The Obama Democrats

The Obama Democrats

The relentless pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Dr. Robert Bellarmine,  Mon., Sept. 17, 2012

There is tremendous insight in the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger’s article. - Sept., 2012 - You decide; as I share the last half of his analysis.

“The Obama Democrats are no longer the party of FDR, Truman, JFK or Clinton. All were combative partisans, but there view of the American system was fundamentally positive. The older Democratic party grew out of the American labor experience of their 20thy century, which recognized its inevitable ties to the private sector.

“The systemically alienated Obama party more resembles the ancient and capitalist syndicalism movement of continental Europe.

“In its 2008 primaries, the Democratic Party made a historical pivot. The center-left party of Bill and Hillary Clinton was overthrown by Barack Obama and the party’s “progressives,” the redesigned logo of the vestigial Democratic left.

“The internal tension between the party’s liberal and the left blasted to the surface at the Chicago convention in 1968, when the famous Days of Rage street protesters vilified the party of LBJ and Hubert Humphrey. The “San Francisco Democrats” dominated the 1984 convention, but the party still nominated the establishment liberal Walter Mondale.

“While liberals owned the party apparatus, the left took control of its ideas. By 1990, liberal Harvard Law School was torn apart by a left-wing theory called critical legal studies, which condemned the American legal and economic system as … rigged. What binds Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Sandra Fluke and the rest of the Charlotte roster is the belief, learned early on, that their politics has made them a perpetual band of American outsiders.

“It’s an irony now that one of their touchstone ideological works has been Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (1964), which was about the American political right back then. Today it’s the Obama Democrats who insist that something like voter-identification statutes as a racist conspiracy.

“Barack Obama in his grave acceptance speech fears that “this nation’s promise is reserved for the few.” And so out on the plains, the Obama Democrats will assemble a voter army from that vast proletariat, the U.S. middle class, to pull down “the wealthiest.”

“This is a party whose agenda is avenging slights, wrongs and the systematic theft of “our democracy.” For all this injustice, someone must be made to pay…

“The Obama administration’s battle with the Catholic Church over contraceptive services is symbolic and important. The tradition of religious independence, which even liberal Catholics thought legitimate, has no standing with the do-the-right-thing politics of the Democratic left. Kathleen Sebelius: Get out or our way.

“An Obama victory wouldn’t be just a defeat of the GOP. It would be a defeat of the post-World War II Democratic Party. And they know it. The progressive left has wanted to push Democratic liberalism over the cliff for decades. This is the best shot to get it done.

“Mitt Romney - whose own political conversation is remarkably bereft of history - ought to be explaining to Democrats-turned-independent how far Mr. Obama has moved their party from its traditions. FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare asked all to buy in to supporting it. Obama-Care doesn’t; Mr. Obama revels in explaining how “they” will pay for “you.” Left unanswered, demagoguery* can win elections. And take a generation to undo.” henninger@wsj.com

George H. Kubeck, *Demagoguery reminds me of the two demagogues campaigning in Germany and Italy during the 1930’s. Troubled & frightened by an Obama victory are normal & rational feelings.