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What's Wrong with the Democratic Party?

Trinnity said:
The Democratic Party is out of touch. Why?

I have some thoughts on that, but I'd like to hear yours first.
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I think the biggest problem for Dems is that the Progressive wing rather than the classic liberal wing has seized prominence. I was a Dem from the JFK days up through Carter (voted for him twice). I still consider myself somewhat of a Classic Liberal - max freedom and responsibility - minimum government and regulation. But the dems drifted into the prog mindset - government knows better and should make life decisions for the people; we can solve all of societies problems with enough rules and regulations. So now I label myself a conservatarian with Classic Liberal undertones. I'm for strong defense and an involved foreign policy but eschew judgements on individual lifestyle choices that harm neither me nor society.
 
Sounds like the emerging consensus in the thread is that they're not far enough to the left, and also they're too far to the left.
 
Fiddytree said:
I assure you, Clinton and Obama were not and are not centrists.

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Thanks, but your assurance on this point is utterly meaningless to me.
 
RickJames3000 said:
Thanks, but your assurance on this point is utterly meaningless to me.
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That's fine. You still get to be wrong. It's a great time to be alive and indifferent to reality.

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Fiddytree said:
That's fine. You still get to be wrong. It's a great time to be alive and indifferent to reality.

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I trust your assurances about what it is like to be divorced from reality, and believe you speak from experience.
But as I said, your opinion on centrism is noted and easily discounted.

Cheers!
 
OrphanSlug said:
You may want to narrow this down.

If you mean out of touch with Independents, then that is natural when you drift further left on issues.

If you mean out of touch with some other group we need to know who you are talking about.
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As both parties moved further and further left and right, I would say both parties are out of touch with middle America. Call them independents, the center, center left and center right, the non-affiliated. Both major parties are shrinking. If Gallup is to be believed those who affiliated or identify themselves with the Democratic Party is down to 29% of the total electorate. The Republican Party is even worst at 24% with 45% of the electorate claiming their independents.

Neither party represents middle America, just the fringe left and right. I remember when the Democratic Party was known as the big tent party, no litmus test required. From FDR until Reagan the Democratic averaged 45% of the total electorate. The Republican Party, the smaller major party average 28% with 25% independents. Then you had the Reagan realignment. The Democrats fell to an average of 35%, The Republicans came up to 30% with 35% of the electorate identifying themselves as independents from Reagan to Obama.

Under Obama the decline of both parties continues to where today, under Trump it is 29% Democratic, 24% Republican and 45% independent. That's a lot of folks with no political party to call home. The sad part of it, is all this shrinking has allowed the hard core ideologues of the left and right to gain a firm control of both parties. We now have polarization, hyper partisanship, no compromise and no working together for the good of America. Just for the good of the party.

Here's the history from Pew in case my averages might be a point or two off.

Trends in Party Identification, 1939-2014 | Pew Research Center
 
What is wrong with the Democratic Party can be summed up in a few phrases but the problems are not all unique to the Democrats.

1) Citizens' United SCOTUS decision- has changed American national and state elections into a paper-chase for greenbacks rather than a mechanism for the peaceful debate and clash of ideas in a civil society. Thus both major parties have set aside all pretext of principled service to the majority of Americans and have become preoccupied with serving the monied special interests who finance a very expensive and now all but continuous election cycle. Money in politics, not votes, not sentiments of public service nor ideology (pragmatic or idealistic) now more than ever before drives the major parties to the exclusion of what is good for the Republic and the commonwealth of the American people.

2) The Betrayal of the Base - the political-money-chase has caused the Democrats to abandon their demographically significant base in favour of the interests of their largest political donors and this spurning of the many for the affluent few has further divorced them from the millions of people they need to overwhelm a built-in electoral system bias which favours the Republican Party. That bias is only partially the responsibility of the Republicans efforts at gerrymandering and voter suppression and is more down to the demographics of rural-urban divide and the constitutional and institutional mechanisms of the American electoral system which just happen to favour the Republican Party today.

3) The Democratic Nomination Process - the role of the "Super Delegates" allowed the DNC brass to derail and effectively block the nomination of a popular and moderately principled candidate for the presidential election and instead resulted in nomination of a candidate who was so despised by so many in America that an absurd populist revolt led to the election of the present-day sitting president.

