‘Now They Tell Us’
OK, fun with Nocera’s awkward sentence construction aside, at least tonally, I’m not sure if he’s the best journalist to make the case that “moderate Democrats wrested the party back from its most liberal wing.” Recall that Nocera was the same Timesman who wrote – and later apologized for – this last year, even after the president’s call for a new civility amongst his fellow “liberals” earlier that year:
You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.
These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.
[. . .]
As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible thing. Apparently, that’s their problem.
For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.
If that’s the Times trying to reach out to “core concerns of the middle class,” I’d hate to see what came before. (Oh wait, I know what came before.)
And finally, have moderate Democrats actually “wrested the party back from its most liberal wing,” as Nocera claims? Let’s ask this polite young man how eager he is to support a self-described moderate Democrat:
In the liberal blogosphere, the most energetic quarter of the party, Kerrey’s comeback bid was lambasted as the return of yet another mushy moderate. The online left says it won’t lift a finger for him — and in some cases, it’s even rooting against Kerrey.
It’s a reaction that’s emblematic of the new normal in Washington, a place where there’s no room for committed centrists like Maine GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe, who announced Tuesday she’ll retire after three terms — and perhaps even for members with a record of orbiting the center, such as Kerrey.
“I hope he gets carpet bombed. The more Republicans spend in Nebraska, the less they’ll have to go after Democratic Senate candidates who actually act like Democrats,” said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the influential blog Daily Kos. “And if it turns out he needs the help, then too bad. F—- him.”
Well, that settles it then! After years of being MIA, I’m glad moderation has finally returned to the party of McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and Obama, along with an era of new civility, as well.
Although perhaps a road back from the Democrats’ ever-leftward swing over the last 45 years is finally visible, based on this:
Republicans should fight hard to make Brazile’s words a reality come November.
What’s a “moderate Democrat”? Is that one who froths out of only one side of his mouth?
Clearly it means one who only wants to lynch blacks -or- Catholics, not both.
I doubt if I’d call Dubya, Mitt Romney or John Boehner the GOP’s “most extreme liberal faction,”
“most extreme conservative faction” makes more sense in the context of your post.
I wouldn’t either. I was just pointing out the poor sentence construction of a Timesman. And however much these men have taken up rent-free space in the left’s heads, “most extreme conservative faction” is equally laughable when comparing them to say, Calvin Coolidge or Barry Goldwater.
“During the McGovern-Mondale era, the Democrats were exactly where the Republicans are now: the party had been taken over by its most extreme liberal faction, and it had lost touch with the core concerns of the middle class….Those terrible losses in 1972…”
Baloney.
They lost the presidential elections in 1968 and 1972 because of the mess they made out of Vietnam, not because they all of a sudden got too liberal.
What the hell do you think guys like Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson were? Right wingers?
Actually, I’m pretty sure that the current Timesmen consider Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson to be right-wingers, compared with their own ideology. Or as Obama said last year, he considers FDR to be “pretty fiscally conservative.” Of course, compared to the guy who said it…
I don’t care what they consider, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the ideas of the old liberals and new liberals, although modern day liberals aren’t quite as bloodthirsty and hot to put us into bloodbath wars as liberals used to be, but that also is a result of Vietnam and the consequent election of Dick Nixon.
That’s why the modern Dems won’t EVER put boots on the ground in a foreign conflict, no matter the situation is. They haven’t forgotten what it cost them when Vietnam blew up in their faces, namely control of the executive branch of the government. Once they get over that (and they will), we’ll be right back where we were in the first part of the 20th century, with the totalitarian liberal Dems bungling us war after bloody war, and millions of American kids getting drafted into the army to fight said wars.
Guys like Roosevelt and Obama are out of the same ultra-left wing cookie-cutter mold, and nothing about the way they think or act has really changed.
And, Joe Nocera is living in a dream world. The beating they took in 1968, and 1972 was all about their complete mishandling of the Vietnam War. That’s what broke their stranglehold on control of the executive brasnch federal government, not their CONSTANT, NEVERENDING political liberalism.
Truman actually repaid some of the federal debt, which is more than can be said for at least the latest 5 Presidents. Also, Truman was definitely an anti-communist and a friend of Israel; so I’d say that, compared to FDR, he was pretty conservative.
Similarly, JFK was an anti-communist and a tax cutter.
In the period between the death of FDR and the assassination of JFK, the Democratic Party looks relatively sensible to me, compared to what went on before and after. But that might be because I don’t know much of that period, so I am willing to be corrected. (But if it was that bad, why did Jonah Goldberg not report on it in Liberal Fascism?)
