What really crippled our party: Civil rights or the Vietnam escalation?

I have noticed that a considerable number of historians link the fall of the Democratic party in the 60's to its (reluctant) support of the civil rights movement. After all, many southerners--Dixiecrats--did in fact flee to the Nixon campaign in '68. There exists the assumption that our once progressive party was operating on borrowed time when it finally decided to support the most urgent of moral struggles in 20th century America. Hence, the very embrace of liberalism seems to be blamed for the ascent of the Republican party.


I don't buy this for a second.


After all, if America wasn't ready for a truly liberal government, than how the hell did Johnson win the '64 election by the biggest landslide in American history (by this time, everyone knew Johnson's stance on civil rights, for he had displayed extraordinary courage and skill in getting the Civil Rights Act through Congress)? Was his victory not indicative of a resounding endorsement by the citizenry for the Great Society?

Isn't it possible that our party's downfall had more to do with the Johnson administration's SIMILARITY with the right-wing in respect to foreign policy, than it had with its radically different domestic vision? I can't be the only person who places the blame for the great failure on LBJ's decision to sell his soul to the god, Mars. Had he forsaken the advice of his Kennedy advisors, Lyndon's domestic vision would surely have prospered until at least the '68 election. Without our resources being allocated to the military budget, perhaps the most explosive of riots would never have occurred. And without the war itself, the gulf between hawk and dove within the party, and the mass protests, would never have tainted Democrats with the image of instability and failure.

What really crippled our party?

I don't think the Democratic Party is in any way crippled.

It's true that the Civil Rights Act cost the Democrats a lot of support in the South. But they still managed to control the House for decades and the Senate for sizeable chunk of the time. They also won the White House in 76', 92', '96 and '00.

We're not crippled.

A little limp in the service of civil rights is not a failure. Hell, if we lost both legs and an arm it would be an honorable loss in the fight for freedom and decency.

Crippled? Anyone who doesn't show a wound from that struggle should have to explain himself.

I would think.

Johnson won the 1964 election because the nation was STILL in mourning, guilt and shock over the assassination of JFK.

It also sounds as if you are discounting the amount of democrats, especially from the South, who were at that time still refusing to register repuke because Abe Lincoln was a republican.

If Johnson had ended the Vietnam war in his term of office, 1968 may have turned out differently. I do believe that. However, it was a different time. coulda woulda shoulda

Just get BushCo the heck out, please!

Johnson won because everyone thought Goldwater would drop a few big ones on China and Russia and start WWIII.

I can't think of any other reason why the Democratic party became the gutless wimp party.

have turned to the Green Party.

LBJ initiated the notion of Dems being poor stewards of nationsl defense which has been a plague almost ever since. Carter got a bye beig an ex-admiral, Clinton got a bye due to a smart message ("its the economy stupid"). And its the nearly sole reason General Clark even registered in this go round.

There are other factors but this one was key.

thanks for the correction. same principle applies.

I think Carter's southern heritage and etc helped him honest.

Cuz I never heard of a Lt. SG....

"During his naval career he lived in many parts of the United States and served around the world, including the Far East. He rose to the rank of lieutenant (senior grade), working under Admiral Hyman Rickover in the development of the nuclear submarine program."

seven years at the rank of lieutenant. Please learn what you are talking about.

And Media Take over by the Gingrich Repugs who forged alliance with RW Hate Groups and then the Fundies, and all funded again by Corporate Lobbyists.

Reagan was the magic bulltet. I recall in the hospitals the DRG's, diagnostic related grouping. This gave insurance companies the power to cut quality care by not paying for services beyond what they concidered reasonable.

Reagan also was a major architect of union busting...remember the air traffic control unions?

Reagan and his cronies, some who are in power now, are the culprits who widdle away at our party base from the outside working inward.

the Push towards Progressive Liberalism.

The Democratic party's reluctance to support the civil rights movement essentially prevailed.

The party did not live up to the promises, the people who would have supported them were disappointed, many died in poverty, their kids and grandkids aren't interested in voting for any party, even if voting were a practical option for them, neither party offers them anything but more rich men getting richer while more of them get evicted.

The Democrats had a chance to change the government of the United States, and save millions of lives, both in the US and abroad.

The party made, and continues to make, different choices.

You ask "What really crippled our party? "

I'd like to modify the question slightly to "What has crippled and continues to wound our party?"

I think that our problem is a dearth of new ideas that we really believe in and back fully - ideas that will benefit the great majority of Americans, and ideas that we actively communicate to the public.

