# Is the Democratic party headed in the wrong direction?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 21, 2011, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187 "2011-04-21T05:15:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/41 "2011-04-24T04:13:10Z")
And howsabout, Henry “Hank” Paulson. A 32 year Goldman Sachs veteran, including several years as the Chairman and CEO. He then served as the 74th United States Treasury Secretary for President Bush. Paulson, more than any other person, architected TARP and the bailout. Paulson was the one that drove the idea that TARP recipients could not be named because it might cause erroneous perceptions about credit quality, therefore TARP recipients include Goldman Sachs were not named at the time.
The spin is that Obama is the one that gave Goldman Sachs a sweetheart deal? Puh-leeze.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/42 "2011-04-24T06:29:40Z")
I wasn’t trying to exempt Bush - and both GE and Goldman Sachs gave handsomely to McCain (and to Hillary Clinton). This isn’t just an Obama issue - it’s the way politics are run now. A government that tries to do too much winds up ceding a lot of the nuts and bolts of legislation to industry, because they’re the experts and the only ones really qualified to determine the form of the details. So the government convenes commissions, or brings in industry experts for congressional testimony, or whatever.
Throughout this process, legislation becomes corrupted and diverted towards the ends of the big corporations that have an ear in the government. Innovation is stifled. The regulatory apparatus is essentially captured by big business, making them partners in determining how and where to control the population.
Your mistake is to think you can reduce the influence of one without reducing the influence of the other. So long as there is big government, this relationship is unavoidable. It’s the collusion of wealth, economic power and political power for joint ends.
The only way to reduce the power of this leviathan over you is to take back political power from the government and vest it back with the people. Even if that means having to take more personal responsibility for social outcomes, charity, education of your kids, or retirement. Sometimes that’s the price you have to pay. Because if you don’t, your children will pay double.
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/43 "2011-04-24T06:43:09Z")
Sam, what is money?
If money is power, & we shrink the government, as things stand now, how does power get back to the little guy, the local landowner, the small business, with so much money in the accounts of international bankers & the like?
Free-market capitalism is not the economic system for Joe Average. New Dealism might be.
But hey, maybe you think money isn’t power.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/44 "2011-04-24T06:47:51Z")
> [@Whambulance](#):
>
> Stimulus packages, even bigger government, more extensions of healthcare to those that cannot or will not contribute, more entitlement projects, extensions of unemployment compensation, support for more government and union benefits packages & more projects rewarding illegal immigrants and minorities (it is important to note here that my argument isn’t that minorities shouldn’t receive the best care, only that they should not be privileged at the expense of others).
How about cap-and-trade, a policy which would place some accountablity on corporations for emiting CO[sub]2[/sub] into the atmosphere, and opposed by Republicans.
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### Author:  [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/45 "2011-04-24T13:20:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> The only way to reduce the power of this leviathan over you is to take back political power from the government and vest it back with the people. Even if that means having to take more personal responsibility for social outcomes, charity, education of your kids, or retirement. Sometimes that’s the price you have to pay. Because if you don’t, your children will pay double.
Do you have a real world example in a major economy?
Sounds like the old pull yourself up by your bootstraps philosophy and yet another attempt by those at the top of the pyramid to stay there.
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### Author:  [@Whambulance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whambulance)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/46 "2011-05-01T06:50:06Z")
Thanks for everyone’s contributions, I have been away for a while.
> [@J\_Cubed](#):
>
> I don’t understand your objection to health care. Sure, the current law isn’t perfect, but it’s essentially Bob Dole’s old plan, and the Republican legislators didn’t attempt to improve it, just destroy it. And let’s not forget that it was commercial interests and their Republican lapdogs that have made virtues out of overconsumption and instant gratification. That’s probably the biggest factor in health care costs, right there. A cultural abdication of personal responsibility, cheered on by every right-wing pundit and politician.
I am not against health care I am against the Obama team’s use of a golden sledgehammer to fix it.
If you were to go through the itemized invoice for an extended hospital stay, you’d find hundreds of items like the famous $10 aspirins, extra pillows, lung capacity meters etc. that were never administered and sometimes total over 30% of the cost.
