Democrats Need To Rediscover Their Beliefs

The Republicans are crowing about their return to power after the last election.   Some of them even believe they have been given a mandate by the voters to return to the same disastrous policies that threw this country into the current recession.   As a recent Gallup poll shows, both the Republicans and the Democrats are viewed unfavorably by a majority of the public.

The people did not vote for the Republicans as much as they voted their displeasure with the Democrats failure to produce the change they had promised.   There was a time in this country when the Democrats proudly held progressive beliefs, and fought for the working man and the downtrodden (as in the administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson).   But it seems that somehow the modern Democratic Party has lost its way.

There are still some good progressive politicians in the Democratic Party, but these days there are just as many Blue Dogs -- Democrats who vote with Republicans to favor the rich and the corporate interests.   They opposed a public health care option, voted to weaken regulations to rein in Wall Street greed, oppose the strengthening and sustaining of worker's unions, want to cut Social Security benefits, support corporate outsourcing, etc.

Frankly, I don't blame voters for not voting Democratic in the last election (or for staying home on election day -- as millions did).   It's impossible to know anymore just what Democrats believe in and are willing to fight for.   They promised change, but delivered very little.   They promised jobs, but delivered very little.   They promised health care, and then gave the insurance companies a giant payday and left them in charge of medical decisions.   They promised to punish Wall Street and keep them from ripping off the rest of America, and then passed a weak bill that does almost nothing.

Here in Texas the Democratic Party has surrendered its beliefs and decided they must become a pale imitation of the conservative Republicans.   They no longer offer a real progressive choice.   They say they can't win unless they offer candidates only slightly less conservative than the Republicans.   That mindset has been disastrous, and currently there is not a single Democrat holding statewide office.

Voters respect politicians who have definite beliefs they are willing to fight for -- even if they don't like those beliefs very much.   They don't respect a party or a politician that waffles or seems to have no hardcore beliefs -- and sadly, that describes the current Democratic Party.   And I'm not the only person who thinks the Democratic Party has lost its way recently.   The blogger Mean Rachel has this to say:

Democrats in Texas have a problem. Weak, flavorless and not good for cooking, the Democratic Party – particularly in Texas – has tried to blend in so much that we’ve lost our relevancy. We’re the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Republican Party. We were so afraid someone would stop and notice we were Democrats that we forgot one thing: we couldn’t make voters forget about the (D) next to each one of our candidates. "We're not crazy like them, but we're kinda' like them" is a fool's strategy.

The Democratic Party is suffering from an atrophy of character. We have lost any conceivable moderates to attrition, because the Republican Party at least has the ability to define who it is – regardless of the fact that they’re the drunk guy at the holiday party, at least everyone remembers that guy’s name. Our fixation on “the bad guys” does no good if we’re not worth listening to in the first place. We need deliberately distinct leaders and we need to be unabashedly unafraid to support those leaders in bringing back the fundamentals of what matters to Democrats and -- as one insider so eloquently put it recently -- "the tangible consequences of voting for them."  

And then The Rude Pundit adds this:

If you wanted to measure how degraded the Democratic Party has become, simply compare what they once fought for, the poverty programs and civil rights, to what is being fought over now: whether or not to give a three-year tax cut to people making more than a quarter of a million bucks a year, something that the majority of the nation doesn't support. Meanwhile, most Democrats are going along with extending tax cuts to the middle class, even if the end result is gutting programs for the poor.

If there is a soul left to be found in the Democratic Party, as our leaders compromise away every principle that once energized us, it is by returning to directly improving the lives of the poor in the nation.


The Democrats need to return to their progressive roots and once again fight for the underdog and for ordinary citizens.   The Republicans have chosen to defend the rich and throw everyone else to the dogs.   They don't need any help from Democrats -- Blue Dogs or otherwise.

When the Democrats decide they have beliefs, and show voters they are willing to fight to defend those beliefs, they will find they have lots of support.   But until they do, the voters are going to leave them to wander in the wilderness.   I hope they come to their senses and return to their progressive roots soon -- before the Republicans turn this recession into a full-blown depression.