A lot of Greens and other far-left critics
of the Democrats
have a strange belief that the Democrats were
somehow more
liberal or otherwise better in the 1960s than
the party is
nowadays. But I really just don't get this
line of reasoning
at all. I have a hard time imagining that
the radical left
would have been nearly so supportive of the 60s
Dems if
they'd been there at the time. A brief
review of the 60s
Democrats:
John Kennedy - Fiscal conservative, scion of wealthy
political family, moved only cautiously forward
on civil
rights, labor policy essentially identical to
modern
Democrats. Radical? No way.
Lyndon Johnson - Southern populist, often thought
of as a
conservative, thougn he wasn't. He did
the right thing in
signing the Civil Rights Act and certainly many
of the Great
Society programs were good ideas, but he stubbornly
stuck to
the center on most other issues and lest we forget
escalating
Vietnam. Seems like a pretty conventional
Dem to me.
Hubert Humphrey - A holdover new deal liberal,
Humphrey was
strongly pro-union and pro-civil rights, but
pro-war in
Vietnam (at least at first) and played to the
center in his
1968 campaign. Again, seems pretty conventional
to me.
And not only does the "60s were better" argument
dissolve on
the slightest real inspection, but the argument
that the party has
ignored its core constituents since then is in
fact insulting to those
constituents. It is in effect telling the
Democrats' followers that
they are too stupid to make their own political
decisions, and
have to have the world explained to them by the
Greens.
It seems to me that all the "Democrats are sellouts"
whining
by the Greens is really just sour grapes; the
Green argument
was rejected by the populace, and rather than
blame the
unpopularity of their ideas (the vast majority
of Americans
are pro-death penalty and against completely
socialized
health care) they instead blame the Democrats
for being more
popular. But it's not the responsibility
of the media, the
two main parties, or anybody else to get the
Greens message
out. If they can;t find a national mouthpiece
with enough
volume, then perhaps its because not enough people
actually
support their agenda.
If the far-left were more pragmatic, it would
quietly line up
behind the Democrats and subtly influence the
agenda from
behind the scenes. Of course, pragmatism
has never been the
strong suit of that particular group.