Nathan's right about this. It's long been an article of left faith that the Dems have moved to the right, but that depends on your point of comparison. If it's the early 1970s, maybe. If it's just about any other time in American history, the case is much harder to make. The party of the 1930s and 1950s was full of reactionary southern racists. Doug <<<<<>>>>
above is useless point, no such choice exists (or can exist), although i assume that few contemporary 'progressives' would - all else being equal - choose party hamstrung by dixiecrat tyranny...
in any event, today's dem (including some who are quite 'progressive') talk of having to make accommodation/compromise/etc is present-day version of fdr/new dealer talk of having to avoid alienating dixiecrats, the more things change, the more they blah, blah, blah...
specifics (both internal and external to dems) would take too much time/space to adequately address in this forum, however, in contrast to political democracies with stronger party systems, u.s. political parties face disadvantage of being only one of numerous actors seeking to influence public opinion...
still, comparatively weak u.s. political parties are, by no means, without influence re. public/voter peception, while there is conflicting research re. whether or not parties change perceptions, there seems to be agreement that they can (and do) perpetuate/reinforce existing opinions...
re. dems, because they feared upsetting existing preferences of their coalition (a portion of which they should have thrown out on their ass, they were gonna lose them anyway), they tried to avoid discussing racial issues in early 70s, a very crucial period in public opinion, their efforts at avoidance left vacuum, which led to increasing public confusion, and rest - as ubiquitous they say - is history, we know the kind of political shit that began filling up the empty space...
modern liberalism is littered with words such as appropriate/practical/realistic/ reasonable, such *principles* in certain crucial junctures substitute ambiguity for definition, they leave little sense of anything resembling a clear course, hallmark of this has been to make *virtue* of not being locked into specific substantive positions, intent on occupying ostensible 'middle ground', liberal dems opted for 'flexible' responses to changing/increasing political issues/demands, ultimately, however, liberal success was tied to sustained economic growth...
should be no surprise, given above, that both radicals and conservatives flailed away at modern liberals, conservative ascendency is not surprising either, political left would have been at disadvantage without crap of its own making given structural constraints of u.s. political system...
so yes, congressional parties (and party-in-organization types, and lots of primary voters, for that matter) resemble disciplined/ideological/responsible party model much more than during heyday of dem hegemony, but dems are minority party today, in large part, because they failed/were unable to facilitate/influence political preferences ('mobilize bias' in great phrase of e. e. schattschneider) at critical times (i.e., '30s & 60s)...
direct action tactics in '30s produced policy benefits for working people that dixiecrats had to accept (even as they worked to limit such benefits, particularly for black folk, many of whom still witnessed improvements from new federal programs), similar tactics in the '50s/'60s produced similar results, this time to specific benefit of african-americans...
liberal dems were, perhaps, done in by contradictions of their location in political arena/along political spectrum, but they contributed mightily to current situation (which has been mostly bad for working folks), maybe question that should be asked is not why democratic party liberalism has been in eclipse, but why it was successful at all... michael hoover
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