Resolved: The Democratic party has moved too far to the left

Great Debates
1

In this thread, Debaser says:

Now, I’ve always felt that the Democratic party, in the last few decades, has actually moved more to the center. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

This is pretty much in line with how I have always thought about it. But I certainly don’t consider Wikipedia to be the last word, but we can at least use it as a starting point. Please share your arguments and references about whether the Democratic party has moved more to the left relative to where it has been in the past.

2

This is a tough one. The problem is distinguishing “the Democractic party” from any individual Democrat, like Kerry, or from the sum total effect of all the Democratic politicians (weighted, of course, by their respective abilities to influence national issues. :slight_smile: )

I’m too lazy to do this right now, but how about a point-by-point comparison of this year’s Democratic party platform with the platform from whatever time period you consider to have been that party’s golden years of liberalism?

3

I should mention that by “in the past”, I mean in the last few decades. Please don’t go all the way back to the pro-slavery Democratic party; that would really confuse the issue.

4

I think that the only lesson that you can draw is that Debaser charts the ‘political centre’ by the position of the US Republican party and views other parties as ‘left’ or ‘right’ in relation to the GOP.

Describing the Democrats as ‘extreme’ anything is laughable.

5

Let’s not forget that the Kerry-Edwards ticket got 48% of the vote overall, and 55% of all “moderate” voters in the election. I don’t think they could have gotten those results if they were really as way-out-left as the conservative insta-pundits like to claim.

6

To be fair, Avenger - Debaser isn’t the only person I’ve heard make this claim. It does seem to be mainly people on the right saying it, though. I’ve haven’t really heard any liberals saying that the Democratic party has become more liberal. The right says the Democratic party has moved to the left, and the left says it has moved to the right; obviously someone is incorrect.

7

Well, I don’t think the Democrats have shifted further left of US center recently…in fact they have kind of waffled around the same relative position since the 70’s. I think the entire US political spectrum has shifted right though, so ‘the center’ is a relative position that varies with time in the US. Currently ‘the center’ is right of where it was in, say, the 70’s. The Democrats are probably right of where THEY were in the 70’s too (they seem to be hitting the same themes in their planks and various stances on things), but the same relative distance from the current center as they were to the center of earlier times. The Republicans are a different matter, as they have really changed their political stances on a lot of things recently…I really find them all over the board these days (especially Bush), with specific STANCES that can be centrist, right or even left of center depending on the issue.

Of course, this is all broadly speaking…individual Democrats can be anywhere and everywhere on the spectrum (and the issues shift with individuals)…just like individual Republicans. And this is all based on my own impressions.

-XT

8

Not far enough, if you asked me. I barely supported them this year (a tactical vote, nothing more), I’m likely to drop them completely from now on, if they begin whoring for fundie votes.

Oh, did you mean, “…to win elections”? Yes, probably. If you meant “…to stand for something positive and progressive, i.e., to move us into the future with a set of core humanist principles that can withstand shifting political currents”, not by a long shot. Dem increasingly = Pubbie Light, and probably will moreso as Democrat career politicians flock to the God squad to keep their deadwood arses in office.

9

I think this must be the latest Pubbie talking point; woo the Democrats to abandon any liberal issues by convincing them that they lost the election because they are still too liberal. If anything, we need to move further to the left and energize our base, the way the Pubs did with the Fundies. We lost this election because we allowed the the Pubs to define the lection in terms of their wedge issues. Gay marriage is not an issue that will change the way most Americans live, but it can be exploited to generate enough fear to mislead the timid away from the real issues like Iraq and the economy.

Democrats need to gin up some wedge issues of our own, and drive them into the hearts of the Pubs. I say we start with out-of-control conservative deficit spenders and the ballooning national debt. That’s something everyone should be afraid of, and we don’t even have to mislead anybody.

10

That’s a good idea. And much better than the wedge issue of “outsourcing” that the Dems tried this time. But don’t mix metaphors: Outsorcing the capture of bin Laden didn’t seem to work either. I’m very surprised that the deficit issue didn’t seem to resonate much with the electorate. It was #2 on my list of why I didn’t for Bush this time.

11

I seriously doubt the Pub’s want you to abandon your liberal issues…quite the opposite. They will be MORE than happy if you carry on. And I’m sure they will be completely overjoyed if you move further to the left.

I agree that the Democrats allowed the Republicans to control the tone and substance of the election. They sat around singing kumbya at the DNC and other happy happy joy joy things, without bothering to focus on ANY issues…or even focus on Kerry. The RNC was masterful in comparison in terms of focus on the key issues and on Bush.

