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Past and Current Challenges of the Democratic Party

In a previous letter, I focused on the enduring tension between racism and reform at the center of the Democratic Party from its inception in the 1830s through the 1960s. I also addressed the political dilemma that President Lyndon Johnson confronted in 1965 that in embracing the Civil Rights legislation on equal accommodations and voters rights, the Democratic Party would likely lose the South for a generation or more.    This helps explain the political decimation of the Democratic Party in the South over the next 60 years; however, the broader issue as to why the Party lost the white working and lower middle classes throughout the county is a more complex matter. This calls for grasping the dynamic power of the conservative reaction against the radical political culture of the 1960s based on its key pillars of the civil rights movement, the rise of a distinctively feminist consciousness, the anti-Vietnam War protests, and the counterculture, which, in their cumulative impact, repr
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Travails of the Democratic Party

Travails of the Democratic Party  The Democratic Party, formed in the Jacksonian revolution of the 1830s, combined an explosive democratic impulse among white working and middle classes with the most egregious racism embodied in this nation’s history. This tension remained a pervasive feature of the Party’s political culture through the mid-20 th century.   This racist impetus intensified with the heating up of the sectional conflict with such Democratic stalwarts like Mississippi Senator, Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, Governor of Georgia, serving as President and Vice-President of the breakaway Confederacy. Fighting Radical Reconstruction, after the Civil War, tooth and nail, the Democratic Party in the South sought to destroy any vestige of an interracial democracy, which the Radical Reconstructionist Congress and its abolitionist allies sought to perpetuate. Led by the likes of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and the preeminent Black abolitionist, Frederick Douglas
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Tyranny of the Minority

  Revolutionary notables such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison sought to resolve a crisis of major proportions in the evident flaws within the first U.S. Constitutional government, the short-lived Articles of Confederation.   The major weakness was the incapacity of the Articles to provide an effective structure for governance. Specifically, the Articles did not contain an independent executive or judicial branch of government. It lacked the very rudiments of a sufficiently complex, three-branch structure upon which the states were based, which served as a working model for the second Constitutional founders when a notable group of 55 gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 for a second reinvention of the government of the recently formed Republic. Of concern also was the fear of a spreading, demagogic impulse which threatened the governing order of the new nation. James Madison referred to a “tyranny of the majority” based on what he perceived a
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Low-Grade Fascism and High-State Illiberalism: The Choice Before Us?

  The historian, Robert Paxton links fascism with ·          A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solution. ·          Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences. ·          The need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny. ·          The beauty of violence [rhetorical or otherwise] and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success ( The Anatomy of Fascism , p. 219).   Stated in narrative form, fascism is:   “…a form of political behavior marked by excessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liber
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Trump as the Ever-Present Mid-Term Election Elephant in the Room

  As with Biden, so it is with Trump, my assessment is based on the available record, which I integrate within my understanding of contemporary history, political culture, public ethics, and my capacity to make reasonable, evidence-based inferences. With Biden, I see a flawed individual with a generous heart, who can make very consequential errors in judgment. His core values resonate around an inviolable loyalty to family, public and community service, a foundational belief in patriotism, and a desire for public concord broadly along the lines of his core political beliefs rooted in the values of the New Deal and Great Society. As an avowed liberal, I find much to admire, despite his sometimes-substantial flaws. I search long and hard to discern any positive values embedded in Trump’s public persona. The fundamental problem is rooted in his deep-rooted narcissism, which underlies his need for adulation and his rage against personal or public slights which clouds any capacity to gove
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Joseph R. Biden: The Indispensable President of Our Time

  When I think of Joe Biden, I reflect on his flawed humanity, a person who also has the capacity for greatness. His core values are rooted in his deep-rooted patriotism reminiscent of the “greatest generation,” those who endured the Great Depression and defeated fascism in World War II. While the current political climate is not amenable to it, Biden would like to channel the vision and policies of FDR into an era that is as perilous as what the US faced in the 1930s and 1940s. As senator, Biden chaired the judicial and foreign policy committees, and gained considerable mastery of the political and policy intricacies of these two critical areas of governance. Based on a lifetime of public service, his broad grasp of policy and governing acumen is as astute as anyone’s who has held public office at the national level in the past few decades.   While adroitly serving as President Obama’s Vice President, he expanded his operational knowledge of the executive branch a great deal. As V
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Dilemmas of Our Times

Dilemmas of Our Times    We live in perilous times.  One political party—the Democratic—is focused on meeting the challenges of preparing the United States for the near-term future, for which the year, 2040 might serve as a symbolic target. Foremost among the priorities is climate change reform, without which Planet Earth will be in peril, with the result that the planet’s temperature will rise well above the recommended 1.5c rate for the remainder of the 21 st  century. In response to this crisis, the recent legislation passed by the Democrats makes a historic climate investment that is on track to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. It would be difficult to minimize the importance of this alone, even as the Inflation Reduction Act accomplishes a great deal more, including expanding Medicare benefits by capping out-of-pocket drug costs, ultimately to $2,000 per year, and lowering energy bills by $500-$1,000 per year. For those living on fixed incomes, the importance of these r
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