The Anti-Democratic Democrats
Denis Keohane, in The American Thinker:
Read the whole thing.
A great piece; well worth the read.
Democrats named their party after democracy. They used to think it was a good way to run things.
There has been debate on the right for years about whether President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Middle East as an integral part of the GWOT is perhaps too naively Wilsonian. Democrats are largely silent or dismissive on the issue. Woodrow Wilson was, of course, a Democrat.
The once fervent support for democracy among Democrats from Wilson through Truman has been ebbing over decades. The one time elections in much of the old colonial world in the sixties most often led to disaster and a letdown of enthusiasm for democracy. Domestically, Democrats began to seek alternatives to appeal to elected representation. In the seventies, unpopular policies like school busing, affirmative action and (initially at least) abortion found Democrats seeking cover behind the non-elected federal courts. ‘The Courts have spoken’ was a common Democrat response to being asked to take a stand on the unpopular issues. By the nineties it was commonplace for Democrats and the left to seek policy victory by court ruling when there was no chance of prevailing in the democratically elected branches.
In recent years Democrats have moved beyond seeking a judicial workaround to a democratic system that just won’t give them what they desire. The Democrats first took the 2000 Presidential election to court, filing the butterfly ballot case in Palm Beach County . Having gone to the courts, the Democrats were furious when the Supreme Court decided against their interests, and began calling 2000 a stolen election, decided by a right wing court .
[...]
What they don’t either understand or do understand and don’t care about, is that they are undermining the very concept of democratic elections, and may well do so again in the next few weeks. There is growing evidence of a combination of frustration with democratic processes with the belief that elections are won by dirty tricks, pure and simple, among Democrat rank and file. The son of a Democrat Congressman and three other young apparently non-idealistic Democrats were convicted of slashing the tires of 100 Republican GOTV vehicles on election day, 2004 . Senator Schumer is a strong advocate for privacy rights yet aides in the DSCC that he ran committed fraud to obtain the credit report of a Republican candidate .
The “purple finger” images from the Iraqi elections touched the hearts of many Americans, even notably some of the Democrat left, as symbolic of something cherished, profound and inspiring to Americans. Yet most of the Democrat reaction to democratic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq has been lukewarm to outright dismissive. Even the idea that women in Islamic majority countries were enfranchised didn’t get the feminist allies of the Democrats fired up.
Armando, a regular at Daily Kos, posted a commentary entitled “Myth of the Purple Fingers” quoting the New York Times about Iraqis seeming to be unenthusiastic about the vote for their Constitution He wrote,
“Yes the Constitution will win the vote. And then what? Will our troops come home now? Will the Iraqi government be able to govern? What is different now than yesterday?”
Oddly enough (or not) the New York Times characterized turnout in Iraq of 63% as “unenthusiastic” ) But the Washington Post gushed about the US’s enthusiastic turnout in the 2004 election of under 61%!
For years Democrats have been fostering the notion, for short term political advantage, that democratic processes don’t work, elections are stolen, and that Republican elected officials obtain position by fraud and Rovian plots, appealing to their party’s long-used tactic of encouraging a sense of victimhood. Democratic processes make victims.
At some point, the chickens will come home to roost. If Democrats continue to push this theme, as they may well do next month, what alternative to democratic processes do they propose?
It is grossly ironic that the party that is undermining the very concept of the democratic process, calls itself the Democratic Party.
Read the whole thing.
A great piece; well worth the read.
robert108
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