Well, I hate to tell you this, but the conservative deficit spending thing WAS brought up by the 'Crats this time…and it failed to work because Bush et al were able to make a convincing case (well, it didn’t convince ME mind you) that 9/11 and Iraq were the main reasons for such huge deficits. I doubt this will be a key ‘wedge issue’, unless things are the same as they are today 4 years from now…which I seriously doubt.

Myself, I think the 'Crats need to seriously sit down and decide exactly what their ‘target market’ is as far as voters goes and re-define their party and their stances in terms of that market. If they were going to take a REAL page from the Republicans book they would first start with the Clinton presidency. Clinton was a VERY popular president…who was a moderate centrist. HE stole pages from the Republican’s play book and made them his own. HE dropped a lot of the liberal social aspects of the party and even said the day of big government was over, pissing off many liberals…who none the less voted and supported him. The Republicans took that too heart…they pay lip service to those you call ‘fundies’ without much real substance, while running towards the center. Hell, much of Bush’s rampant spending is on the social side of the house IMO.

If the Democrats run further to the left, if they decide to continue to make highly liberal issues the cornerstone of their party, if they continue to run liberal left leaning candidates to appeal to their fringe…then IMO they will continue to lose in the US. Myself, if I were them, I’d look at embracing certain aspects of Libertarianism, become the party of fiscal responsibility and small government (in other words do what the Republicans SAY they do, but actually DO it), advocate the SERIOUS revamping or dismantling of some of their cherished social programs (while proposing REAL programs that are well thought out, efficient and that WORK), drop some of their hardline stances on things like gun control, and perhaps even abortion, making it a state issue, etc.

But what do I know, right? :slight_smile: Probably just a Republican conspiricy to make you give up the left…

-XT

12

It was actually my number 1 issue for why I didn’t vote for Bush…but it didn’t get much traction with ‘the people’ out there obviously. I think its because Bush was able to successfully tie in the deficit with 9/11 costs and Iraq…which I think the majority of people understood and I guess agreed with.

-XT

13

Darn - I just realized my title is not well-worded. I really wanted to debate the actual truthfulness of the contention that the Democratic party has become more liberal in the past few decades, not whether this is good or bad. I should have simply asked, “Has the Democratic party moved to the left?”

Whether being more or less liberal is good or bad is a great side-issue, but what I was hoping for was for those who have contended that the party has become more liberal to get in here and defend that assertion.

14

Yes, that’s my take on it as well. The center has shifted, not the Democratic party. Now, could Debaser and any others who contend that the center is the same, and that the Democratic party has shifted to the left, argue that point?

15

It’s issue-specific, I think, and hard to judge because the center (as judged by the people, but also as defined by the party/government elites, who don’t necessarily embody the people’s views) won’t stay still.

Defense: it’s an open question whether the threats the U.S. faces now are the same, or the same in magnitude, as in the 1970s-'80s. Looking at Clinton and his nation-building frolics (including the Kosovo adventure), and seeing how tamely most Dems. lined up behind Bush/Wolfowitz’s Iraq escapade, I’d say that either (1) they’re tired of being branded of wusses, so Dems. will be militarist-for-militarism’s sake before they’ll be avowed pacifists; or (2) with the demise of the socialist USSR, and the increase in do-gooder humanitarian missions administered through student-council like multilateral bodies, the Dems. may just naturally have begun to find the new breed of war more congenial to their sensibilities, especially if it can be pitched (as most wars can, coincidentally) as in aid of “tolerance” or “saving persecuted minorities.” Overall, don’t think they’ve moved too far left, if at all.

Taxes: Raising taxes on the “very rich” is class warfare, of course, but the Dems. have engaged in class warfare for years. Clinton raised taxes and that may have hurt him and Gore, but the fed. tax burden is so high (and so unlikely to ever retreat to a modest portion of the GDP) that I’m not sure tweaking the marginal rate up or down by three points (Clinton and Bush, respectively) is a deal-breaker. The govt. (Dems. and Republicans both) have gotten very good at disguising tax raises rather than proposing an across-the-board hike in marginal rates. How much easier just to silently subject increasing number of “fat cats” to the AMT, sub silentio, because it’s minimum level isn’t inflation indexed, or to phase out deductions and thus make the nominal “top” marginal rate lower than the effective rate actually paid by many taxpayers. And economic boom times allow government to collect hugely-increased taxes without appearing to “raise taxes” at all, which is what the Dems. did under Clinton. I think the Dems. will tax you more, but then you always knew that, and I don’t know how much worse it’s getting.

