# The Slow Death of the Democratic Party **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 15, 2004, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568 "2004-09-15T17:22:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/41 "2004-09-17T00:21:22Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Dude, there most certainly was “international consensus” about the Taliban. Not the same issue as Iraq, despite Bush’s constant attempts to mix them. Nor is there any reason to believe that Gore wouldn’t have gone after Osama in Afghanistan, the way Bush hasn’t for the last 2 years. > > But the overall point is still that your OP is not derived from fact. You asked and I answered about a Gore re-election scenario. What part of it do you disagree with? As to the OP, I originally placed it in IMHO because it was primarily my opinion and analysis. My general point is that liberalism is becoming an albatross to the democratic party. What facts are you disputing? ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/42 "2004-09-16T20:18:43Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > They’ve only made it (ie opposition to Roe v Wade and/or abortion) a litmus test for appointing judges to the Federal bench. If that’s true, it is a stealth litmus test. To my knowledge candidates for the federal bench who express the opinion during Senate hearings that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided never make it to a judgeship. Factual citations to the contrary, naming names and preferably quoting chapter and verse of Senate testimony or published opinions or judge’s speeches to the contrary, will be cheerfully acknowledged. The fact of the matter is that Judicial nominees dance around the Roe issue as they do not want to set off a firestorm in the Senate. That’s some litmus test. They dare not risk openly debating the issue because they know they lack the support to openly overturn it. The “This American Life” radio show previously quoted, which I urge everyone to listen to, makes that point that the big tent GOP is approximately 30% pro-choice and that while the nation is divided on the issue the Republicans are happy to include the pro-choicers in their tent. The only sacrilege to them is being anti-tax cut. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/43 "2004-09-16T20:19:21Z")
> [@](#): > > I was born in 1962, so my knowledge of the Vietnam era is viewed through the prism of history. Perhaps you should try a lens of history instead – better magnification, less distortion. > [@](#): > > In the the 50’s it seems to me that that the goals of the Democrats and Republicans were nearly interchangable. I think the folks on the left were more concerned with civil rights, which they should be honored for. Completely wrong. While there were some leftists concerned with what they called “social justice,” they were not a majority in the party. The Democratic party stood for rural populism in the South (farmers united against the railroads and corporations), and controlled machine politics in the North (also a sort of anti-Big-Business populism); union labor, race relations, Communism, and government reform all have a VERY complicated history with the Democratic party. Franklin Roosevelt laid the groundwork for the modern Democratic party when he created all those relief acts. The specter of a welfare state made the Democrats appealing to a lot of people who weren’t aligned with either party before. > [@](#): > > But segregationist George Wallace ran as a Democrat, if I recall correctly. The political territory staked out then does not resemble that of today. But when Vietnam started to divide the country, the left came down on the side of opposing it. Wallace was a perfectly typical Southern populist. Racism was not a mainstream political issue – it was the way things were. And both parties were pretty vehemently anti-communist, and the Vietnam war started under Democratic administrations; Nixon, in fact, was elected because he had a “secret plan” to END the war. The different strains of internationalism, interventionism, imperialism, and isolationism that various factions in both parties subscribed to is too complicated for me to explain – maybe there’s someone here who knows it better and has it sorted out. > [@](#): > > The idea that a “better society” could be built came into vogue. And to me that is a central tenet of liberalism. Try to build utopia and make the taxpayers pay for it. That’s socialism – I subscribe to it, but most Democrats have (and had) no such grand vision. Present liberals want to adequately fund social projects with taxes, thinking that it’s worth the cost. Republicans want to cut the programs to meet what they think is a reasonable tax burden. Both have costs and benefits, and the positions are separated by values, not opinions or different analyses. > [@](#): > > The establishment folks that wanted the Great Society of Johnson find common intellectual ground with the anti-establishment war protesters and an alliance was born. I hope it’s now clear why this is wrong. > [@](#): > > But today, the harsh political reality is that the votes are in the center. Ted Kennedy will never be elected President…and Kerry’s leftward voting record will bring him down as well. And we all remmeber what happened to Pat Buchanan’s presidential aspirations. The point of this post is to make the case that liberalism in post 9/11 America is no longer a numerically viable political philosophy. Liberalism in post-9/11 America is about the same as it was before. The Republicans aren’t going to do away with Social Security, Medicare, welfare, or school lunches, and the majority of Democrats never wanted to do much more than we do now. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/44 "2004-09-16T22:10:11Z")
