Who Are These Democrats ?

By David Glenn Cox

Times change and political definitions change as well. The Republican Party was born of an anti-slavery plank in the days of Abraham Lincoln. The Republicans were the party of reform and were, dare I say it, liberals. The Democrats were the party of the status quo, supporting slavery and big business. In my childhood I was raised with John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, and all of them basking in the light of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Harry Truman had tried to pass single payer national health insurance, along the lines of modern Medicare, in 1948. He was defeated by the first Republican-controlled Congress since Herbert Hoover. Truman always publicly referred to Republicans as reactionaries; they were the party of no.

“The Republicans believe that the power of government should be used first of all to help the rich and the privileged in the country. With them, property, wealth, comes first. The Democrats believe that the power of government should be used to give the common man more protection and a chance to make a living. With us the people come first." — A Government as Good As Its People (Harry S. Truman)

Franklin Roosevelt said it like this: “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”

Republicans in that era were considered, in many circles, nuts. So when I see their clients waving posters of Hitler and bringing guns to rallies today, there is nothing new here. When Barry Goldwater ran for President his slogan was “In your heart you know he’s right,” but that was turned around by the Democrats to “In your guts you know he’s nuts!”

The Republicans are famous for using emotional sophistry and fear to convince ordinary Americans to vote against their own interests. Harry Truman once said, “Don’t vote for me, vote for yourself!” The labels of nut ball or whacko are as meaningless to the Republican horde as telling a pig it smells bad. Ronald Reagan was seen in his era as every bit as loony as Sarah Palin is today. The Republicans of that era, and still today, like threatening war with all enemies, real and imagined. Goldwater warned of a nuclear war with Russia and China if they would not give in to our demands. This is why the campaign ad run by Lyndon Johnson of the little girl picking daisies with a mushroom cloud in the background had such an effect.

It asked the simple question: Is this what you want for your children? Goldwater was at the far right end of the Republican Party, the end aligned with the John Birch society. At the other end of the Republican spectrum were the Rockefeller Republicans, people like George Romney and Gerald Ford, and of course, Nelson Rockefeller. They were economic Republicans, Republicans from Democratic-leaning districts who were soft on Republican hot button issues of the day like “forced integration” and strong on limiting the power of organized labor.

“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home— but not for housing. They are strong for labor— but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage—the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all—but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine— for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing—but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing—so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people. And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.” (Harry Truman)

But since the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, there has been a shift in the political landscape. Liberal became a dirty word and politicians of both parties ran for office on their conservative values. Since that election the American standard of living has gone only down, and American weapons of war have never grown dusty from lack of use. What we have seen in that time has been Republican wet dreams of cutting taxes for the rich and cutting wages for the working man.

We have a world-turned-upside-down scenario where Bill Clinton’s welfare reform program was more conservative than Richard Nixon’s. Bill Clinton was no more a liberal than Ronald Reagan was a moderate. The media and the Republicans like to label Democrats as liberals, but in point of fact there are very few actual liberals in Congress. We do have Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank and John Conyers, but you couldn’t fill a minivan with the actual liberals in Congress.

When Harry Truman ran for the presidency in 1948, the liberals had split the party because they wanted Truman to step down. The Southern Dixiecrats had walked out of the convention over Truman’s strong stand on desegregation. Truman was a moderate Democrat; Kennedy was a moderate Democrat, so when judged side-by-side, Bill Clinton was almost as conservative as either Nixon or Ford.

But since the election in 1980 we have had endless, and in most cases needless, military conflicts, and the so-called liberal voices were mainly silenced.

“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.” (Franklin Roosevelt)

"I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo." (Harry Truman)

“We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.” (John F Kennedy)

Perhaps it is this generational difference that puts me at odds with so many of my fellow Democrats. I see war in the same light as FDR, Truman and Kennedy, that war is the failure of politics. It is a Neocon wet dream, bogeymen created to feed contractors and bury young Americans. There is no Al Queada. The Taliban are, after all, Afghans, and our troops are not. Just as there were no WMD’s in Iraq, and prisoners were tortured to support the administration’s lies.

These current entanglements are Neocon fantasies for unipolar domination, Iraq to control the oil market and Afghanistan to limit Russia’s ability to sell her oil. So when I see Barack Obama buying into this, I am less than pleased. Obama ran for office as a progressive but so far has governed as a conservative. He has sought bipartisan support for health care reform when history and logic would tell you that it is not there.

"I don’t like bipartisans. Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know that he’s going to vote against me." (Harry Truman)

It is as if Obama began the health care debate with a first down on the fifty yard line and has been angling for field position to kick a field goal ever since.

“About the meanest thing you can say about a man is that he means well.” (Harry Truman)

“We shall be judged more by what we do at home than what we preach abroad.” (John F Kennedy)

“It isn’t sufficient just to want - you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.” (Franklin Roosevelt)

So when I see Hillary Clinton advocating military bases in Colombia or when Barak Obama says, “By moving forward in Iraq, we’re able to refocus on the war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March — a strategy that recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base from the remote, tribal areas — to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan,” I have to ask myself, who are these people calling themselves Democrats? I guess they mean well but they don’t sound like the Democrats I remember.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else. (Franklin Roosevelt)