Spending: Well, both parties are now spending like drunken sailors, so I don’t think the GOP’s going to kill the Dems. anytime soon with ads predicated on fiscal prudence. It’s not just the war; GWB’s intentness on interfering in non-federal issues such as education means he’s committing to federal funding for them, and Bush increased NEA funding. Moreover, as with taxes, increasingly when we look at the past vs. today, it’s apples and oranges. The Dems. have backed off their stalwart advocacy of welfare, which in my eyes makes them look superficially less-left. But then you realize that the reduction in direct AFDC payments doesn’t mean a reduction in overall government spending, as we’ve seen the proliferation of multiple quasi-welfare programs (SSI, Medicaid, Section 8, the EITC, Pell Grants) that provide multiple avenues for covert expenditures of govt. money a/k/a vote buying. The GOP is guilty of this too, bigtime, so I’m not sure that even if the Dems. were called on this issue, it would be a net disadvantage to them.

Social Issues: Here’s the only place I see the Dems. moving substantially to the left of the populace, at least more left than they used to be. Many Americans are anti-abortion. Some Dem. leaders used to be; now, it’s anathema for anyone who wants to advance in the Dem. leadership (ask Al Gore and Tom Daschle, whose agonizing flip-flops away from their previous statements spoke volumes). I don’t know what the numbers are on affirmative action, but I suspect the Dems. party line on this issue is substantially to the left of the majority of Americans. To the extent the Dems. are seen as more pro-homosexual, that hasn’t helped them. I sort of do concur with Donna Brazile that, for better or worse, the Dems. have hitched their wagon to (or rather, given an oath of never deviating from the pet policies of) the “four pillars” of their constituency as she characterized it (she actually listed more than four, but it was women, blacks, labor, minorities, environmentalists, and homosexuals).

It could thus be true that the party itself hasn’t moved, on net, to the left, but has allied itself with a limited number of high-profile wedge issues advanced by its biggest supporters that don’t resonate well with lots of swing voters.

16

I think one needs to consider that this time around, the votor turnout was very high compared to the last few elections. It has been posited by some pundits and analysts that there are voters nearer the fringes of the political spectrum who typically don’t make it to the ballot box, for whatever reason. On the right there are the evangelicals and other social conservatives, on the left are younger voters (esp. college-age voters) who are more likely to vote Democrat.

This election had everything to do with which party did a better job mobilizing those away from the center; and clearly, the hands-down winner was the Republican party. There’s little evidence many, if any minds were changed by the respective candidates campaigns; rather, this year had little to do with appealing to the center than to either side, since that’s where all the new votes were going to come from.

I question the notion that the political center has moved much at all. Could it not be that one party was more willing to court less centrist voters than the other, gambling those nearer the center would not cross party lines?

17

With the exception of Huerta88 we seem to be talking broad generalities. Of course the Democrats are too liberal for the likes of the Heritage Foundation type Republicans and the Cato Institute types. Hell, Teddy Roosevelt was too liberal for them what with trust busting and being an honest broker in the Russian-Japanese War and the Bull Moose agenda. The hard line GOP was screaming that Adli Stevenson was too liberal. Some might suggest that the use of the term gained new impetus when it became part and parcel of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy – you could not really stand up on your hind legs and condemn the Civil Rights Act of 1965 but you could say that the Democrats were too liberal and the guys who hated the idea of equal voting rights, equal access to public accommodation and integrated schools could all nod in agreement that the people pushing that stuff were way too liberal.

There has been a consensus in this country about any number of issues, not the least of them is that abortion while an unpleasant and tragic thing must be kept as an option with some restrictions. The same is true of a progressive income tax that turns on the availability of excess income. The same is true of church – state issues. At present the core of the GOP is a consolidation of the hard liners who do not buy into one or more of those several consensuses. For instance anti-abortion people don’t care much about tax policy but their concern for abolishing abortion makes them allies of the anti-tax people. The preserve-the-family-by-making-divorce- difficult crowd doesn’t much care about foreign policy but their approach to divorce allies them with the people who want the US out of the UN. The Black Helicopters people are not the natural allies of the people who are enraged by the idea of same sex marriage but they are in bed together. The Cold Dead Hands people have little in common with the pay as you go fiscal conservatives but both have been co-opted by the GOP.

On the other hand the Democrats seem to have bought into the abortion, civil union, church-state, internationalist foreign policy, progressive tax consensus. The only people who can condemn the Democrats as too liberal are the conglomeration of reactionaries on any number of unrelated questions who make up the coalition (and I suspect a temporary coalition) of potentially hostile interests that make up the core support of the Republican Party. The money guys who are calling the shots are the no-tax, no-regulation, economy based foreign policy types (also known as “Big Business”). But they need the support of the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-pornography, anti-UN, and all the other marginalized dissenters from the national consensus to keep power.

