual races for executive office.

14

One of the reoccurring talking points in American leftist discourse is that the nonvoting population is tilted heavily leftward and in other countries would be active members of the consensus on UHC, maternity leave, worker’s rights, and so on. The idea being they don’t vote here due to being depressed by the only realistic options being two pro-war corporate parties, plus decades of anti-socialist propaganda to muddy the waters.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Since Sanders lost convincingly, instead of easily beating Clinton, and the ACA will probably end up being torn down with nary a peep, I’ll stick with my stance that America is conservative by nature.

15

Many Democrats would agree with you.

But in a purely pragmatic sense, I don’t generally advise dropping distinguishing issues from the platform. That can weaken your coalition.

In this case: Is it really better to drop support for gun control, when 3/4 of Americans don’t own guns?

I think the smarter tack is to distinguish Democrats on issues where they are not seen as distinct from conservatives, or may not appear to have a policy position at all. Imagine a Left-of-Center “Contract with America” which pledged to add more (ahem) democratically elected members to the Federal Reserve Board to counter the private bankers in the Fed. Or a pledge to a fair housing wage; or a Basic Income Guarantee. Give the average Joe positions on pocketbook issues that they can’t get from the GOP, instead of just conceding on guns (or abortion, or gay marriage). Looking like you lost and were wrong all along, and now you have to concede to the other guys, is a dangerous way to play the game.

16

I think most human beings are conservative by nature, in that they stick with what they know; but right-wing is not conservative.

Mostly, people don’t know what they don’t know. There is no great mass of the Poor & Unwashed to vote in a Basic Income Guarantee; there is also no great mass of the Unwashed & Poor to vote away their pensions. The job of political leaders is to pitch new ideas and explain them. I have seen right-wing media sell the Flat Tax and the Individual Health Savings Account–both economically silly ideas, neither of which at this point is small-c conservative so much as right-wing crackpottery. But people who don’t know any better ate it up because somebody cared enough to publish an explanation of the idea and make it sound rational.

The Left can surely be as creative as a right-winger who thinks that unequal salaries should always be taxed at equal rates, or who thinks the government is “helping” by telling you how much to spend on medical treatment. And for better ideas. We need to disseminate better ideas.

17

They also hold pretty sold majorities of the popular vote in the Senate and the House as well. It’s not the party that should be discarded, it’s the system that keeps allowing the losing party to control everything that should be discarded.

18

Well, near as I can tell Trump – like all of the other fifteen or sixteen or seventeen or whatever-it-was Republicans up there with him at the debates – said, yeah, I agree with the standard GOP position of lo these many decades when it comes to guns and Israel and abortion and capital punishment and so on; but, hey, same-sex marriage is settled law, and I don’t want a Supreme Court Justice who’ll strike that down.

I don’t recall hearing him say Word One about keeping gays from adopting kids, or serving in the military, or whatever; I only seem to recall that the RNC convention had an openly gay speaker, and as I recall he drew plenty of applause.

(At that, I seem to recall that Ted Cruz drew a less friendly response from the audience when he didn’t come out in favor of Trump at said convention – but when he spoke of freedom, be you “Christian or Jew, Muslim or atheist, gay or straight”, man, that went over just fine.)

So as far as I can tell, they’ve just decided to concede that one, and yet they don’t seem doomed; rather the opposite, y’know?

19

As a practical consideration, a Democratic party that jettisoned the Sanders semi-socialists might be able to attract a lot of people who currently call themselves Republicans, creating a scenario where you’d have three parties, at least for a while, a far left party, a far right party, and one in the squishy center.

20

Out there, somewhere, is the political sweet spot. If Republicans could somehow reform their party to maintain their social conservatism while at least showing a shred of humanity and concern for people other than rich white Christians, they’d probably govern for the next 50 years. If the democrats could maintain their focus on middle class economic issues and stop being the party of victims, they’d probably govern for the next 50 years.