4) The Abandonment of Pragmatism in favour of impractical idealism or unworkable ideology - while Democrats are very practical in seeking campaign contributions, they have been monumentally impractical in crafting a workable and rational political platform which addresses the real needs (not wants) of the majority of Americans. There is a failure to prioritise the planks of their platform through realistic political triage in order to get enough pragmatic Americans who are not locked into party loyalty to support them during elections in sufficient numbers to win. In an effort to be hyper-inclusive of all political aspirations, no matter how marginal or impractical they might be, the democrats have probably alienated more voters than they have attracted by rigidly adhering to some planks in their party's platform. The result of this hyper-inclusivity is an unworkable and unsellable platform which by trying to fix every real or perceived problem in America ends up allowing them to solve none because they can't get enough candidates elected to make any real changes.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
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Evilroddy said:
What is wrong with the Democratic Party can be summed up in a few phrases but the problems are not all unique to the Democrats.

1) Citizens' United SCOTUS decision- has changed American national and state elections into a paper-chase for greenbacks rather than a mechanism for the peaceful debate and clash of ideas in a civil society. Thus both major parties have set aside all pretext of principled service to the majority of Americans and have become preoccupied with serving the monied special interests who finance a very expensive and now all but continuous election cycle. Money in politics, not votes, not sentiments of public service nor ideology (pragmatic or idealistic) now more than ever before drives the major parties to the exclusion of what is good for the Republic and the commonwealth of the American people.

2) The Betrayal of the Base - the political-money-chase has caused the Democrats to abandon their demographically significant base in favour of the interests of their largest political donors and this spurning of the many for the affluent few has further divorced them from the millions of people they need to overwhelm a built-in electoral system bias which favours the Republican Party. That bias is only partially the responsibility of the Republicans efforts at gerrymandering and voter suppression and is more down to the demographics of rural-urban divide and the constitutional and institutional mechanisms of the American electoral system which just happen to favour the Republican Party today.

3) The Democratic Nomination Process - the role of the "Super Delegates" allowed the DNC brass to derail and effectively block the nomination of a popular and moderately principled candidate for the presidential election and instead resulted in nomination of a candidate who was so despised by so many in America that an absurd populist revolt led to the election of the present-day sitting president.

4) The Abandonment of Pragmatism in favour of impractical idealism or unworkable ideology - while Democrats are very practical in seeking campaign contributions, they have been monumentally impractical in crafting a workable and rational political platform which addresses the real needs (not wants) of the majority of Americans. There is a failure to prioritise the planks of their platform through realistic political triage in order to get enough pragmatic Americans who are not locked into party loyalty to support them during elections in sufficient numbers to win. In an effort to be hyper-inclusive of all political aspirations, no matter how marginal or impractical they might be, the democrats have probably alienated more voters than they have attracted by rigidly adhering to some planks in their party's platform. The result of this hyper-inclusivity is an unworkable and unsellable platform which by trying to fix every real or perceived problem in America ends up allowing them to solve none because they can't get enough candidates elected to make any real changes.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
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So the Dems "spurn[ed]...the many for the affluent few" while simultaneously losing the middle by being "hyper-inclusive of all political aspirations, no matter how marginal or impractical they might be." That's some feat! (On an unrelated note, superdelegates have never in their history "derail[ed] and effectively block[ed]" the nomination of any candidate.)

More of the classic "The Democrats' problem is that they're A. Oh, and equally damning, they're ~A."
 
Greenbeard said:
So the Dems "spurn[ed]...the many for the affluent few" while simultaneously losing the middle by being "hyper-inclusive of all political aspirations, no matter how marginal or impractical they might be." That's some feat! (On an unrelated note, superdelegates have never in their history "derail[ed] and effectively block[ed]" the nomination of any candidate.)

More of the classic "The Democrats' problem is that they're A. Oh, and equally damning, they're ~A."
Click to expand...

At some point the Dems began to make fun of their own traditional voters.

Listening Skills: How One Reporter Beat the Experts in 2016
F.H. Buckley, NY Post
 
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