What does the Democratic Party stand for?

[kentuck]

Does it still stand for the same principles that John Kennedy and Martin Luther King stood for? How long has it been since we have been to the top of the mountain?

Seriously...

Does the Democratic Party still stand for the same principles as Harry Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Does it still have the same concerns about the "ill-clothed" and "ill-fed" in our country?

Is the Democratic Party still willing to fight for its values as did LBJ? Is there still room in the tent for the poor and disadvantaged?

Or do we now have a new Democratic Party? What does it stand for?

I only ask the questions. I do not have the answers.

[ProSense]

1. .

here

[kentuck]

3. Thanks ProSense.

Good post.

[sandnsea]

2. Today they just stood for gay rights

To hear folks around here tell it, Democrats ran out of the Senate with pee running down their legs.

This just after Elizabeth Warren was appointed with similar fauxrage.

You don't know what Democrats stand for? Ask someone getting extended unemployment benefits.

[griffi94]

4. it depends

on whether or not they're campaigning.

it seems like they're for different things when they're running for ofice as opposed to when they're in office.

[scheming daemons]

5. Today, 96% of them stood for repealing DADT

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. like any party the elected officials take no notice of the party agenda

meaning our congressmen do their own thing.

[VMI Dem]

7. Civil unions and sensible repeal of DADT.

Yup.

[craigmatic]

8. This democratic party stands for

civil rights, the right to organize, and equality for LGBT, not to mention health insurance for the old and poor, social security, and.. well... pretty much the opposite of what the repigs stand for. The difference between now and then is that the party stood for helping people survive the depression back then but that part has long been lost since the 1960's. Survival liberalism was replaced by improving quality of life liberalism. I think today we could use some of the survival liberalism back it's too bad LBJ and dems since got rid of it.

[Skittles]

9. depends on whether or not it is an election year

[OhioChick]

12. You noticed that, too? n/t

[Skittles]

14. aw fuck yes

they are in FULL BONE-TOSSING mode now :puke:

[Poll_Blind]

37. I read that and couldn't help but be reminded of this article from today's Christian Science Monitor

Why Democrats are pushing a series of bills doomed to fail

PB

[Forkboy]

10. Got me.

They say a lot, do a little.

[HughMoran]

15. Republican obstructionism

You really can't say they don't try to do the right thing, though I know you won't admit it.

[Forkboy]

19. Yeah, but who cares what you think?

[phasma ex machina]

11. IMHO the Democratic Party stands for pacifism, social justice, and a sense of community.

The Democratic Party ought to become pro-life. (I'm a pro-life pacifist, despised by both parties.)

Unfortunately, TARP perfectly illustrates how the powers-that-be ultimately control both country and its virtual empire regardless of who sits in the White House, Congress, and on the Supreme Court. Good people (DK, Dean) mostly get ignored.

[Skittles]

16. Dems ARE pro-life

you are simply ANTI-CHOICE

[blindpig]

32. Pacifism, you got to be shitting me.

Buchanan- Mexican War

Wilson- WWI

Kennedy- Escalated war in SE Asia

Johnson- Massive escalation in SE Asia

Carter- Initiated covert war against leftists in Latin america

Clinton- conducted air war against Iraqi people

Obama- Continued war and occupation in Middle East

Yup, fine bunch of pacifist....

[Starry Messenger]

13. Protecting Wall Street in a more genteel fashion.

Capitalists with slicker branding.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Today, what it stands for is less than what it bends for.

[Ozymanithrax]

18. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican.

This is not surprising, since Truman did not make Civil rights a Democratic ideal until 1948, causing Strom Thurmond to leave and run on a Segregationist ticket. Former slaves were loyal to the party that freed them. After 1948, Republicans became more and more the party of big business, until Nixon originated the Southern Strategy, making racism part of the Republican appeal. Reagan finished the change, leading to the south, formerly a Democratic stronghold, to switch to Republican.

Now that I've straightened that out.

Reid today put DADT up for a vote, and the Republicans filibustered a Defense Authorization bill rather than even discuss it. Reid certainly stood up for civil rights today, even if the Republicans won this round.

So I think there is still room in the tent.

[emsimon33]

20. ANSWER: Democrat Party..."We aren't the Republicans...yet."

[Ozymanithrax]

22. There is no such thing as the "Democrat Party."

It does not exist.

Now, in each state has a registered Democratic Party, which is a part of the Democratic Party of the United States. But this "Democrat Party" doesn't exist, though Republicans seems to think so. But then, they specialize in both self delusion and mass delusion.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

27. Is there a registered Democratic party in Minnesota? N.T.

[4lbs]

29. It must be, because of Al Franken.

:D

[Donald Ian Rankin]

34. Except he's a member of the DFL, which is why I asked.

[Ozymanithrax]

36. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is the Democratic Party...

in Minnesota. Each state has its own laws about what is required for a political party to appear on a ballot. So, parties must register separately in each state. Yes, Senator Franken is a Democrat, a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and a member of the DEmocratic Party of the United States. But there is no "Democrat Party."