Hospitals pad their bills like this because their arrangement with insurance companies isn’t one that favors them. Insurance companies actually leverage tighter and tighter deals with hospitals in their areas and in some cases pay less than half of what hospitals would like to see for particular care.
When they aren’t paid in full it puts them in the red and since they are capitalistic institutions, they raise their rates … Ad nauseam the cycle continues at the taxpayers expense.
There needs to be some type of supervisory influence overseeing this relationship. There also needs to be tort reform and an ability for consumers to plow through the special interests and purchase insurance from competitive providers across state lines.
All of this could have been done in a 50 page bill, the CBO could have monitored the savings over a 2 year period and then that savings could have been thrown at a government health insurance plan to low-income households.
Instead we got thousands of pages of gluttonous bureaucracy.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/47 "2011-05-01T08:45:42Z")
With the few obvious exceptions, I agree with most of the posts in this thread, and feel they mostly answer OP’s question. But let me add my $0.02 anyway.
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> Pretty much everything conservatives say is code for “I don’t want to pay taxes”
Tax cuts are even the centerpiece of their deficit reduction plan. :smack: One wonders if they all flunked 3rd-grade arithmetic and conflate addition with subtraction.
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Here’s the problem with Democrats: They used to be about protecting the poor and disadvantaged. They had an actual message and a political stance that was somewhat consistent. But the party has been completely hijacked by its fairly narrow source of funding - big labor, lawyers, and corporate fatcats. As a result, the Democrats now find themselves defending wages for people who make twice the national average, to be paid for by taxpayers who make less. That’s not progressive - it’s regressive. They find themselves bailing out corporations like GM and giving tax subsidies for rich people to buy $40,000 Chevy Volts, and instituting plans to encourage wealthier people to buy brand new cars while mandating that the used cars that poorer people rely on are destroyed, driving up prices in the used car market.
>
> Democrats are no longer champions of the poor. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the dirt-poor people in Appalachia or Louisiana. They’d rather expend the taxpayer’s money propping up salaries and gold-plated benefits of public union employees and providing fancy trains for wealthy commuters. They’d rather spend their time trying to impose schemes for taxing energy, which disproportionately hurts poor people.
> …
> In the meantime, the social security and medicare benefits that the poor working class disproportionately depend on are in danger, and the Democrats are doing nothing about it.
As usual, there are some grains of truth in **Sam Stone** ’s comments. And also as usual, he draws the incorrect conclusions.
A world where elected legislators were saints or altruists would be nice, but that is not this world. It might be nice if voters were altruistic, i.e. if middle-class voters sought policies to help the underclass, but any altruistic spirit is dead in America. So, **Sam** , since Demo policies strive to help the middle-class your solution is to reject them and help only the super-rich? If “trickle-down” has any validity at all, I’d find trickle from the middle more plausible than your trickle-down plan to concentrate wealth in the super-rich. But you’re entitled to your own opinion.
But you’re not entitled to your own facts. Your bizarre pretense that the Demos are to blame for social security and medicare trends calls into question your … (well, let’s go to the Pit for further discussion of that).
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> Apparently government does NOT “derive its just authority from the consent of the governed”. It exists to order people around against their will.
>
> If that’s the direction the Democrats are heading, then they want to impose fascism in the literal sense of the term.
>
> Regards,
> Shodan
SDMB’s own stand-up comic got into the act. 😃 But he keeps trying to tell the same joke over and over and over, and it wasn’t overly funny the first time.
> [@Whambulance](#):
>
> I am not against health care I am against the Obama team’s use of a golden sledgehammer to fix it.
> …
> Hospitals pad their bills like this because their arrangement with insurance companies isn’t one that favors them. Insurance companies actually leverage tighter and tighter deals with hospitals in their areas and in some cases pay less than half of what hospitals would like to see for particular care.
> … Ad nauseam the cycle continues at the taxpayers expense.
>
> There needs to be some type of supervisory influence overseeing this relationship…
> Instead we got thousands of pages of gluttonous bureaucracy.
Some of your comments about health care are valid, but for the life of me I don’t see how this relates to the theme “left agenda appears to increasingly encourage a lack of personal responsibility.”
In health care, a straightforward way to absolve persons of responsibility would be Universal public-financed health care. That’s what the Demos should have done; that’s what your comments imply the correct solution to be. As others say, the problem with Demos is that they cater to special interests, not the general public.
