Does The Democratic Party Stand For Something Beyond Just A Career Vehicle For A Bunch Of Mostly Slimy Political Hacks?

The Democratic Party of founder Thomas Jefferson certainly did (ergo: the Declaration of Independence, vociferously and violently opposed by conservatives). The Democratic Party transformed by William Jennings Bryan certainly did ("We will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them 'You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold'"). The Democratic Party of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt certainly did. The DLC and Blue Dog conservatives-- predominantly reactionary southerners-- have a very different vision of the Democratic party than the progressives who have made it mean something hopeful to millions of Americans. With Blue Dogs and DLC scumbags endeavoring almost as hard as their Republican allies to maintain the status quo, derail health care reform, turn back the clock on women's choice, deny equality to gay men and women, ignore the dual looming climate change/energy crisis and, most important, keep the corrupt corporate money flowing in their direction, I thought it might be a good time to re-familairize ourselves with something Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a great Democrat, said when I was just a schoolboy, working for him (as an elevator operator in his NYC campaign headquarters):

In this entire century the Democratic Party has never been invested with power on the basis of a program which promised to keep things as they were. We have won when we pledged to meet the new challenges of each succeeding year. We have triumphed not in spite of controversy but because of it; not because we avoided problems but because we faced them. We have won not because we bent and diluted our principles, but because we stood fast to the ideals which represent the most noble and generous portion of the American spirit.

What a slap in the face to corporate shills and other conservative Democrats! It isn't just seeing how bribe-besotted DLCers like Evan Bayh (IN), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE) and Mary Landrieu (LA), and equally corrupt and even more conservative Blue Dogs like Mike Ross (AR), Jim Cooper (TN), Bobby Bright (AL), Travis Childers (MS), Jim Marshall (GA), John Barrow (GA) and Heath Shuler (NC), are selling out the fundamental principles and values of the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys that brought RFK's quote to mind. It was also a post written yesterday by Digby at Hullabaloo that reminded me of his words.

Following up on dday's post below, can I just ask if those of you who are older than 35 or so are getting that strange familiar feeling? You know the one, where the media are suddenly hostile to the president, the Democrats are running for the hills and the country is confused and doesn't know what to think? The one where cable news gets obsessed with manufactured wingnut shitstorms designed to distract and diminish the president's stature and sap his political capital just when he needs it the most? We've seen this movie before, haven't we?

...Obama's "problem," as it is for all Democratic presidents, is that he is allegedly "out of step" with the people --- like Matthews and his firefighter brothers, and that cop in Cambridge and Rush and other Real Americans who are upset about how "liberal" he's being with his tax 'n spend health reform and the horrible deficits and his defense of loudmouthed black professors who are no better than they ought to be. You can feel the Big Money, the right wing noise and the Village all starting to find their collective voice and take control.

You can blame Obama for walking into the lion's maw, as I'm hearing many of his allies do today-- liberals always blamed Clinton for failing to be perfect too. But believe me, there's no way to avoid this stuff when the frenzy begins. Once they smell blood they always find something.

Yes, they do-- and they always have. Let me string some quotes together from Mike Lux's inspiring book, The Progressive Revolution as he wraps up a discussion of how Democrats have tried to deal with conservative fear mongering-- some with caution (some might say cowardice) and some with Hope.

The entire history of American political debtae can, in some sense, be described as the argument between the hope of progressives for a better future vs. the fear of conservatives who want to protect the way things are now... [They rant about how they] fear the democratic mob. Fear of the freed slave. Fear of a liberated woman destroying the traditional family. Fear of freethinkers destroying traditional religion. Fear of communism. Fear of gays and lesbians. Fear of hippies, "free love," and the drug culture. Fear of the immigrant. In a bizarre twist Social Darwinism gave us fear of the weak, and in the modern version of Social Darwinism, Reagan gave us fear of the poor on welfare. Post 9/11, you can now add in the ever-potent fear of terrorism.

The Republican conservatives' fear-mongering on behalf of the elites and the status quo has been met with cautious conservatism-- very comfortable conservatism in most cases-- by careerist Blue Dogs. That's the Democratic Party at its worst and when it's least effective as a vehicle for the goals and aspirations of our country's working families. The opposite is Hope. And it's too early to tell if Hope, for a man whose first appointment was corrupt, reptilian Wall Street shill Rahm Emanuel, was more than a smart campaign slogan.