[Ozymanithrax]

35. There is no "Democrat Party." That is a Republican relabel libel.

In Minnesota, there is a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is how they name it in Minnesota. Each state has its own version.

But, please, here at Democratic Underground we eschew using Republican relabeling.

[Davis_X_Machina]

21. LBJ's party, as was FDR's and Truman's and JFK's...

...was one-third hateful Dixiecrats who were reliable votes for the Cold War, or the war in Vietnam, but not much else. There were moderate, and even liberal, Republicans in those days -- Hatfield, Javits, Chaffee, Brooke -- you could do business with. That species has gone extinct.

It fought the Cold War with no respect for the Constitution, by throwing money and lies at it with reckless abandon, every bit as bad in both regards as the GOP.

It drew its power in part from big city machines that were corrupt, in many cases racist, and profoundly anti-small-d democratic -- like the first Mayor Daley.

It had wafflers, and trimmers and pols with one wet finger up to sense the direction of the prevailing wind, like Humphrey on Vietnam.

It had massive egos getting in the way of good policy, like Ted Kennedy on health care.

It wasn't an unmixed bed of roses. There was no golden age -- unless constructed after the fact by the selective exercise of memory.

And the same thing will be true thirty or sixty years from now.

The present will be painted by Democrats of the future as a golden age, and people will ask "What happened to real Democrats, like they had back in Clinton's day, or in Obama's?"

[AndyTiedye]

23. The Democratic Party is to Weak to Stand. It Can Only Crawl

[mrcheerful]

24. Here we go again with the same crap that was said when Clinton faced daily attacks and the media

hounded him for not living up to the promises he made before he was elected. This is a well known R tactic that started with Clintons election, wear the Democratic voters down by making attacks on anything Clinton said or done leaving the voters who voted for Clinton stuck in the position of defending Clinton, it works because the voters only hear what their candidate hasn't done and very little of what he has done or why his policies didn't go far enough to do much good. Why? Because by feeding the voter limited information then telling them the candidate hasn't lived up to what he promised while refusing to inform the people what he has done and how it effects them.

As we see on DU we got folks ranting and raving Obama has done to little or nothing at all, when facts say that he has done a lot more in less then 2 years and with the current right tilt the countries been pushed since 1980 these things the left to center folks don't get that to push harder will only have the opposite effect, the middle ground voter will dig in their heels and turn more right especially after being spoon fed daily dose's of fear, fear of brown people, fear of Muslims, fear of terror attacks, fear of anything different then what they see as normal, loss of job, illness, home foreclosure.

We are seeing signs of that all around us, fearful people turn to god and arm themselves, America is a powder keg waiting for a spark, we on the left don't respond to fear but centrist's and wing nuts are working with emotions and not a clear head, they see boogie men behind every bush and they are paranoid, push them to the left with sweeping change and who knows what they will do, these people are crazy with fear. It doesn't matter if its irrational fear, fear is neither good or bad it's just another feeling humans have, but, when everything around you causes fear, then add change on top of that your asking for a fight.

I was watching Moores Columbine movie last night and it brought back all of the fear I was seeing in the 90's and back then I watched how fast after the Reagan failure how quickly folks turned on Democratic candidates and voted the R's in, we saw how well the R's ran the country from that point on.

[JamesA1102]

31. Well said nt

[tavalon]

25. It has no spine, so I'm guessing it stands for nothing

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. So you're saying you want the Dems to oppose gay rights, is that it?

After all, none of the people you list supported gay marriage...

I'm all in favour of the Democratic party moving left, but I think the idea that doing so is a matter of going back rather than going forwards is a misguided one.

There was no "lost golden age" when the Democratic party was significantly more liberal than it is currently*. The core values of the Democratic party were... I want to make a pithy and cutting remark about bimetallism or supporting Napoloeon or some other no-longer-relevant issue here, but I don't actually know what values the Democratic party was founded to support (although I do know that back then it was the Republican party, confusingly...).

As to nowadays - the values of the Democratic party are, by definition, those its elected leadership espouses nowadays - which is to say, centrist rather than liberal, in the main. They are *not* those of the liberal wing of the Democratic party - no one wing is any more the "true" democrats than any other.

I think the question you should probably be asking is "what *shoud* the values of the Democratic party be?"



*One could at least make a case that the Democratic party was further left economically for a period of a few decades in the mid-late 20th century than it is now, but I don't know enough either to do so or to refute it, and I would distrust anyone who tried to do so on an internet discussion forum. And socially, the Dems are currently far further left than they've ever been before.

[pampango]

28. Equal rights. Reduced income inequality. n/t

[LWolf]

30. The left wing of the party does. The rest stand for neoliberalism. nt

[stuntcat]

33. I'd like it to stand for considering the future in every action we take

so many humans' spongy little minds are locked in the past.. back when being rich mattered, when religion was something to fight over.. when screwing the planet to death seemed like what we were created for. Ahh the good old days..