> [@Evil One](#): > > Would Gore have attacked the Taliban and established a doctrine of preemption? Or would he have waited for international consensus which might never have come? First, let me point outthat pre-emption needs no special doctrine. It has been recognized as a legitimate casus belli for centuries. What the WH was intentionally mislabelling as pre-emption for propaganda purposes was actual preventive war. Preventive war has a history of being a dodgily justified war. As Rush Limbaugh says, “Words mean things.” To continue using this intentionally obfuscatorial bit of agitprop newspeak is to Humpty Dumpty the words into meaning so much that they lmean not much of anything at all. Iraq was a preventive war, not a preemptive one. Second, IIRC, acquiring an ‘international consensus’ for attacking the Taliban was readily forthcoming. Not much of a wait needed. Third, the Taliban were not attacked under the guise of pre-emption. They were attacked as retaliation for attacks on the US. It was Iraq that was attacked under the guise of pre-emption. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/45 "2004-09-16T22:29:09Z")
Every Democrat worth worrying about in recent memory has been a moderate. One of the jokes about Clinton went “he was the best Republican president the US ever had” due to his fiscal conservatism. If anything the Democrats suffer for their centrism rather than liberalism, since hard core liberals voted for Nader in the last election. The idea that the Democrats are dying a slow death by liberalism is fatuous. They’re dying a slow death because they’re not different enough from Republicans to satisfy discriminating left-wing voters. As pointed out above, right-wing voters are more herdish and loyal, so Republican candidates suffer less from centrism. The only exception to this rule I can think of was Ross Perot’s candidacy, in which an even more effective and folksy social centrist with an extremely conservative fiscal agenda outdid the pubs at their own game. The OP is a big lie, and a dumb one at that. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2004, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/46 "2004-09-17T00:39:58Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > Republicans want to cut the programs to meet what they think is a reasonable tax burden. It depends what you mean by “want”. I think in some universe where they were King, they would want the programs to disappear or be reduced and they do want to try to make it inevitable that someone will have to cut the programs. **But, they don’t really want to do it themselves.** Why should they? So far, the public seems content to let them having a win-win situation: cut taxes, increase spending and let the Democrats clean up the mess. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2004, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/47 "2004-09-18T12:53:59Z")
> [@Evil One](#): > > You asked and I answered about a Gore re-election scenario. What part of it do you disagree with? Its irrelevancy. Your thesis is the unfashionability of liberalism, particularly in domestic policy, not 9/11. Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but Gore’s choice by the people certainly does not support your thesis, nor would there be anything for you to “analyze” in such a way as to support it if he were in office right now. The facts do not support your statements; it’s that simple. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/48 "2004-09-20T16:03:00Z")
Which statements in the OP are belied by the facts? ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568/49 "2004-09-20T16:29:40Z")
**Malodorous** : Good point you have there. Giving the difficulty of getting just two people to agree on anything, any ruling party must be a coalition whose internal inconsistancies will eventually blow it apart. (Not that I’m sure I can last another twenty years before the conservatives claw each other to shreads. Come to think of it, Republican rule should end about the time Social Security implodes. Make of that what you will.) Welcome to Doperdom! So fork over the money already! [It is indeed Bullwinkle. When I joined I presumed (correctly) that someone had latched onto that name, and so I settled on this variant (of course, the initials have launched a thousand jokes, mostly having to do with Moosehead Beer. . .).] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-slow-death-of-the-democratic-party/264568.md?page=2)