So, we’ve come full-circle. “Responsibility” is code for lowering taxes and making government disfunctional. OP wants functional health care, and yet has allowed right-wing propaganda about “responsibility” to conflate health care’s problem with its solution! :smack:
Hope this helps. 😃
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### Author:  [@Whambulance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whambulance)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/48 "2011-05-01T17:53:38Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> Some of your comments about health care are valid, but for the life of me I don’t see how this relates to the theme “left agenda appears to increasingly encourage a lack of personal responsibility.”
>
> In health care, a straightforward way to absolve persons of responsibility would be Universal public-financed health care. That’s what the Demos should have done; that’s what your comments imply the correct solution to be. As others say, the problem with Demos is that they cater to special interests, not the general public.
>
> So, we’ve come full-circle. “Responsibility” is code for lowering taxes and making government disfunctional. OP wants functional health care, and yet has allowed right-wing propaganda about “responsibility” to conflate health care’s problem with its solution! :smack:
>
> Hope this helps. 😃
First let me say that throughout some of the posts above and especially this one that people are arguing points based on a misinterpretation of the term “responsibility”.
I was very careful to base my assumption on PERSONAL responsibility because I agree the term responsibility is over propagandized and vague.
Personal responsibility and Universal publicly-financed health care are the antithesis of one another, so that is not what my arguments imply. Universal publicly-financed health care implies by definition that the entire population either contributes to the fund, receives benefits from it or both. It promotes situations where I can choose not to work knowing that my neighbor across the street has worked hard enough to allow me the same benefits.
In my argument the entire health care / insurance system functions as it does now only with more efficiency and less gouging, thereby leaving a net positive to put toward a publicly funded set of policies to AID lower income households not entitle them.
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/49 "2011-05-01T18:35:58Z")
> [@Whambulance](#):
>
> Personal responsibility and Universal publicly-financed health care are the antithesis of one another, so that is not what my arguments imply.
No, they’re completely unrelated concepts. Universal, publicly-financed healthcare works. Profit driven health care doesn’t. You could cover everyone in the US under a single-payer system for half the cost of our current system (or your wholly theoretical efficient and gouging-free system).
Personal responsibility doesn’t enter into the equation.
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### Author:  [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/50 "2011-05-01T18:41:35Z")
> [@Whambulance](#):
>
> First let me say that throughout some of the posts above and especially this one that people are arguing points based on a misinterpretation of the term “responsibility”.
>
> I was very careful to base my assumption on PERSONAL responsibility because I agree the term responsibility is over propagandized and vague.
>
> Personal responsibility and Universal publicly-financed health care are the antithesis of one another, so that is not what my arguments imply. Universal publicly-financed health care implies by definition that the entire population either contributes to the fund, receives benefits from it or both. It promotes situations where I can choose not to work knowing that my neighbor across the street has worked hard enough to allow me the same benefits.
>
> In my argument the entire health care / insurance system functions as it does now only with more efficiency and less gouging, thereby leaving a net positive to put toward a publicly funded set of policies to AID lower income households not entitle them.
Our medical system is a complete mess. It rewards doctors for doing things. Every single thing they do makes them more money. We do not reward doctors for results.
Hospitals can gouge all they want.There is nobody to stop them.
Insurance companies have nothing stopping them from jacking up rates and giving themselves bigger and bigger paychecks. When the health care changes take effect in a couple years, the insurance companies will be forced to pay 85 percent of their net on medical care. that is why they are jacking up premiums. The bigger the overall pot is ,the more that 15 percent will be.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/51 "2011-05-01T19:10:53Z")
> [@Whambulance](#):
>
> I was very careful to base my assumption on PERSONAL responsibility …
>
> Personal responsibility and Universal publicly-financed health care are the antithesis of one another, so that is not what my arguments imply. Universal publicly-financed health care … promotes situations where I can choose not to work knowing that my neighbor across the street has worked hard enough to allow me the same benefits.
>
> In my argument the entire health care / insurance system functions as it does now only with more efficiency and less gouging, thereby leaving a net positive to put toward a publicly funded set of policies to AID lower income households not entitle them.
(“as it does now” means pre-Obama? Did you explain how to achieve the “efficiency and less gouging”?)
