Where Did the Democratic Party Go?
What happened to the Democratic Party? Today, much of the media focuses its attention on the turmoil in the GOP, but the Republicans haven't gone through the ideological transformation the Democrats have. For the GOP, their rancor is largely centered over whether the party leadership has remained true to its ideals of lower taxes, smaller government, law and order and a muscular national defense. On the Democratic side, the
Van Jones, Communist
ideological premise of the Democratic Party has shifted. The shift has been unmistakably left. So far left in fact, Democrats
Bernie Sanders, Socialist
can now with almost cavalier indifference claim avowed socialists like Bernie Sanders and even communists, like Van Jones as part of their family. It wasn't very long ago, making such an accusation was fighting words. So, what happened to the Democratic Party? When did this shift occur?
The transformation of the Democratic Party didn't happen overnight. It happened over decades. During those years, there were a number of events, marking turning points along the way. The purpose here will be to point to the most important milestones in the intellectual and ideological changes that laid the foundations for the radicalism we see today in the Democratic Party.
1: THE MOVE TOWARD PROGRESSIVISM
Many Democrats today call themselves "Progressives." To the uninformed ear, the term itself connotes movement in a direction that would at first glance seem positive. After all, who is against progress? It was precisely for this reason the early 20th century progressives adopted the term to describe themselves. What role did Progressives play in party politics in the early 20th century and how does that relate to today?
Progressivism was a reactionary response to the rapid social changes brought about by modernization and the Industrial Revolution. Early 20th
Theodore Roosevelt Woodrow Wilson
century Progressives were reformers. They hailed from both political parties. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican and Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, were both Progressives. At their core, Progressives believed in activist government and had little use for strict constitutional interpretations with respect to limiting government's power and role in people's lives. They believed a powerful national government was necessary as a countervailing force against the rise of monopolistic corporate power in both industry and finance. Further, they saw national government as a vehicle to enact positive social change.
During the second decade of the 20th century, Progressives accomplished a number of changes. Ending the practice of child labor, organized labor, the enactment of an income tax, enfranchising women with the right to vote and the prohibition of alcohol throughout the United States, were all efforts, spearheaded by Progressives. Although the results of these efforts were not all met with universal approval, Progressivism as a political movement became embedded as a permanent feature in the American body politic.
2. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Toward the end of World War I, there was a civil war in Russia. Revolutionary Marxists calling themselves Bolsheviks (translated to mean , "The Majority"), overthrew the Tsar, murdering him and the entire royal family. The Russian Revolution marked the first time any country was founded based on the Marxist theories of socialism. The Russian Revolution created a wave of excitement in the west, including the United States. In Russia,
Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin
they were beginning an entirely different form of government based on the working classes of people, using the writings of Karl Marx and their practical application by Vladimir Lenin. To call the new Soviet state a bold experiment is an understatement.
The excitement on the Progressive Left in America could hardly have been greater. Revolutionary communists and socialists grew in popularity in the United States, particularly among the academic classes, but also in organized labor, a Democratic Party progressive stronghold. Soviet style communism in the United States stopped short of being widely accepted, but the seeds of subversion were planted in a number of key institutions: namely, academia and organized labor.
3. THE ALGER HISS AFFAIR
Alger Hiss was a top level State Department adviser to President Truman and was appointed by him to represent the United States in drafting the U.N. Charter. Hiss was highly respected by leading Democrats all throughout the Washington, D.C. establishment. In 1948, a Congressman from California, named Richard Nixon accused Hiss of being a Soviet spy based on evidence and testimony of a former communist spy, Whittaker Chambers. The Democrats erupted with outrage against Nixon and Chambers. Leading Democrats rushed to the defense of Hiss, vouching for his
Alger Hiss
loyalties to the United States in sworn Congressional testimony. Rarely has a defense team ever assembled so impressive a
Whittaker Chambers
batch of character witnesses as appeared on behalf of Alger Hiss. The list included two U. S. Supreme Court justices, a former Solicitor General, and both former (John W. Davis) and future (Adlai Stevenson) Democratic presidential nominees. Justice Felix Frankfurter described Hiss's reputation as "excellent." Justice Stanley Reed said of Hiss's reputation, "I have never heard it questioned until these matters came up."
Ultimately, Hiss could not be charged with espionage since the statute of limitations had expired, but was convicted on two counts of perjury connected to investigation about the alleged espionage. It remained a stain on the reputation of the Democratic Party lasting for many years. Not merely because someone so close to the President was an agent of the Soviet Union, but because he was so prominent, well respected and so many equally prominent Democrats stood up to defend a guilty man.
For Nixon, it both catapulted him into the Vice Presidency and made him the most reviled Republican among Democrats. The Hiss Affair made it possible for the people to question the loyalties of Democrats. After all, what does it say of a Democratic Party when Soviet spies, socialists,
Richard Nixon
communists and other disloyal Americans can find comfort there? Much of Nixon's later troubles with the media and Democrats were the residual effects of bitterness over the Alger Hiss affair. Surely, nobody would suggest that all or even most Democrats at the time were less than patriotic. But it did suggest that in at least some precincts of the Democratic Party, subversive thinking was tolerated. The Hiss Affair exposed that dirty little secret and as a result, the nation was shocked. The Alger Hiss controversy occurred in the early part of the Cold War era, when suspicions ran high and often turned into paranoia.