That's where the pugs are hurting us, really - they tell everyone that free trade means low prices and that everyone will get rich. It isn't true, of course (when has that ever stopped them?) but it has been sold as a new idea and a lot of people have been convinced it's true. Is free trade the one best answer? If it isn't, what's a better answer? And if there is a better answer, why aren't we offering it to the voters?

The same thing goes for so many areas. What about the escalating costs of higher education? The difficulty of getting a job? The bigger difficulty of getting health insurance?

As long as we're seen as the party of nay-sayers and complainers, we won't win. Telling everyone that we need to increase taxes or decrease services and balance the budget isn't going to win - even if it's true. We must speak to people's hopes, their dreams - and, maybe, their fears.

JFK spoke to our hopes, didn't he? He made us believe we could accomplish anything, and, for awhile, we did. Please don't tell me we don't have another Kennedy out there - we've got some great candidates! I personally like Dennis Kucinich, but that doesn't mean that Dean, or Kerry, or Clark couldn't do a great job for us. What they (and we) need is the great ideas that formed the foundation of our great accomplishments in the past.

Flame if you must.

Amazing what principles our leaders have been willing to sell out for another TV ad.

I would adore legally limiting campaigning to say, eight weeks before a general election, ten weeks before a primary. And shut up and do your bloody work the rest of the time.

Fundraising would be limited to certain periods, too. You know, like they limited the amount of time the 9/11 families had to sign up for the fund. Like the limit on counting votes and all in Florida.

It's cruel, I know. But I do it only to be kind.

Look at how popular Clinton was during his time in office. He beat both Dole and Perot combined in the number of votes in the 96 election. Vietnam hurt LBJ for sure, but it din't seem to do much damage to the party overall in the long-run.

Go vote in your primary or caucus, and in the end back the winner as strongly as you did your favorite. I heard once that if everyone voted the liberals would beat conservatives 60-40. Doesn't sound too far off.
Peace,
Frank

The election was a year after JFK's assassination, so LBJ received a lot of support from the country, how can you not be aware of that? We just had a 40 year anniversary of JFK's slaying. Jesus!

Also, are you aware that the GOP candidate in 1964, Barry Goldwater, went around saying stuff like:
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the defense of liberty is no virtue." The Democrats responded with "In your heart you know he's right, in your guts you know he's nuts."

That's how the famous "Daisy" TV commercial originated, the one that ends with a nuclear explosion.

Hubert Humphrey almost beat Nixon in '68, so Vietnam didn't bring down the party, either. Are you aware of George Wallace's candidacy? Nixon tapped into his voters, that's how that Southern Strategy got started.

The GOP's enemy used to be the Soviet Union, now it's Democrats. The big right-wing think tanks, funded with millions of dollars, and empty headed hacks like Rush Limbaugh have done their part.

I could go on and on. Get some books and start reading.

How would the Republicans and the American Right have fared if, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr and Jerry Falwell had been assassinated in the space of five years?

Bush sr that it..

The only thing that cripples us as a party
is when we are divided over issues .

We still have a majority on the issues
when we don't bicker and stand united
and vote together we win .

republicans?

and you owe me an apology.

I called others on the majik crap.

than civil rights. In the 60s, we had a "if they don't hurt us, then it's fine with me" attitude to everybody else's alternate lifestyles. Then AIDS was a wake up call for us and our innocence was broken. When I didn't see the leadership within the Democratic party to call for changes in lifestyle that would protect the public health, that's when I knew we had clash between social policy and Liberal idealism. Atleast, that's when I started breaking away from the party.

With his response to the AIDS crisis? Can't quite remember what he did.

Please, refresh my memory.

"And the band played on" by Randy Shiltz. It chronicles how everyone handled the crisis and shared in making a bad thing worse. There were brave gay men who tried to instill a sense of responsibility in the gay community and they were ostracized for their attempt.

Ronald Reagan acted abominably, without doubt. But the liberals, for the most part, made some bad choices as well. Read the book. (Do not rely on the movie version.) It's one of the reasons why I am no longer a Democrat. I don't believe in pure idealism, of any kind. Only social pragmatism.

It's their paid media shills that tell us over and over in big bold words that we are worthless and we have just hunkered down and accepted it. Don't pander to this stuff.

some of the reforms made in its wake attempting to clean up the system backfired.

For instance: to get rid of "party bosses in smoke-filled rooms" deciding on candiates, the role of primaries was expanded. With this, however, brought increased reliance on donations to individual candidates (expanding the role of PACs, and diminishing the control of the party leadership), and (particularly in the 1970s) some pandering to the liberal/left end of the spectrum at the cost of ticking off moderates and conservatives (and both those descriptions were -- as groups -- much more liberal than they are now).