FDR; The National Recovery Act, the 3C camps, massive stimulus spending (which at least got us Hoover Dam, aircraft carriers, and fleet-type submarines; three things our present-day Dems would freak at). And in the end, in 1939, his SecTreas, Henry Morganthau, bemoaning the fact that none of their government “pump-priming” had improved the economy. Which got a bump from World War Two, and went right back into hibernation in ’46.
Truman; Had too much on his plate internationally (Berlin, Korea, and MacArthur) to fiddle with the domestic economy much. Probably fortunately for the latter.
Eisenhower; Had sense enough to emulate Calvin Coolidge and keep his hands off the economy for the most part. And while progressives like to use his quote about the “military-industrial complex”, the COMPLETE quote also calls attention to the dangers of an “academic-scientific complex” and an “intellectual progressive” complex, which he considered equally hazardous to the nation’s well-being.
You forgot Adlai Stevenson, BTW. His Presidential campaigns in 1952 and ’56 marked the true beginning of the modern-day, ultra-progressive Democratic Party. Stevenson’s take was that FDR, Wilson, etc., simply hadn’t gone far enough. He also had a finely-tuned contempt for the common herd. In fact, he said that all he needed were the “smart, sophisticated” people, and he would win. He was wrong both times, but his philosophy is on display every day in the Democratic party today. (I still find it hard to believe the Dems were foolish enough to run him for President twice.)
As for LBJ, between the Great Society, the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1968, high taxes, massive “stimulus” spending, and demonizing Barry Goldwater as a kill-crazy nut who was itching to push the Big Red Button and go “Dr. Strangelove” on our collective a$$, if he wasn’t a hardcore, modern-day liberal, I’d like to know what he was. As for Vietnam, two words; Clinton & Kosovo.
The Democrats have pursued the same philosophy, to greater or lesser degrees, for over a century. Modern Dems have convinced themselves that the reason their doctrines have always failed before is that the American people just didn’t try hard enough. They think they have a cure for that, too.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work in the Soviet Union, or China, or anywhere else it has been tried, but they think, as Ted Kennedy once said, that “it didn’t work because they didn’t have (us) to run it.”
For an encore, they’ll repeal the law of gravity, too. That way, as Ayn Rand said, they can fly to the Moon with a thought whenever they feel like it.
And gaze down at all the peons’ on Earth below.
clear ether
eon
“Modern Dems have convinced themselves that the reason their doctrines have always failed before is that the American people just didn’t try hard enough. They think they have a cure for that, too.”
The replacement of the people with a new one? They’ve been working on that pretty hard.
ruman; Had too much on his plate internationally (Berlin, Korea, and MacArthur) to fiddle with the domestic economy much.
Seizing the steel mills went way beyond mere fiddling. It was liberal fascism on stilts. At least the Supreme Court was independent enough then to slap him down.
Sorry, but you’re just plain wrong; there is almost nothing in common between the Democratic Party of FDR through Carter and the Democrat Party today. I know because I was present for the end of that Party. Through Carter the Democrats were liberals on most social issues and trade unionists leaning socialist on economic issues but they were patriotic and not intentionally destructive of American interests and values.
Beginning with the ’72 election cycle the “New Left” made a concentrated push to capture the switches and levers of the Democratic Party. They were successful enough to make McGovern their nominee in ’72 though even he was basically an old-fashioned liberal statist, not really a socialist or a communist. By ’76 they still didn’t have enough of a grip on the Party to really make one of “theirs” the nominee, though they’d had great success in ’74 in the wake of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation; that was the brass ring at the time for the Left, they’d forced the evil Nixon from office. Carter won in ’76 more because he was “not Washington” than because of his politics, though he had a lot of help from the National Extortion Association because being a Southerner from a right to work state he really thought the NEA was all about better schools. By ’80, hardcore lefties were in charge of Democrat Parties everywhere outside The South. I was working for AFL-CIO/COPE in ’80 and the lefties made it clear to us crusty old fashioned trade unionist types that we were no longer welcome; you had to be a doper, a baby killer, and know how to speak communist code to be anybody in the Democrat Party by ’80. I remember the moment when at a workshop convened by the Democrats to contemplate how we’d lost the last statewide office in Alaska, once the most Democrat of Democrat states, a legislator friend of mine, glass of scotch in hand – which marked us with the lefties – talked before the fireplace at the lodge where we were meeting about how we didn’t know or understand most of these people. I didn’t know what I was exactly, but I knew I was no longer a Democrat and armed with the courage of my connections I left that world and went into private business. I cast my last vote for a Democrat out of pure self-interest in the ’83 Governor’s race because the candidate was a friend of mine and I saw a profit in it; haven’t voted for one at any level since.