For years after the Hiss's conviction, the debates over his innocence or guilt raged. It wasn't until the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the declassification of KGB documents, which clearly showed that Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy, was the matter settled. Hiss was a traitor.
It should be remembered that Alger Hiss, like many Soviet sympathizing communists, spent their formative years in the first two decades of the 20th century, which were so consequential in the development of the Progressive left and the effect on it from the Russian Revolution.
The Hiss controversy is important because it is illustrative of how leftist extremists were able to hide amongst rank and file Democrats, gain their trust and avoid detection. Over the decades, as the power of the extreme left of the Democratic party grew, it would become less and less necessary to hide their loyalties, or lack thereof.
4. THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND THE RISE OF THE WELFARE STATE
The seminal event that marked the change in the Democratic Party was the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the ascension of Lyndon Johnson to the Presidency. Johnson, a Texan and former majority leader of the Senate, blocked or watered down every attempt by the Eisenhower Administration at Civil Rights legislation. With the death of Kennedy, however, Johnson, ever the opportunist, was able to forge a new alliance between southern blacks and the Democratic Party with the promise of a War on Poverty, new Civil Rights legislation and laws ensuring voting rights. Ironically, it was Republican support that helped pass those measures.
Kennedy & Johnson
Johnson, knew he needed to disassociate the Democratic Party from the harsh images of Southern white supremacy, which was entirely owned by the Democrats. He saw his opportunity with the War on Poverty. Johnson was an FDR New Deal Democrat and he took his lessons from the New Deal which secured wide Democratic majorities in Congress. Those majorities were won with high cost government programs which were supposed to address a social ill. In the New Deal, the problem was mass unemployment. Although the New Deal failed to correct the Depression era problems of unemployment, politically, even in failure, they provided the Democrats with Congressional majorities lasting decades. Johnson was a witness to this.
Johnson merely employed the New Deal model. Even if it were possible for a government program to end poverty, that was not his political goal. Rather, Johnson's political goal with the War on Poverty was to secure voting majorities for Democrats, particularly from Southern blacks, who for more than a century were reliable Republican voters. Secondarily, he could change the image of the Democratic Party in the
Civil Rights protester attacked by police dogs.
South from one of intolerant white supremacists, important in an age where images on broadcast television shaped public opinion.
Prior to the adoption of all of LBJ's poverty programs, leading Democrats, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that they would create a crippling dependency on government. Moynihan believed these programs could cause the family unit to disintegrate since benefits were distributed based on need only. Without proper administration, Moynihan said, breadwinner males would have a perverse incentive to be out of the home. In other words, fatherlessness would be rewarded. This is called a "moral hazard." A moral hazard happens when a public policy encourages morally destructive behavior. Those LBJ era programs did just that and people like Moynihan warned about it at the time and were dismissed or ignored.
At the time, the rate of black illegitimacy was at or below the white rate, about 20%. In the half century since the advent of the War on Poverty, black illegitimacy is 73% and showing no signs whatsoever of being reversed. All of this leads to a predisposition on the part of the dependent class to demand more from government. And government is what the extreme left is all about.
While Johnson's programs had their greatest and most deleterious impact on the population of poor blacks, it was not limited to blacks at all. The majority of Americans affected by these programs were white. What Johnson achieved for the Democratic Party, however, was to change its image. His diabolical gambit was to ensure a permanent voter base of people dependent on government. He targeted blacks because he knew it would be difficult to oppose government programs for the poor without appearing cold blooded or even racist. Everyone wants to help the poor, but not everyone believes it's government's role to actually help with financial support for the very reason that it could create the same crippling dependency Moynihan warned about and ultimately do more harm than good.
Over the half century since LBJ's programs, the black family has virtually dissolved, young black men between 15 and 30 are responsible for at least half of all violent crime, poor blacks are deprived of school choice because of the power of teachers unions, the ever increasing minimum wage promoted by leftists puts more and more unskilled and inexperienced young people out of work, abortion on demand causes more babies to be aborted than born in some major cities like New York, and the sense of hopelessness keeps increasing, placing ever greater demands on government for solutions. But the solutions over the past half century have failed and suggesting a change in direction is often labeled as "racist." As the demands grow louder, they also become more radical out of a sense of unfairness and disenfranchisement.
With a population of people dependent on the government, the left extremists in the Democratic Party now had a constituency they could nurture and grow with the promise of greater benefits in the name of vaguely defined principles like "fairness." By 1966, Columbia University professors, Richard
Cloward & Piven
Cloward and Frances Fox Piven devised a strategy to end poverty by "overloading" the US welfare system to force its collapse in the hopes that it would be replaced by "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty". Whether this is full blown socialism or not isn't the point. It is yet another inroad into the mainstream of the American body politic. It is a rallying point, around which truly extreme socialists and communists could organize and subvert the current system of free market capitalism and constitutional government.
Inside the dependent class, leftists have ferreted their way in to promote all manner and form of grievances. The proliferation of a grievance culture is now at epidemic levels. Progressives have teamed with militant radicals to demand fundamental changes to basic institutions. In some cities and states, birth certificates no longer carry "mother" and "father", but "Parent A" and Parent B". Marriage no longer means what it always meant for centuries. Government is in your life in every way imaginable and imagining new ways every day.
The people now in control of policy in the Democratic Party are not in the mainstream. They have more in common with Alger Hiss than John F Kennedy or even Lyndon Johnson. These are leftist radicals. What we label them is less important than recognizing what they are and how it got this way.