With two children, I do agree that I have PERSONAL responsibility as wage-earner to afford their health insurance. Indeed, it is one particular reason I do not live in the U.S.A. But some people simply cannot afford health insurance, especially if they have, e.g. a genetic predisposition to kidney disorder. Is your view the laissez-faire one, that the lives of such uninsurable people are not cost-effective?
The economics of American health care have been debated in prior threads. If you have a particular contrary view on that, can you point to a prior thread please? Is it your view that lazy welfare mama is a big part of the problem when she takes her kids to the E.R. for ear infections (the only way she can get free care)? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth; I just want to better understand this connection between personal responsibility and health care finance.
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### Author:  [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/52 "2011-05-01T19:20:23Z")
Over half the bankruptcies are caused by health problems. You can afford health coverage until you need it, then it is gone.The insurance companies will get rids of you. Plenty of middle class people lose their homes when a catastrophic illness hits a family member.
[Bill Moyers Journal . MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE | PBS](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/profile.html) The system is a mess that rewards everybody but the sick person who is left high and dry.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/53 "2011-05-01T20:15:38Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> Apparently government does NOT “derive its just authority from the consent of the governed”. It exists to order people around against their will.
:dubious: **All** governments exist to order people around against their will. Some governments, the people collectively get to elect first.
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### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/54 "2011-05-01T20:22:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> :dubious: **All** governments exist to order people around against their will. Some governments, the people collectively get to elect first.
I think you’re not getting it.
“…Derives its just authority from the consent of the governed” only applies when _Republicans_ win elections. And if you get pushed around by a Republican-run government, well, that just means you’re not really a patriot, probably not even a citizen.
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### Author:  [@randy054](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randy054)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/55 "2011-05-01T21:16:39Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#):
>
> This is dead right. You’ve got two parties who compete in elections by using various issues to appeal to Americans with the aim of getting elected so that they can then bend over for the country’s corporations and wealthiest individuals.
This in aces!
One party says one thing and the other party says the opposite, but in action and actual policy. They are identical.
It helps to keep the masses divided against each other.
Divide and Conquer.
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### Author:  [@randy054](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randy054)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/56 "2011-05-01T21:44:36Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#):
>
> It is also code for, “I don’t like regulations that get in the way of extracting money from the public through any means necessary,” including fraud, deception and endangering public safety.
You would think Geithner is your “traditional republican” on some of the policies he and some of his cronies like the Bernanke have enacted.
Take for example, the latest stunt they have pulled:
**Treasury Blocks Regulation Of Market That Sparked $5.4 Trillion Fed Bailout**
[http://wallstreetbears.com/huffington-post/treasury-blocks-regulation-of-market-that-sparked-5-4-trillion-fed-bailout](http://wallstreetbears.com/huffington-post/treasury-blocks-regulation-of-market-that-sparked-5-4-trillion-fed-bailout)
> [@](#):
>
> The Treasury Department plans to exempt foreign exchange derivatives from new Wall Street reform regulations, a Treasury official said Friday, dismissing concerns about a market that prompted $5.4 trillion of emergency support from the Federal Reserve in late 2008.
What could possibly go wrong? Oh, that right, the tax payers would be on the hook to bail them out anyhow.
It becomes more and more clear everyday that these monster’s regardless of what stripe care not one iota about the country anymore.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/57 "2011-05-01T22:16:51Z")
> [@Whambulance](#):
>
> A little background here. I am a middle-of-the-road Libertarian with some far left as well as far right tendencies so I am by no means bashing Democrats in general.
>
> The reason I am posting this is that it occured to me a couple days ago that much of the left agenda appears to increasingly encourage a lack of personal responsibility.
RWs have been making that charge against “the left agenda” at least since the New Deal. It would be kinda hard to miss it, really, if you listen to the news at all. Nevertheless, it only occurred to you a couple of days ago; so, you can’t really care about it all that much, can you?
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/58 "2011-05-01T22:17:57Z")
The Democrats have a direction?
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### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/59 "2011-05-01T22:22:49Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> The Democrats have a direction?
Clearly, not.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2011, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/60 "2011-05-01T23:14:51Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> The Democrats have a direction?
In the sense that driftwood has, i.e., in hindsight.
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