Washington, D.C.
Return with us now to the stirring days of yesteryear, when Democrats were
Democrats and Republicans, as Gene McCarthy said, were like moss on the
north side of a rock: they didn't have much vitality, but they never really
died out either.
This wasn't all so long ago, you know. Specifically it was 1948. Hubert
Humphrey was the Boy Mayor of Minneapolis. Gene McCarthy had just knocked
off the Republican Chairman of Ways and Means. Strom Thurmond and the Governor
of Texas bolted the Democratic Party out of disgust with its democratic
aspirations for black Americans. Forty-eight dead people voted in alphabetical
order in Starr County to elect Lyndon Johnson Senator. Richard Nixon answered
an ad to run against Jerry Voorhis in the lowest campaign of the 20th century,
until his next.
Not so long ago at all. As an intro into 1998, it may well be time to resuscitate
the Democratic Party platform of 1948 and use it as the yardstick with which
to measure the aspirations and plans of the different wings of the Democratic
party 50 years later.
As always, the Republicans remain irrelevant in any but the most obstructionist
ways. If the country is not saved from the Republicans, it cannot be saved
at all. Their insistence on corporate selfishness as the national ideology
would disqualify them from serious consideration even if their manifest
incompetence at governing did not do so. Any party whose leadership counts
House Speaker Newt (Nuke 'Em) Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent
(Boy Cheerleader) Lott as principal (though not particularly principled)
moderates is obviously destined for increased marginalization as even the
companies who paid for them come to realize their ineffectiveness.
How far have the mighty fallen? Well, let's see. The Democrats in 1948 didn't
favor just civil rights, they favored racially blind economic justice. The
Democrats in 1948 didn't favor health insurance reform, they favored universal
health coverage. The Democrats in 1948 didn't favor labor freedoms, they
favored worker empowerment through organization. The Democrats in 1948 didn't
favor reinventing government, they favored delivering government services
and protections. The Democrats in 1948 didn't favor the Fortune 500,
they favored the economy as a whole. The Democrats in 1948 didn't favor
welfare reform, they favored a living wage and full employment. The Democrats
in 1948 didn't favor just a balanced budget, they favored a fair distribution
of goods and services.
Under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman the Democratic Party united the
city and the countryside, the blue collar worker and the white collar small
businessman, the farmer and the laborer, and thereby vast sections of the
middle class were formed. In 1948 the post-war vision of a Fair Deal for
all came up against the specter of professional anti-communism and, for
the moment, triumphed. The issues were clear, the divisions straightforward,
the choices unmistakable. It's been downhill all the way ever since.
It is fashionable nowadays, a mere six years after its commencement, to
notice how the Liberal Republican Administration of Bill Clinton has taken
over Republican themes (balance the budget and screw the consequences, which
is a vain worship of idolatrous figures at its worst.) He attempts to present
capitalism with a human face, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did before him; and,
like FDR, he is reviled for his pains. The right hates him because he thinks
things need fixing and the left regards him, quite rightly, as not wanting
to fix enough things thoroughly. Of course, FDR did have a majority of his
own party to work with in Congress, and some electoral clout with which
to compel them to do it ...
I would not want to argue that the Democratic Party was less corrupt in
1948 than it is now. But then the same holds true for the Republicans. Somehow
in 1948 the Democrats managed to fight for a few basic tenets that would
have been revolutionary if attained then and still would be if realized
now.
Take universal health insurance. The idea to which the Democrats were pledged
in 1948 was to just treat every American like they were members of the Armed
Services. Or, as my father used to say, "Give every citizen the same
socialized medicine Dwight Eisenhower had all his adult life." We,
the people, need everybody's productivity. Therefore we will all pay for
everybody's health care. Pretty straightforward, really, and even if it
might lead to doctors becoming salaried public employees instead of private
buccaneers that would be no loss of national freedom at all.
But the real test is now, as it was then, civil rights. The theory of 1948
was if the armed forces can be integrated, and the rest of the federal government,
and education, then the states individually and the economy as a whole cannot
be far behind. But the goal was the economic integration, not meeting a
series of legalistic tests. This goal underestimated the virulent opposition
of the south and the lassitude of the north toward any economic redistribution
achieved on behalf of poor whites and poor blacks. While the obstruction
was based on the notion of America as being rich enough to throw away a
portion of its citizens, that notion has long since been exploded in fact
though not in the fanciful imaginations of the New Confederates who dominate
Congress.
Nowadays, the business and union Democrats are as corporatist as the Republicans,
with the additional layer of betrayal that they will not reform a campaign
financing system so odoriferous it makes the sewerage seem clean by comparison.
Members of the reform wing of the Democrats vacillate between being the
prisoners of the academy and being its outcasts. Whether up against Republican
opponents who are either blow-dried suburban New Confederates or cash-flush
small businessmen, Democratic Congressional candidates lack only the courage
of their 1948 forebears to stand for fundamental rather than marginal change.
James McCarty Yeager lives one block from the ruins of Fort Sumner in
Maryland, one of the ring of forts that protected the Union capital from
the Confederacy.