Somewhere about there Slick Willie Clinton and Algore came to the DLC and morphed JFK’s guy, Matt Reese’s, minimum winning coalition from picking a minimum winning coalition and doing stuff for them into picking a minimum winning coalition and talking about doing stuff for them and feeling their pain. You know, Slick has yet to explain his sojourn in the East Bloc when he was supposed to be studying. Oh, and the Hildebeest’s thesis on Saul Alinsky was no coincidence. The people who were sitting in dorm rooms smoking dope and planning “The Revolution” in ’69 put their first made-man in office in ’92 but the Hildebeest overplayed their hand and brought on a counter-revolution in ’94 so the communists had to trim their sails. America was sick of defending Slick and Algore was such an idiot that even the women who loved sensitive new-age guys wanted to trip him, throw in Nader’s vote and we got GWB, but the Left had become so powerful in the media and popular culture that GWB, even with a nominally Republican Congress for much of his tenure, was as compromised in dealing with the Left as Slick had been in dealing with the Right. Now we have a real communist, right out of Saul Alinsky; he still has to fake it, but he’s the real thing. The public employee unions have grown in power exponentially since the Slick Willie days, thanks in large part to profligate spending that went in large measure to Democrat front groups, and now form a European-style socialist workers party, something we old-fashioned trade unionists would never have tolerated- there’s a reason they pushed us out. Republicans really, really, really need to read their Trotsky and Alinsky and learn how to deal with these people; November ’12 may be the last chance for a very long time.
What you say is true, but I hold that the difference is one of degree, rather than substance. Read Woodrow Wilson’s writings on the Constitution, and compare them to Obama’s statements. Much of the time, The One sounds like he’s quoting Wilson verbatim.
My mother (1913-1998) was an FDR New Deal Democrat from the time she was eligible to vote. She changed to the GOP in 1952 after listening to several of Stevenson’s campaign speeches, and concluding that his problem wasn’t that he was a “liberal”, it was that he was detached from reality. In this, she found that a close friend of her’s and my father’s agreed; namely Frank Lausche, then-governor of Ohio. And a Democrat, BTW. She told me in ’72 that McGovern was basically quoting Stevenson in ’52. She also said that no matter who won that year, America would be the real loser; she voted “None of the Above”. In ’68 she had voted for Humphrey, just to try to keep Tricky Dick OUT of the Oval Office.
Also keep in mind that McGovern lost. As Hunter S. Thompson observed (in “Fear and Loathing; On the Campaign Trail ’72″), McGovern’s support in the party was thin, as you state. HST posited that the Dem power structure (i.e., the lot you dealt with) were willing to throw the election to Nixon to retain control of the party. Carter in ’76 and Clinton in ’92 were supposedly proof they succeeded. What they mainly proved was that the differences between “mainstream” Democratic dogma and the “radicals” were mostly cosmetic. (Zell Miller made this point in “A National Party No More”, as well.)
Democratic Party “philosophy” has been far to the left of the rest of the American people for a long time. It just went off the edge of the cliff in 1972, is all.
cheers
eon
Truman fought this battle, on behalf of the “Right” wing during the 1948 nomination competition against Henry Wallace and the Progressives. Today’s Democrats are no longer the scion of Harry Truman but the heirs of Wallace. And it is vital to the Democrats that this history NOT be taught. For them, the only history to take from 1948 is “Dewey Beats Truman” (sic). Contra wise, it is in the interest of the GOP to openly point out that “This is not your Grandfather’s Democrat Party”.
The NY Times (along with the rest of the MSM) have moved the ideological continuum one step to the right such that socialism is now liberalism, liberalism is centrism, centrism is conservatism, and conservatism is fascism. They’ve worked this mendacious mischief to normalize liberalism and demonize conservatism. Problem is, they’ve come to believe their own lie and can no longer relate to reality or the masses, who never believed it and whose lives must adjust to the everyday realities of high unemployment, high gas prices and underwater mortgages.
Truly, one must be hopelessly ensnared in fantasy to believe that trillion dollar deficits are the quintessence of centrist policy, and that opposition to such ruinous profligacy is fascism run amok. But that’s what the Timesmen believe because that’s what they’ve been telling themselves for nigh on four decades. They screwed up by trusting themselves.
I’m still waiting for some Liberal to define “extreme right wing” in terms of ideological beliefs. What is it that the “extreme right wing” believes in the fevered mind of the Left?
I’m sure I’d be considered a “winger” by the Big Government, welfare Leftists state because my brand of conservatism can be summed up simply as “LEAVE ME ALONE!” and any rejection of nanny state paternalism is a sure sign of right wing extremism.
