Sadly - very sadly - Trent is right on the money. Bush is vulnerable on management of the economy (stupid!) and social justice. It would be nice if those were the central issues in the election. However, when the only relevant question will boil down to (and be perceived as) Health Care, Economic Fairness and Exaggerations about WMD versus, say, Elementary Survival for you and your kids, the choice will not be that tough for most people. There is a growing middle range of swing voters - probably at least 10-20% - which will fall big time for Bush. The kind of people who begin their posts "Well, I used to be a Democrat, but..."

But do I really have to vote for Darth Vader?

>But do I really have to vote for Darth Vader?

You just don't know how much fun I had writing those last two sentances.

Besides, one man's Darth Vader is another man's Anakin Skywalker. And remember, it took Darth Vader remembering his life as Anakin to kill the Emperor.

Well, wars are divisive things. People like me who think the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea (at least as carried out by Bush) feel that way really strongly. If the Democrats aren't going to give me a candidate who articulates that position, I'll vote for some fringe nutjob who does.

But they are giving me a candidate who articulates that position. And I'm damn well going to vote for him. You're welcome to vote for one of the Dems who supported the war. More power to you.

I don't see a problem here.

Even if you're 100 percent right about the future of the Democratic Party, US politics is not binary. There is a third option:

Independent.

If I end up leaving the Democrats, I'll be an Independent. I am not going to trade one truckload of baggage for another.

Michael,

What makes you think the Republican Coalition as it is now will survive the death of the Democratic Party and victory in the War on Terrorism?

In the aftermath of the end of the Cold War the Republicans drove out arch cold warrior Pat Buchanon over immigration. That was only over a minor issue.

Politics like nature abhores a vacuum. The current Republican coalition of amoral big business Fat Cats, small 'l' Libertarians, Small Businessmen and the Religious Right will not willingly cooperate or cohabitate without the threat of Democrats in power to hold them together.

One or more of these groups will split off and form a new national party with the exiled centrist Democrats to replace the over run by leftie nut rump-Democrats.

Well, as Kang (or was it Kodos?) said, "its a two party system".

independent really shouldn't be capitalized, since it's not a party, it's a grab-bag; I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with being an independent - there isn't; there are a number of advantages, but also some drawbacks.

That's why I'm really not emphasizing the option of Disafected Democrats leaving the Democratic party as much as I'm urging them to work to remake it. Having people like yourself defect from the Democratic Party may actually, arguably, be more in the narrow, partisan interest of guys like me; but I'd actually rather see a Democratic party that is healthier in its politics (at least as I define healthier; folks like John Callender will disagree).

John: there's "no problem" for you because you see Democratic candidates that you can stomach. But A.L., Michael, and others don't, so there's a problem for them. They're turned off by the current field for reasons articulated in numerous posts and comments. As you say of yourself, if there wasn't a Democratic candidate who reflected your views you'd go elsewhere and vote for "some fringe nutjob". They're considering going elsewhere to a greater or lesser degree; positions vary.

I think they should do exactly what you folks are doing: fight, actively, to get their views represented by the Democratic Party. Organize and mobilize and become activists to win. The same methods your wing of the Party has done to get their way - and threatening to defect and cost the party victory if you don't get your way, either by not voting (costing a vote) or voting for someone else (again, costing them a vote) certainly is one of those tools, and the shots across the bow steming from the Green vote is one of the things that have the current Democrats running as they are. Might be only a couple of percent of you in the electorate but you can cost them the election. That's one of the whips you hold over their head.

I'm thinking that these guys can play the same game, and Truman showed that a Democratic party that stands for Democrat-party values but is strong on foreign policy but loses its Leftist fringe to "some fringe nutjob" (while simoultaniously losing a Right-fringe to a different "fringe nutjob") can attract more votes than they lose and win anyhow. Democrats need to be reminded of that.

(In other words, what Trent said. He posted while I was writing mine {*_+} .)

Porphyrogenitus,

You're neglecting the effect of the "Money Primary."

In Truman's time it was possible for a party faction to stay independently funded and fight all the way to the convention floor and beyond. That is what Strom Thurmond did with his Dixiecrat revolt.

Today's Democratic campaign system is specifically intended to prevent that.

Go google the USA Today on Democratic camapign contributions and read their editorial on the zip codes from which Democratic candidates are getting their campaign funds. They are all vying for buck from the same guilty over Vietnam leftists who reliving their salad days every election, trying to bury their guilt by reaffirming their political choices (mistakes) from then.

Democratic candidates that buck the money men's ideology won't make it to Iowa and New Hampshire, let alone the Boston convention floor.

