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I don't know what "progressives" means, so I can't speak to that. Seems to me you lump any and all of those who lost and could be portrayed as left wing into this "progressive" grab bag, and then use that to make an argument that the party should move to the right.
I use the term to cover several movements closely related to each other. Henry Wallace, a former VP of FDR, ran on the Progressive Party ticket, a party that sought to move American politics left. The "new left" of the 60s that had the same goal, and the "progressive" movement of today (netroots, etc.)
Could we not cite the Dixiecrats and other conservative forces within the party and make a similar case to the one you are making here against the Left?
You could, but it would not be nearly as strong a case. In the '48 election, the Dixiecrats did, indeed, splinter off. But Thurmond siphoned off votes from the Republican candidate as well. Henry Wallace's Progressive campaign (like Nader's in 2000) siphoned off votes that would have most likely gone to Harry Truman. Additionally, the Wallace run against Truman was the culmination of close to two decades of progressives sniping at the administrations of FDR and Truman.
By the time 1968 came around, the mainstream of the Democratic party had already rejected the Dixiecrat movement. When former Democrat George Wallace ran on the American Independent Party ticket on the same segregationist platform as Strom Thurmond did 20 years prior, he was no longer claimed by the official apparatus of the Democratic party. No other conservative force has splintered from the party to run a third party candidate nor has any other conservative force protested the Democratic nominee in any presidential election as progressive movements have.
I don't know that the demonstrations is Chicago caused Humphrey to lose. I think an equally valid case could be made that it was the conservatives in the party who caused that loss.
The '68 debacle of a Democratic convention carried live on national TV, showed the left as being counter-culture radicals - a very strong image for 1968 America - and the leading contributor of the Democrat's undeserved image as being pacifists. Humphrey was very much in line idealogically with the Truman-Kennedy tradition.
What case can you make that conservative in the part caused it?
I don't know why Kennedy challenged Carter. I didn't support that. Seems to me Carter was as much a leftist as Kennedy.
Well, as President, Carter clearly was not a leftist. Carter was involved in the recruiting of Islamic fundamentalists, who later became Al Queda, to engage in a "Jihad" against the "atheistic communist regime" in Afghanistan. That certainly wasn't a leftist move.
Time Magazine said of him: A catalog of contradictions: Liberal, moderate, conservative, compassionate, ruthless, soft, tough, a charlatan, a true believer, a defender of the status quo, a populist Hamlet... A Democrat who thinks like a Republican... he also considers himself a fiscal conservative...
Other facts concerning him:
A former State Senator, he was elected Governor by running to the right of the other Democratic candidates. "I was never a liberal," he told state voters that year. "I am and have always been a conservative."
He campaigned against school busing.
A supporter of the Viet Nam war, as Governor he declared "American Fighting Man's Day" in support of Lt. William Calley after his court martial on charges of massacring civilians.
At the 1972 Democratic convention, he was a delegate for Henry "Scoop" Jackson's (said by some to be the father of the DLC) presidential campaign, and he worked with Al From of the DLC on economic issues as well.
One of his campaigns was endorsed by Pat Robertson, who aired a profile of him on the 700 Club.
Kennedy challenged a sitting Democratic president from left, carried his fight to the Convention when there was clearly no chance he could win, lobbied delegates to break DNC rules and change their vote, then refused to lift Carter's hand in victor when Carter got the nomination. Millions on TV saw Carter following Kennedy around the stage to get that congratulations.
You say that "our biggest congressional and presidential losses have come when the GOP effectively painted the Democrats as 'liberals.'" The right wingers are always trying to portray Democrats as too far Left. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
Yeah, it worked beautifully when our candidates lost electoral landslides in '72, '80, '84, and '88. It was completely ineffective in '76, '92, '96, and '08.
I don't see how that can be used as an argument for moving the party to the right. Would the right wingers stop trying to portray the Democrats as too far Left if we moved sufficiently to the right? Of course not.
Two issues here. The stated goals of think tanks and policy shops like the DLC is to move the part back to the center with the same goals as Democrats had in the Truman-Kennedy era. And they've largely succeeded. History shows the centrist candidates win (or come very close to winning) and further left candidates lose big. That isn't my opinion. It's an electoral fact.
Obviously, then, that means creating a third party threat is the best strategy for the Left, no?
If the left's goal is to give the GOP a lock on power, that would be a good strategy.
Yet that is what you continually argue against. Whatever the cause of the FDR administration moving to the Left, that did lead to electoral success.
Actually, no, I don't continually argue against the left forming their own party because they already have several registered parties in the US. FDR's electoral success wasn't based entirely on leftist policies. After all, he always said major portions of the New Deal were temporary, even stating as much in a State of the Union address: "this business of relief must end."
Much of FDR's electoral success came from his embrace of free trade policies and his desire to enter WWII (and performance thereafter)
That can only mean that you want the party to move to the right, and do not merely advocate that because of this practicality argument.
No, I want the party to remain in the center, as it was throughout most of our golden period (Post Wilson to the present)
Why not be honest, and say that you support conservative politics rather than using these practicality arguments?
because I don't. I support traditional centrist Democratic policies.
I'd like to paraphrase one of the moderators on DU, Magistrate:
"Another is the perennial brouha here about what constitutes a "real Democrat", most of which is conducted along lines that bear very little relation with the actual states and history of the Democratic Party. The idea that (certain Democrats) not "real Democrats" is nothing but the punch-line to a very poor joke, although it is certainly true that they embrace many policies and ideas that some of our radicals detest. But that latter is hardly an indication they were not "real Democrats"; rather, it is an indication that such radicals are somewhat out of step with the Democratic Party as a real institution and political force, as opposed to an ideal item they imagine not only to be fact, but to be wholly agreeable to them. That faction of the Democratic Party had its political trial with the campaign for President of Sec. Wallace in 1948, and failed utterly, gaining the votes of only a handful of people. What is repudiated at the polls by the overwhelming preponderance of Democratic voters cannot be the real face of the Democratic Party. It really is that simple."
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