Democrats Have Lost Their Way

I remember asking my father and mother what a political party was, I recall them setting their jaws, tipping their heads and saying without a moment’s hesitation that your dad is a Democrat, your mother is a Democrat and the people who care about all the people and their welfare were the Democrats.

I was about six.

From then, I was a Democrat. No questions, no misgivings, no doubts, no reservations.

I was Democrat through and through.

Of course there was nothing behind all this tough, resolved, Democrat ‘til death devotion. What I knew then was that my parents were right about everything else. So they pretty certainly would be right about which party should run the country.

I knew nothing about the Republicans.

My closest contact was a grandfather who was once a rich man; made his money in oil. His one thought was that it was a very good thing John F. Kennedy was dead – terrible thing, of course, his being shot and all – but the result was a benefit to the nation.

I didn’t really warm up to that political party.

Later, I learned of the two parties and their differences and their basic philosophies.

Democrats were a group of hard working people who had all sorts of goals and understood that their goals were not all exactly the same, but who needed to build a big enough party to fight against the other big party.

Blacks needed black rights, black power, black pride and they were drawn to the Democrats. All of them? No not all. But if there was going to be a political party that blacks joined, Democrats was it.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had to make his own way and practically drag John F. Kennedy into the fight against segregation in the early part of JFK’s career. But that bond between blacks and Democrats became a bulwark of the party’s strength.

Now, however, black groups are fractured and unable to get the nation to see their emancipation turning into a backside slide toward poverty. There is no one shining spokesman for the blacks now.

Jesse Jackson is unable to lead the whole black nation. Barack Obama of Illinois is a freshman in the U.S. Senate this year and might be the ordained one awhile hence.

But he asks for time.

Democrats have no time.

The case is just the same with Labor.

Labor, that incredibly large group of men and women who had no power alone but vast power as a unit of millions has lost its mission.

Top unions bicker and separate and leave labor hamstrung trying to get any one big labor platform pushed through the government.

Once labor was as big as any government.

Now it is looking for its identity.

No real help from the Democrats.

The leaning in this relationship was mutual. Now neither can lean on the other.

Republicans were much easier to figure out.

Basically they wanted to keep everything they had, acquire more and not be bothered with a lot of extraneous laws.

In other words, they were the people who had all the money and wanted to keep it that way. Doing anything but sweeping the streets and delivering the water was – well – socialist. That was naturally one step away from communist.

Republicans never worried about losing any real money, they simply had too much of it.

Now that is a twisted view of Republicanism.

But it was mine.

That has changed.

Now I see the world’s most powerful Republicans as true blue fascists.

Those at the wheels of United States government are so wrapped up in their own world that they cannot recognize reality.

Foreign nations loathe the current government. That includes Western Europe, the East, the Middle East and the rest.

Republicans have taken their "me first" attitude, expanded it exponentially and told the world it has to be with America or America’s enemy. Republicans have painted a mural of blunders, gaffes, ill-conceived plans all over the land. President George W. Bush has run his office like a blind man in an operating room. It is truly sickening.

What is worse is that against this tsunami of Bush evil, this stain on America, the other party has been profoundly silent.

Oh but with a plurality in the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Republicans have effectively shut us up.

As I write this, the Democrats pulled a sneaky maneuver and got the Senate to meet behind closed doors to discuss America’s intelligence that led us into the Iraq war.

They emerged from the session with a promise for a bi-partisan study committee.

Wow, the Democrats won exactly nothing.

They simply highlighted their own ineffectiveness.

Democrats lost church support like it was a runaway hemorrhage. Suddenly, Republicans got the noisy Christians all lathered up about abortion and gay marriage and all of a sudden the country is split into red states for God and blue ones for dangerous left-wing flag kindlers.

How did this happen?

Could it be as simple as the Republicans looked for a way to win presidential elections, saw this as fertile ground and worked it and worked it until the issue was theirs?

Yes, it could.

Republicans used old fashioned politics and mixed it with new fangled technology and came up with the issue that took the soul of the voter and married it to a political candidate and – boom – instant creation of a huge, loyal, sometimes fanatical political-religious entity.

Awesome.

It reeks of all the seasonings that made anti-communists so popular back in the 1940s and 1950s.

There was public rage, pointing fingers, outing Commies all over the place, almost like a national board game where everyone was playing whether they wanted to or not, and everyone was one of "us" or one of "them."

When in doubt, guess it is a "them."