That is why fighting inside the Democratic party is pointless.

"But do I really have to vote for Darth Vader?"

The perfect remedy when you're tired of always having to choose the lesser evil... >;->

I vote for A.L., Totten and Katzman to form a new party with the religious right after it splits from the GOP over gay marriage.

I never knew the religious right was for gay marriage!! Although it makes sense...fidelity and commitment are good religious values, after all.

A.L.

Good point there AL. I have been trying to figure out what will happen with the political landscape soon, and the possibility of a religious right split doesn't make sense to me. Sure the religious right, which has both conservative and populists, can find some common issues with disaffected dems. Labor, for example, could work well to form a labor party. However, there is a strong connection to the GOP now for the religious right. Don't forget that W., while having strong business connections, does sort of fall into the religious right caetegory. More so than his father certainly. I think it more likely that the "small l" libertarians will split off, thanks to issues like gay marriage(or at least civil unions). However they too have problems with larger government, and something tells me a new Dem. party isn't going to downsize anytime soon. I think that nobody is going to split off at the moment, because there are too few people out there who agree with them now to form a new Dem party.

Well, if you're tired of the lesser evil...

There's always the Starry Wisdom Party.
"No More Years!"

Buchanan was tossed for free trade, not (primarily) immigration. Same emotional nexus (on Buchanan's side), but lots more money involved.

Good thing, too.

Tom Holsinger:

I am a disaffected Dem. But under no circumstances will I have anything to do with the Religious Right. Nothing keeps me away from the Republican Party more than that faction.

If the RR would go away and form The Christian Party and a big enough heap of liberal hawks joined up and mellowed out the GOP, then I might go along for the ride. I have my differences with small-l libertarians, but they aren't huge.

That might be what Trent was talking about up above when he said (implied) that neither party will survive 9/11 in its current form.

It could happen. I'm not going anywhere until I see where the dust settles. In the meantime, if I do leave the Dems, I'm going to the Independent non-aligned center.

Ultimately, I don't think the voting machine tabulates differently the vote of the Republican who voted for Bush or the Independent or Disaffected Democrat who voted for Bush or voted for the losing fringe candidate (who throws the election to Bush à la Ralph Nader). Independents for Jaba the Hut unite!

Edwards is a pro-war centrist.

I just finished reading Holt's Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, about the last major American party to die. He makes a very salient point late in the second half of the book - the political environment of the mid-19th century was well-suited to the formation of single-issue third parties like the various nativist, prohibitionist, and free soil parties, from which the Republican party eventually coalesced. Those conditions no longer exist - the state controls the ticket-making apparatus. The system is designed to maintain the existing two parties, or at least, coalitions using the existing names. The actual contents of the two parties have changed radically, but the apparatus remains.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party will exist as long as the current ticket-making apparatus remains as it is.

Last year, Democratic partisans were crying the new Democratic millennium. This year, the Republicans are announcing an emerging Republican majority. My guess is that neither is going to happen.

I re-registered as a Democrat late last winter, after growing up Republican and voting as such for the last twelve years. This means that I'm definitely moving against the current, but I did it for local, practical reasons. I live in a "Red" district of Pennsylvania, where the Republicans are an overwhelming majority. I have a natural aversion to single-party states. Additionally, I'm politically more liberal than the local Republican party. However, registering as some sort of independent in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a fool's game - it excludes one from serious participation in the primaries. Thus, I have joined the Democracy.

What I am saying, is join whichever party makes local and tactical sense to you. There are no machine-gun-toting thugs forcing Democratic party members to vote the Democracy and Republican party members to vote the
elephant in the general elections.

michael is dead on target with his trending towards being an unaligned centrist independent. im already comfortably there though (might debate whether "centrist" is correct just because im not so sure a binary political axis is accurate -- unless we are talking about Anti-Idiotarians vs Hystericrats™) and there isnt anything i can see happening in the near or medium term future that could possibly have me embrace either the reps or the dems.

yes, the ballot doesnt care what i am, only who i vote for... but long term politics is just as much about what we build as it is about what already exists.

it would be quite nice indeed to see a solid core of discussion by all these dissaffecteds leading to the emergence of a real life national and local big(I) independent option.

freedom loving independent hawks unite!

(jaba can go and register just like everyone else.)

Ok, show of hands here - how many in the room voted McCain in the 2000 primaries? How many wish he'd run again? Come on, I can't be the only one.

only if he ran with a proposed cabinet with rummy-rice-wolfowitz in it. although mccain-rice 04 would be nice... has better ring than bush-rice. hmm, anyone think mccain can pull off a "dave" and replace bush as pres without anyone knowing?

i do have to admit it would be a tough choice if i had a choice between bush and mccain in 04... i wont even mention the selfimploding dems or fringe wacko tiny candidates -- nader-kucinich anyone? shivers.