The Democrats are too liberal only if the national consensus is too liberal. Because of their adherence to the consensus the Democrats are labeled by the likes of our friend Nader, the Greens and the Libertarians and the real leftists as being nothing more that “Republican Light.” You want that they should become “Republican LITE?”

18

Oh, but you could say (and Donna Brazile basically did) the same about the Dems. Black churchgoers and homosexual activists aren’t really fellow travellers. Old-school labor unionists probably live lives, and have overall values, that are very disparate from those of the coastal metropolitan/Hollywood wing of the Dem. core. Basically what we’re saying is no one is without cobbled-together coalitions, and everyone will claim to represent the broad middle.

I think that on the policies where they’re most identical (some of which you’ve correctly identified), both parties can legitimately claim they represent (or have manufactured) consensus. Unless something changes, under either party we’re going to have basically free trade, open borders, an interventionist foreign policy open to throwing military support behind certain allies or causes, a permanent, and large, and increasing federal bureaucracy and federal spending commitment, fairly high and ‘progressive’ taxes, fairly ubiquitous social-support programs in one guise or another, an increasingly “securocratic” form of government in which the feds expand power over individuals in the name of good order. That’s what both parties basically stand for, and the people can thus be inferred to have chosen, or at least not violently opposed, such programs.

I don’t agree with you that there’s necessarily a “national consensus,” numerically, on other issues you identify as settled. If there were a consensus on the need for abortion (and the polls, while often useless because of the inherent variability and the potential for jiggering questions, are far from supportive of the view that the current regime, and current Dem. policy, of abortion on demand for all three trimesters is the subject of any national consensus), why the urgency in preventing any erosion of the Roe v. Wade fiat – which reversal would merely restore this issue to the democratic process, at which time the “abortion consensus” should kick in, and all’s well. Same with “civil unions.” Is support for that really reliably in the majority/plurality? If it were, and if it were only fringe elements and flat-earthers opposed, how do you get to a three or four million vote margin?

There are, contrary to your suggestion, (and much to the chagrin of an equal number of ideologues on the right) plenty of middle-of-the-road (I think they call them “squishy”) Republicans. How often do you think George HW Bush spent or spends worrying about the black helicopters or the UN (between his visits to the Trilateral Commission and the CFR, both of which I think he’s actively involved in)? Is Paul Wolfowitz fulminating against “gay marriage?” Are my Republican neighbors who voted for the GOP for the first time four years ago after a lifetime of proud liberalism (mainly so they could preserve the value of their pharma stock options) obsessed with pornography (other than with viewing it on DirecTV)? Are the “security moms” who voted for Gore last time and Bush this time dismissable as gun nuts?

Come on. Every party has its fractious fringes, and its broad middle, and has trouble appeasing the smaller factions of its coalition (remember, the Dems had the liar Al Sharpton as a headline speaker at their Convention, despite his failure ever to apologize to Steve Pagones for ruining his life – you think they’re not captive to their “pillars” to some degree, or that some Dem. candidate won’t have to wince while giving faux-serious consideration to the subject of slave reparations?). You could of course argue that the GOP’s suffering because dragged too far right by its fringes, but the numbers on the ground don’t make this proposition as cogent as the proposition contained in the OP.

19

I think the Dems have actually drifted right of center in the past decade or so. I don’t know of any truly liberal legislation they’ve supported lately, and they’ve supported plenty on the right.

The problem with the Dems is that they don’t have any balls and they’ve let the right lay a false claim to the “moral” high ground. We need to get more aggressive and more hardline left. We need to go hard to the hole on environmental issues, on universal health care, on stopping the exportation of jobs, on civil rights issues. We need aggressively explain why we are in the right instead of being pussies all the time. We are right and they are wrong and we can’t forget that.

Religion seems to be an achilles heel because the Dems don’t have the stomach to exploit the base stupidity of the masses the way the Reps do. Maybe we should reassess that.

20

Hmm. The first statement seems remarkably like an expression of religious faith in an orthodoxy or doctrine.

The second seems to indicate that base stupidity is the only reason a person would vote on religious grounds.

Are all those Afro-American churches that you couldn’t burn Kerry and Edwards out of in Fla. the last weeks of the campaign full of “basely stupid masses?” If not, how do they reconcile being motivated by faith with not being “base” and “stupid?”

If they are base and stupid, weren’t Kerry and Edwards exploiting this by going and leading come-to-Jeebus tent revivals?

Gosh, the inconsistencies are legion.