And where were the Democrats in the latest soul battle?

Left field; they may fret and toss on a liberal talk show about the need to stop this hijacking of the human soul to get human votes, but that is about it. The Democrats have no plan here.

The Democrats are clueless.

Their record on all meaningful issues is nonexistent.

All there seems to be is the occasional thundering speech from a Democrat, something to get the juices bubbling and think about winning back all the soon to be lost skirmishes. OK, yea, let’s go then. Make some policy. Throw together a group with various goals to win this fight, then fight the next and the next.

Oh lord there was once that huge machine – the Democratic Party – that would lift us all to victory.

Nice fantasy, but it has no relation to reality.

Democrats have watched.

Democrats have watched a little more.

Democrats have done nothing.

Sure they can say they are keeping their powder ready for the 2008 presidential race. But by 2008 the United States will be a new place altogether. America will be an evil around much of the world.

It will not hold its arms forth and ask to help other people. It will be in the midst of saving itself.

It will be in the midst of failing to save itself because it will have completely suffocated its soul.

Nobody has risen to challenge Bush.

That is the only way to fight this regime.

I am not talking about running against anybody for the presidency or the congress. No. I am looking for one principled person who can simply show America just how tainted it has become.

Personally, I would rather this person not be – not be – a presidential candidate.

This battle is way bigger than one presidency.

This is the fight for America’s existence as a principled, well meaning, melting pot that is one of the few places that can exercise the raw power and the brain-power and the soul to – just possibly – avoid constant warfare.

America is waiting.

Its real soul will choke by 2008.

This started years ago.

Democrats saw it – Democratic President Bill Clinton saw it clearly – but Clinton’s eight years just gave the Republicans time to make their move and solidify it.

Used to be that speeches brought actual policy; grass roots Democrats could see a John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy pluck the deep, resonant tones of the Democratic undercurrent and touch one’s soul.

All of them had their flaws. Jack Kennedy would have been whisked out of office if today’s sex rules applied then.

But he and his brother Bob and King all shared one thing: all of them had a vision for Americans that encompassed all, welcomed all, asked all to help make a better United States.

That was sincere.

That was what Democrats offered.

Once.

But not now.

Democrats cannot find America’s soul because they have lost their own.

Once, during my period as a beat reporter, I was told to cover a big wig Democrat. I didn't think much of it. No one would know I was related to him - second cousin. Besides, I was the only one in the newsroom at the time, so I was sent.

In the mayor's office, the big wig was talking with the mayor and speaking like an uncle. When I came in, having never met the man before and certain he would not know me, I slipped into a corner.

He stopped talking to the mayor and the local officials and said everybody there should relax.

Why?

Because his second cousin, Bill Finucane, was covering the event, he said.

No great revelation or anything, not for him.

He knew the local politics.

He knew me.

His name: Tip O'Neil.

For him, all politics was local.

Always.

But Tip is gone.

How can we win in 2008? Let’s think up some clever ploys to spirit votes away from those crafty Republicans who snuck around and played every card they could find to get the presidency back.

We Democrats need to use every trick that exists to win back the highest office. Of course we need to win back majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, too. But the big daddy office, the big one, that’s the one we need.

As long as that is the order of the day, the Democrats have lost every candidacy even before the elections begin.

They need to fight for the people’s rights.

That’s all.

If they are losers, fine, they must try again.

But right now the Democrats represent nothing.

It is not whether they have a majority here or a plurality there or hold the presidency at the moment.

They are supposed to be fighting.

They are not.

Instead they are bemoaning their lack of power.

Well then – go get some.

They are not battling issues because the presidential election has somehow become a popularity contest. It isn’t.

Presidential elections are about America’s soul.

No one has grasped that.

I would love to rush back to my quiet, safe Democratic Party.

But I can’t.

I would love to vote for an obscure office like county treasurer without even knowing who is running because the man or woman is a Democrat.

But I can’t.

Democrats have given up for the moment; their current leaders are nobodies.

Now I am left with no legitimate political party.

Republicans are neo-fascists; they are impossible.

Democrats are not even really a party any more.

Perhaps a third party will emerge. That will be a terror all its own. America’s two-party system has been a bulwark against possible fracturing of people into innumerable small parties.

But the Democrats, whose very essence has been to collect all the varied strains of special interest and forge them into one working political party, is not doing that right now.

For me, it’s good-bye, Democrats.

Now I’m on my own.