Chihuahuas at our ankles (yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip!)

wyldwolf

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Tue Jan-31-06 05:13 PM
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Chihuahuas at our ankles (yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip!)

Perhaps some of you have heard about the big Democratic pow wow in Hilton Head just before New Years Eve. It was attended by a few hundred elected Democrats, staffers, strategist, activists, and tag alongs. There were discussion panels on any number of political, cultural, and religious subjects and more than one so-called "Democratic Rising Star."

You did hear about it, right?

One such "star" gave a stirring extemporaneous speech on the future of the Democratic party. His name wasn't familiar to many at the time, but his speech hit a home run.

A heated discussion followed about the "fate" of the "leaderless" Democratic party. In the middle of the free-for-all, another unfamiliar face spoke up. She spoke deliberately and pointedly but with great logic. She reasoned that a party out of power is a party with hands tied. But she, along with the speaker before her, oozed a shining confidence that the party was not dead, even after nearly eight years of the GOP controlling the white house and the Senate. She echoed the first speaker's assurance that the Democratic party would rise again.

Was this some Democracy For America meet-up? Some regional convention for elected officials?

No.

It was a DNC event in the winter of 1987. The first speaker? William Jefferson Clinton. The second was, of course, Hillary.

They made good on their promise, too. Despite the yipping and yapping of the left about spinless and leaderless Dems and third party threats, the next year the Democratic party reclaimed the US Senate. And though George H.W. Bush won the next year's presidential race on Reagan's popularity, he was trounced four years later, even with a viable third party candidate, by Bill Clinton.

Of course, 1987 wasn't the first time the left had declared the Democratic party dead or useless. Similar winters of discontent happened during FDR's time. Surprisingly, Republicans gained 81 House seats in 1938. Again In the mid-term election of 1942, the Democrats lost 44 seats in the House of Representatives. And Harry Truman was blamed for losing Congress in 1946.

Harry Truman! Now THERE was a Democrat! I strongly suggest that you read up on him. Here was a guy abandoned by the far left of the party (who backed third party candidate Henry Wallace) for reasons that would have many on Democratic Underground screaming "Truman was DLC!!" And he was essentially declared political dead meat by the rest of the party.

But he came roaring back to win the presidency in 1948. One of my favorite stories about Truman involves the night of the election in question. As his Republican opponent dined on roasted duck and braised apples in an posh Upper Manhatten apartment, Truman checked himself into a hotel outside Independence, Missouri, had a ham sandwich and a glass of buttermilk, and went to bed.

"The greatest achievement," he wrote in his memoirs, "was winning without the extreme radicals in the party... I was happy to be elected by a Democratic party that did not depend upon either the extreme left-wing or the southern bloc."

There are similar events surrounding John Kennedy, who purposely distanced himself from the liberal wing of the party, and LBJ, Carter, and Clinton.

Point is, when the Democrats are out of power (and it goes in cycles), we can't expect to have our way. Not even some of the time. Senators who don't vote our way are called "traitors" by the reactionary elements among us but they never consider that Senators represent their wants and needs of their states and they are beholden to the political winds that blow there. And when the leftwing of the party begins their predictable and tired "third party threats" and starts chanting "purge," just take it in stride. We've been there and done that. Over and over.

I didn't want to see Alito confirmed. And I do get a bit upset when our own don't vote the way I'd like them to.

But I know the tied will turn in our favor soon. It always does.

I would never advocate a "purge" of the 2% of the "Democrats" who always call for purges and speak of "dinos" and "spineless Dems."

But I almost wish you WOULD all go third party. Get that big 2%!!

With the independent vote breaking our way, and the American people growing more and more disgusted at thr Bushies, I think the Democratic party will win in a big way with or without you very soon.