Isn’t it interesting how the Left is trying to redefine individualism, self-sufficiency, individual responsibility, and rejection of nanny statism as an “extreme” position?
Defeat statism, support federalism http://www.redstate.com/derkrieger/
“What is it that the “extreme right wing” believes in the fevered mind of the Left?”
Individual liberty, self-determination, self-responsibility.
The extremist Tea Party believes in smaller government, personal responsibility, personal freedom, and low taxes. They believe in a return to the concepts of our Founding Fathers and Constitutional governance. We have come a long way – in the wrong direction – when such beliefs are considered “extreme”. Levin’s Ameritopia summarizes things pretty well.
It’s simpler than that – anyone who doesn’t agree with them
The modern notion of “right-wing” does not have, and cannot have, a definition: to define it would be to destroy it. The notion was conceived with the sole purpose of associating liberty, self-reliance, and individual responsibility with fascism, racism, and theocracy.
Most conservatives have a different notion in their mind, but it is pointless for them (or: us) to preach to the converted; and as for the non-converted, it might be easier to simply sneer at those who use the word “right-wing” than to try to redefine the term.
A couple of facts that reinforce the hilarity of Nocera’s propaganda that the Democrats have returned to moderation. First, Clinton started the Democratic Leadership Council to promote the moderate wing of the party – it has recently been shuttered. Second, where have all the Blue Dogs gone? Third, read “Radical-in-Chief” to see how the socialist wing of the party is taking over.
“We had become a party that had stopped worrying about people who were working and only focused on people who weren’t working.”
No, say it ain’t so! But this is what the far left does for a living. Anybody watching the mainstream media should know that by now. I hope the American people will give Democrats another “shock treatment” this November. I guess 2010 wasn’t good enough, so we’ll be happy to do it again for them this year. Obama has nothing to run on except pandering to people who constantly want to take from this government instead of adding anything to it. This November we will show him AND the Democrats that enough is enough.
“moderate Democrats wrested the party back from its most liberal wing”
Since when?
It’s never black and white; always gray.
Of course, this is my considered opinion but….
Our people, the Conservatives are led by some people who are really up tight about sex. That is used to paint us with a broad brush. I mean, do we like BJs? Do we like tube tops? Hell yeah! So what’s up with O’Reilly and Santorum and all the other guys who won’t shut up about things being indecent and impure and so forth. Sex has nothing to do with taxes and guns but thanks to the good old puritanical school of thought, it’s dragging us down.
As for the other side, they are goddamn commies and I believe the Berlin Wall came down because they, the liberals, won the cold war by getting themselves entrenched in essentially every institution in western culture. But we cannot beat them if we come across as being against having fun in bed. And they, the Bolsheviks who run the media will beat us up with that in a heartbeat.
My 26 year old son, is an entrepreneur in Brooklyn in a lab run by inventors, and they all, without a doubt, believe in no taxes and small government, and banging many babes. They’re all gun nuts, too. So our side really needs to back off the holier than thought sex stuff.
Just my opinion.
“Bush #41 was talked into caving on “No New Taxes,” his one campaign promise, which both brought on the recession of 1990, and was later demagogued against him by the same Democratic Party who initially welcomed the notion. It was a classic case of Animal House’s “You f***ed up – you trusted us” motto in action.”
You know – with the libs, we’re not supposed to remember that far back – only as far back as is convenient for them. I’ve often made this point – which has gotten lost. The standard Lib History is that Bush41 broke his promise. They conveniently forget their role in it. I remember the NYT and WP running polls showing how people WANTED tax increases. They are completely dishonest hypocrites.
Either party gets whacked when their solutions are out of sync with the times. During the Depression, spending was the thing with WWII doing it up right. Unfortunately the Democrats wants guns and butter during Vietnam and the people got neither or at least not very well.
The US now has relearned one important lesson, that our strength is people making their own decisions and choosing where to apply their effort. We are fast realizing that the left likes to create problems then promise solutions, rather than just letting people solve their own problems while giving them a level predictable playing field.
One problem with the body politic which has been going on for a while is new population which is recently come from slave societies, and I don’t just mean American Blacks. The mood of these groups is to work as groups to get someone to solve their problems. You can see it with labor unions where the unions protect the very people that cause the most hardship for the members.
Your son is a cool dude. Like father, like son!
The far left has taken over the Democrat party and the far right has taken over the Republican party. The far right would consider Goldwater to be a liberal. We need a third partry….and not Ron Paul.
The cost of regulations and shrinking herds John Maday, Managing Editor, Drovers CattleNetwork | Updated: March 5, 2012
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/The-cost-of-regulations-and-shrinking-herds-141240653.html