Real News: WHAT MAKES A CANDIDATE?
REAL NEWS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Common sense, politically incorrect newsletter to 11,451 subscribers)
IS BARACK OBAMA A DEMOCRAT, OR A SOCIALIST, OR A MARXIST?
Various political critics calling Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama a Democrat, or a Socialist, or a Marxist does not make him
so. You must examine his past performance, his speeches, and his
promises to decide which label really fits him. The present
all-inclusive Democratic Party now includes some adherents for each
philosophy.
President #41 George H.W. Bush claimed that "if it looks like a duck,
walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, then it is a duck!"
Barack Obama's spell-binding speeches indicate what he has already
done, and what he hopes to change, omitting that a president doesn't have
the power to enact his economy and tax programs, only Congress can do it.
That is why firing all of Congress is more important than who is
elected president. Congressional infighting and corruption will continue
unless everyone votes against their incumbent U.S. Representative and
Senator, so new Congressional members won't be restricted by the present
power controllers and term limits can be voted on. Why should any
worthwhile legislation need a longtime, experienced finagler to get it
considered?
--REAL NEWS Editor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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216-YEAR-OLD DEMOCRATIC PARTY EVOLVES
Summary of Mark Stricherz's book "Why The Democrats Are Blue"
The Democrats limped out of Chicago divided and discouraged, the
latest casualties in a culture war that went beyond differences over
Vietnam. It would reshape and realign American politics for the rest of
the century and beyond, and frustrate most efforts to focus the
electorate on the issues that most affect their lives and livelihoods.
The kids and their supporters saw the mayor and the cops as
authoritarian, ignorant, violent bigots. The mayor and his largely
blue-collar ethnic police force saw the kids as foul-mouthed, immoral,
unpatriotic, soft, upper class kids who were too spoiled to respect
authority, too selfish to appreciate what it takes to hold a society
together, too cowardly to serve in Vietnam . . . Much of my public life
was spent trying to bridge the cultural and psychological divide that had
widened into a chasm in Chicago. --Bill Clinton, My Life: The Early Years
There is a rough consensus that the Democrats are favored to take
back the White House; that Democrats, as they did in the 2006 midterms,
will do so by riding voter disenchantment with President Bush's handling
of the Iraq War.
The "Social Issue" has played a major role in keeping a Democrat out
of the White House in six of the last nine elections. Democrats continue
to stumble over values issues.
As the Civil War approached, the Democrats took the wrong position on
slavery, and they found themselves, except for a few episodes of
prosperity, America's minority party from the election of Abraham Lincoln
in 1860 until the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.
At the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Republicans
took the wrong position on the social and economic welfare
responsibilities of the federal government, and they remained America's
number-two party until the coming of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich in
the 1980s and '90s.
Today the Democrats are taking the wrong position on morality and
religion, which may doom them to remain America's minority until well
into the twenty-first century. They oppose extending any legal
protections to an unprotected class of human beings -- unborn infants.
And they favor granting public benefits for homosexual couples.
Considering that the national party was known as "the party of the little
guy" and led by Catholic big-city and state bosses, the post-1968 party's
support for secular liberalism qualifies as a revolution, not an
evolution.
So why did the national Democratic Party side with secular liberals
("the kids and their supporters") rather than religious traditionalists
("the mayor and his largely blue-collar ethnic police force")? To those
disgruntled with the national Democratic leadership, it should affect how
they seek to reform the party.
When political observers discuss the revolution in the national
Democratic Party, they focus on the defection of the South in response to
the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the real reason
that the national Democratic Party sided with secular liberals instead of
religious traditionalists.
The McGovern Commission was approved at the the 1968 Democratic
National Convention in Chicago. The 28-member panel is best known for
creating the modern presidential nominating system, in which primary and
caucus voters, rather than big-city and state bosses, choose the party's
presidential nominee. The most significant consequence of the McGovern
Commission is that the Democratic Party's coalition changed and shrank.
The New Deal or Roosevelt coalition had included white Southerners,
Catholics, union members, blacks, and intellectuals. Under this
coalition, the national party was a majority party, and its presidential
candidates won seven of the ten elections from 1932 to 1968.
The McGovern Commission destroyed this old electoral alliance and
replaced it with a Social Change coalition led by secular liberals. The
Commission pushed through a rules change that required informal delegate
quotas for women and young people. The proposal had three major
consequences. First, while the Democratic coalition added feminists and
secular professionals, it drove away blue-collar workers and Catholics,
many of who became Reagan Democrats. Second, it broke the Democratic
Party's longstanding alliance with the Roman Catholic Church. Third, it
reduced the number of Democratic constituents.
The fourth consequence of the McGovern Commission is that the
Democratic Party's nominating system reduced the clout of traditional
Democrats. Under the old boss system, big-city and state politicians
chose the nominee based on the candidate's perceived ability to help the
local ticket back home, nominating candidates from every wing of the
party between 1932 and 1968.
To millions of Americans devoted to the old Democratic Party, the
story of the McGovern Commission and its legacy is a tragedy -- a classic
tale of understandable but impure motives, an ends-justify-the-mean
mindset, hypocrisy, rationalization, and hubris.
Secular, college-educated professionals hijacked control of the party
machinery and imposed their own secular, college-educated agenda. No
individual Democrat could stop them. As a result of this takeover,
support for a once-great national party has dwindled to "blue" states on
the coasts and Great Lakes region. The old presidential or national wing
of the Democratic Party had been in the hands of Northern Catholic
bosses. Although an elite group, they delivered regularly for their
cross-racial, working-class constituents, helping make possible the
legislation of the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society.
The Democratic Party can return to being a People's Party. To do so,
party officials will have to shift power back to the people. State
caucuses and conventions, which reward highly motivated activists rather
than ordinary voters, should be abolished. Super-delegates should be
eliminated. Demographic quotas for delegates should be repealed. Enacting
this package of reforms would dilute the power of party activists, but it
could revive a once-great party.
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I'M MAD, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.
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If we don't fire Washington, who will?
For details, send email to:
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Rich Martin
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