The strangest thought has come to me today while the rioting is going on in D.C.
About 40 years ago, the Democratic Party elites began abandoning the working class and rural voters in most part because there were substantially larger campaign contributions to be had by aligning themselves with the economic and social interests of suburban professionals and wall street. Thus, they left their traditional supporters out in the rain, ripe for any charlatan who might come along, promising them pie in the sky 'greatness' again. But no need to worry. They were only throwing under the bus people who deserved to be thrown there by virtue of lacking higher educations and politically correct views on so many matters. Best to expend them, rather than try to lead them out of their troubles.
It's just idle curiosity on my part, but has anyone heard how that has worked out for the Dems? Pretty darn good, I imagine.
I recall the 1980 election when Reagan defeated Carter. Carter's campaign was hobbled by the Iranian hostage crisis (and alleged collusion with Reagan's campaign). Carter also faced opposition from his own party, as Edward Kennedy ran against him in the Democratic primaries. John Anderson, who was a Republican but more on the liberal side, ran as an independent, which probably took more votes away from Carter than from Reagan.
The Democrats had been in quite a mess since the 60s. After JFK and RFK, LBJ's failures in Vietnam, the debacle of the '68 convention - as well as being weakened by the departure of the Dixiecrats. The election of '72 was tainted by the Watergate scandal, and McGovern was regarded as a "radical" by many.
Carter was the safer choice in '76, which he barely won - and that was largely because there was widespread hatred of Nixon and the Republicans. Times were not good either. Inflation was high, unemployment was high, crime was high, memories of the energy crisis were still fresh. Gas prices were shooting through the roof. The Democrats had control of both the House and the Senate, along with the White House - yet they still couldn't really get much done.
I think Ted Kennedy ended up playing himself out and made a bad move by going after Carter in 1980, especially at a time of national crisis and a need for party unity with Reagan waiting in the wings - although Reagan also faced some opposition from some of his fellow Republicans, at least at first. Reagan seemed much tougher and determined, while Carter seemed wishy-washy, weak, and inept - especially when dealing with the Iranian problem. There was also the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which Carter seemed impotent to deal with.
This was also a time when people were starting to re-evaluate what had been going on in the U.S. for the previous few decades. I was a teenager around that time, and many of those in the older generations were talking it up about how all them hippies and women's libbers were ruining the country and how they wanted to return to Christian values and good old fashioned Americanism like it used to be.
Even the hippies themselves had matured somewhat and many were joining the establishment. The more progressive Democrats seemed less popular among the rank-and-file Democrats (not that they ever were that popular to begin with).
There seemed to be a general cultural shift at that point, and this likely influenced the political climate. On the economic front, Reagan's ideas might have seemed promising at the time, especially since things were pretty tough during the 70s under Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Even many Democrats were convinced, as there were a number of crossover voters.
In '84, the Democrats nominated another safe candidate, Walter Mondale. I remember that I voted for Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primary, although I also liked Gary Hart. I didn't care much for Mondale at all, but my grandparents both liked him. Reagan won in a landslide. I keep wondering what might have happened if the Democrats nominated Hart instead.
I think it was somewhere around 1988 that I lost complete faith in the Democratic Party - and the U.S. political system overall (although having spent my formative years during the Vietnam-Watergate era, I was already pretty jaded to begin with). I supported Gary Hart's candidacy, but the Democratic voters ended up picking Dukakis, whose candidacy was another disaster for the Democrats. I still recall the time when he took that ride on a tank to prove to his detractors that he was tough.
An interesting sidenote is that Gary Hart was forced to end his campaign because of a report that he had been having an affair. Same allegations were made against Clinton, but it didn't seem to matter. Strange how these things work out.
I didn't like Clinton in '92. I actually supported Jerry Brown for the nomination. My friend remarked that Clinton was "a Republican in sheep's clothing," which I think is a fair assessment. I remember people talking a lot about the "global economy" as if it was a new thing, but with the Cold War being over, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the friendlier relationship with China, things were changing.
Whatever had been set in motion in terms of the direction America was taking, both political and economic, the Democrats seemed neither willing or able to rock the boat and go back to their earlier ways of being the "party of the working man." The progressives like Nader and Brown, or some of the rust belt pro-labor types like Traficant, just didn't have as much popularity within the Democratic Party as the neo-liberal types like Clinton.
I think there was an air of recklessness in U.S. politics, especially since the Cold War had ended and America was flying high from Desert Storm. There was a strong push for free trade, such as with NAFTA, as well as closer trade ties with nations such as China, which nobody really seemed to have any real problem - even many capitalists and those who had been staunchly anti-communist. They thought that China was turning capitalist and that Russia was also becoming capitalist.
So, there seemed to be this belief that capitalism had won and that capitalism will rule the world. We also saw ourselves in a somewhat advantageous situation, with China pacified and Russia made impotent, we doubled-down on our role as "world's policeman" even more, since our leaders ostensibly felt America could do whatever it wanted.
To be fair, the Democrats didn't completely abandon the working classes. They did pay some lip service and continued to favor social programs for the poor, job training for those displaced by outsourcing, along with tending to favor better funding for education and healthcare. These are popular issues which many people favor over the Republicans - although Republicans often support those programs, too, just to a lesser degree.
But there's only a certain point the Democrats will go. Some of the right-wingers on the radio think that the Democrats are plotting a "communist takeover," but they can rest assured that that's never going to happen with today's Democratic Party. They are too heavily trenched and vested in the current system to be rocking any boats.
The only boat rocking these days seems to be coming from the other side. But the Democrats will probably be rocking many of their own boats as well - as they've usually done.
