Dems moving to the left?

[alvarezadams]

I'm sick to death of this farrago. So to put it into even more perspective than the obvious (yet ignored) FDR/New Deal allusions, I'll go back further in histort.

The Dems HAD been the conservative party and the GOP HAD been the "liberal" party back in the days of the Civil War. Industrialization (with the abuse of workers) and the corruption of the Gilded Age fostered a divorce between the lion's share of the electorate and the two parties that had become too tied with corporate interests.

The muguwumps and the Populist Party were the reaction. Here's part of the famous "Omaha Platform":

Preamble
The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despite the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes-tramps and millionaires.

snip

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of "the plain people," with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Quad/6460/doct/892omaha.html

William Jennings Bryan was fundamental in bringing the Populist Party into the Democratic Party - creating at the turn of the LAST century the traditional association between the DNC and labour (as opposed to the GOP and big business). Amongst some of the Populist platforms that eventually came through via the DNC: the graduated income tax, the secret ballot, the direct election of Senators, the eight-hour day.

So when the lesser lights blather about the DNC moving "too far to the left" they SHOULD be saying that the DNC has moved "so far to the right to be virtually unrecognizeable"... unless they're thinking of the days of Jackson.

[alvarezadams]

1. kick

in the pants

[alvarezadams]

2. Last kick

[alvarezadams]

3. Penultimate nudge