The best satire convinces some people that it is real. Thanks, Mike T. Armed Liberal spotted it.

Mitch,

IMO the thing to watch for is how sectional the Democratic Party becomes. The Federalists went down because they first became a sectional party, and then tainted themselves with treason at Hartford. I’m thinking more of the red/blue split than the South – the GOP had nothing in the South for more than a hundred years and did just fine. The sectional divide right now, though, seems more based on religion, and that is ominous for the Democrats as the rapidly growing Hispanic vote is so devout. Religious divides in American politics are often sectional based. If the Democrats are frozen out of the West in general, other than the coast, as well as the South they will be in peril.

Experience here in California indicates that third parties can get started – what is necessary is that one party has to self-destruct. The California GOP is third behind the Greens in some counties because it was taken over by the anti-abortion single-issue faction, who then played exclusionary games. State Republican parties in other states have had major rows with this faction and now point to California as a horrible example of what happens if they win.

The real threat to the Democrats, however, is the timing of their activist base eruption. It is not uncommon for a barking moonbat faction to seize control of a party temporarily, paint themselves blue, howl at the moon, slobber in public, urinate on carpets and generally repulse the majority of voters. But right now we’re at war and siding against the nation is dangerous. I agree with Trent that the Democrats are dead for 2004. The danger is that they might be damned thereafter if their party both becomes tainted with treason a la the Federalists, and becomes sectional based a la the Federalists.

The Republicans would have been in big trouble 1942-44 if their isolationist wing had continued to oppose American participation in World War Two.

Trent is right again that the activist Democrats don’t believe the war on terror is real. Andrew Sullivan noticed the same thing today – see this URL:
http://andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_07_20_dish_archive.html#105893464231917639

“THE PRE-9/11 MIND: The more I read emails or talk to anti-war types, I get a sense that 9/11 never really happened. Or if it happened, it meant nothing more than a discrete crime with discrete criminals who alone deserved justice. The notion that it meant that we were and are actually at war with a series of terrorist entities and the tyrannies that support them never truly took hold on the far left (or right). As the months have passed, their complacency and denial have undoubtedly metastasized among others as 9/11 recedes from our collective consciousness and its emotional wound begins to heal. These people, it's worth remembering, believe that the exercise of American military power is almost always more morally problematic than any foreign tyranny or even a serious security threat to the homeland. They can only justify American military power if it is wielded under imminent, grave danger that can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. That's why they are so exercised about tiny pieces of evidence today. They still believe we were wrong to remove Saddam from power without incontrovertible proof of WMDs of a type unobtainable in police states; they still believe America had no moral sanction for such an action; and they are even more determined to prove the superiority of their case now that the war was such a military success. So they have to turn the fallible evidence before the war into "lies"; and they have to turn the difficult but worthy post-war reconstruction into a "quagmire." They know the only chance they have is to turn American public opinion against the war so as to prevent any such exercise of military power again. In that sense, they really cannot simply be mocked. They must be challenged at every turn. For they are engaged in a process that will not only stymie efforts at reforming the Middle East but will make Americans and others more vulnerable to the designs of the Islamofascists and their terrorist allies. The war abroad cannot therefore be extricated from the debate at home. We will not win the former without winning the latter.
- 12:30:51 AM”

Randy Barnett’s guest blog on Glenn Reynold’s MSNBC site is on to this too, at:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/856672.asp

“LEFT LIVING A LIE?

The contention that George W. Bush lied in his State of the Union speech, now spreading through the media and into the base of the Democratic Party, has caused me (Randy Barnett) to think again about a phenomenon I have been noticing since the election of 2000. …”

Barnett is talking about a “fantasy ideology” held by Democratic activists, in which events outside the U.S. are interpreted solely in terms of their fantasy ideology. I use the term “fantasy ideology” as defined by Lee Harris in his Tech Central Station column titled “Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology”, which is mirrored at Steve den Beste’s site here:

http://denbeste.nu/external/Harris01.html

Even Democrats are concerned about the possibility that their party might cease to exist. See this:

http://www.insightmag.com/news/447801.html

"Although I am a Democrat, I don't think that my party deserves to win the presidency next year. One reason is because most of our candidates have become demagogues. ...

With Democratic propaganda spreading widely, at least one prominent conservative, Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, now is advising the White House to be prepared for the introduction of impeachment resolutions. Based on my own experience with impeachment politics, I agree with his advice.

In my case, I believe that political parties that thrive on demagoguery destroy themselves. These days I fear that the Democratic Party that I have known for 60 years now may be close to extinction.

Jerome Zeifman (jzeifman@yahoo.com) was the Democratic chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment proceedings."

Tom,

I rather think that Paul Weyrich is a bit of a flake, and I'd take anything he said with a good shakerful of salt.

As for the Federalists and a "taint of treason", the Democratic Party bore up under the taunt of "rum, Romanism and Rebellion" for decades after the Civil War. They did not come apart, or disappear the way that the Federalists and Whigs did. Between Buchanan and Wilson (1860-1912), the Democrats held the White House for a total of 8 years. That's a long time in the wilderness. They weren't replaced by the Socialists, or the Populists, or a Catholic party or Christian Democratic party, or any of the other European possibilities.

The third party system has been historically quite resilient. If the segregation era left the country with an intact Republican Party and an intact Democratic Party, I rather suspect that the current troubles will not see the demise of either, short of radical voting "reforms" that don't seem to be in the offing.

Mitch,

Far wingers like Paul Weyrich tend to recognize the commitment of opposing wingers in the other party. The term of art for that is "the shock of the familiar."

The growth of the Peroist Reform Party in 1992 and 1996 argues America is long over due for a political party death/realignment.

If Perot had the political skills of a John McCain rather than a stark raving moonbat, as Tom Holsinger puts it, Reform would be a viable political 3rd party today.

>Between Buchanan and Wilson (1860-1912), the
>Democrats held the White House for a total of 8
>years. That's a long time in the wilderness.
>They weren't replaced by the Socialists, or the
>Populists, or a Catholic party or Christian
>Democratic party, or any of the other European
>possibilities.

The difference between then and now is the Democrats had a pro-Union faction in the North and could field creditable on American nationalism candidates like Gen. Hancock of Gettysburg fame.

Today the Democrats patriotic, Pro-War faction does not have a visible candidate for 2004 because their Presidential primary financing money men won't contribute to one.

That is where the Hartford Convention parallel comes in. You must have a loud, visible, pro-war faction and candidate between now and the convention.

As things are set right now between the time that who ever the Democrats have wins the nomination and the convention, Bush will hammer him with image defining TV ads between then and the convention the way Clinton did to Dole in 1996.

And the point of those ads will be how anti-war/unpatriotic that Democratic candidate is using the attack spots and strategies of the losing Democratic candidates informed by the Republican National Committee's opposition research.

i think what we need (at least to start with) is an Emily's List for Anti-idiotarian/Indepenent Hawk campaigns. a way to combine support for good candidates and broad based general issue campaigns. i dont see any other way to start giving bite to our own desires for political change.

Hancock lost, which I think is the operative fact. I suspect that Wesley Clark would lose if the Democrats nominated him. "Gunpowder" nominations don't have a particularly encouraging history in the absence of well-defined issues or a viable coalition behind the “gunpowder” candidate.

The Reform Party was interesting in that it didn't attract any viable political factions. Perot got a lot of votes, and a couple of protest candidacies here and there (Ventura!) succeeded under the flag, but in general, it was all herd and no hat. I mean, do you remember those appalling, clownish state conventions the Reforms suffered through? It almost seems, from the Reform example, that any practical attempt to form a third party will suffocate under the weight of dysfunctional political activists too antisocial, unhinged, or obstinate to find work in the mainstream. I could understand that sort of thing going on with pressure group parties like the Greens, but Reform was supposed to be a new centrist party.

The historical record of new "centrist" or "Union" parties is not encouraging. American political parties form in opposition to each other. A centrist party is fundamentally lacking in a counterweight - it either isn't in opposition in anything, and thus lacks passion and commitment (like most "Union party" attempts), or finds itself in opposition to everything else, and suffers from a sort of political schizophrenia (like the Reform Party).

Just a historical comment here, since Republican isolationism was mentioned; in '40 the Republican nominee was Wendel Wilkie, who was not from the isolationist wing of the party. Actually, isolationism cut across party lines in that era - there were a number of Democratic Senators & Congressbeings who were as isolationistic as any Republican.

I think when the obituary on the 2002 election is written, the come-from-behind victory of Mary Landreu in Louisianna could come to be seen as an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats. Landreu's runoff election victory -- after she jettisonned the bipartisan posture adopted in November -- convinced Democrats that standing your ground and fighting (often just for the sake of fighting) was the way to beat the Republicans. It also led to the rise of Howard Dean (who I do believe will be the Democrats nominee in 2004), who was the first Democratic candidate for President advocate the "Fight Bush For the Sake of Fighting Bush" strategy.