Throw in budgetary and economic shocks from the cost of the Vietnam war, some of the proposed social programs, and the 70s oil embargos, and by the late 70s party unity was undermined, just as the conservative organizing for some post-Watergate payback was bearing fruit.

We were strong when Clinton took office. Now we have nothing!!
It seems obvious to me.

I ran onto something interesting a couple of days ago that I still don't understand. It seems that a significant early episode in the escalation of the Vietnam War -- the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, while Kennedy was still president -- was largely incited by a small group within the administration going behind Kennedy's back to send a crucial cable of support to those plotting against him:

"The point man of this fast shuffle was Roger Hilsman, a hard-charging officer who at the time was State's Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs. His chief colleagues in this affair were Averell Harriman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Michael V. Forrestal, a centrally influential NSC staff member and Harriman protege. George Ball, the ranking State Department officer in town, cleared the cable for transmission. . . . Years later General Taylor said of the 24 August weekend that 'a small group of anti-Diem activists picked this time to perpetrate an egregious 'end run' in dispatching a cable of the utmost importance to Saigon without obtaining normal departmental clearances.' "

<snip>

"Ambassador Frederick Nolting, displaced in Saigon by Lodge and denigrated in Washington by Hilsman because of his pro-Diem arguments (but whose counsel the President sought in August 1963 to balance that of his detractors), later wrote that in 22 years of public service he had never seen anything 'resembling the confusion, vacillation and lack of coordination in the U.S. Government' at that time. Although Nolting had sympathy for President Kennedy, he deplored 'his failure to take control' and concluded that 'the Harriman-Lodge axis seemed too strong for him.' "

http://ngothelinh.150m.com/CIA_CSI.html


And "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography" says of this same period:

"At this time, the group proposing escalation in Vietnam (as well as preparing the assassination of President Diem) had a heavy Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones overtone: the hawks of 1961-63 were Harriman, McGeorge Bundy, William Bundy, Henry Cabot Lodge, and some key London oligarchs and theoreticians of counterinsurgency wars. And of course, George Bush during these years was calling for escalation in Vietnam and challenging Kennedy to "muster the courage" to try a second invasion of Cuba."

http://www.tarpley.net/bush8b.htm


As I say, I'm not sure what to make of this. But the impression I'm starting to get is that two very powerful groups which had been content to act within the Democratic Party -- east coast establishment power brokers and southern conservatives and oil interests -- both decisively pulled away from it in the course of the 60's and concentrated their energies on the Republicans.

George W. Bush is a living symbol of the marriage of those two groups. And for all the trouble they were capable of causing within the Democratic Party, the party has been far less able to win elections without them.

What crippled the Party was being overrun by smug, politically correct weenies who care more about people's feeeeeeeeeelings than about core Democratic values. Average people are turned off by radicals of any stripe, and these (Neo?) Liberals come across as know it all extremists who want to get in other people's lives as much as the Religious Right.

As far as Defense, there's a lot of maneuvering room between standing up for our national interests in an honorable way and seeming to be in favor of sticking flowers in the rifle barrels, which seems to be the stance of a lot of leftists today.

Those "weenies" you refer to as "know it all extremists" were the same ones who marched in Selma, fought the cops in Chicago, and died at Kent State from wounds fired by rifles that didn't have "flowers stuck in them", and, in the end stopped the American aggression and slaughter in Vietnam.

"Weenies" huh?

Since then there has been nothing but right wing propaganda without any counterbalance. That has done more to destroy our liberal causes than anything else. Rush Limbaugh to put it in a nutshell.

"patriotism" comes to mind.

The republicans saw white anger in the south and have capitalized on it ever since. The once "solid" south of the Democrats has become the "solid" south for republicans. They have managed to cloak racism under new terms, "Traditional Family Values", "Traditional American Values", "Individual Responsibility", etc. They have demonized progress, calling Affirmative Action "unfair", "reverse racism". Diversity is proclaimed "unAmerican". Does anyone doubt that all of this is aimed at African-Americans, other races, and those that support equal rights?

As to Vietnam. The right wing (in both parties) have worked hard to sell the notion that it was a noble effort betrayed by the left instead of the murderous genocide that it was. Americans still like to believe that "our troops" are busily liberating oppressed people and handing out candy bars to smiling children, rather than acting as thugs and murderers for the benefit of the corporations. Wave a flag in their face, add a few bars of "God Bless America", and a nitwit Texan acting "decisive", and they can't wait to vote republican.

Add some Democrat politicians who are desparate to win and willing to sell their souls to do so, and the Democratic party became the "moderate" wing of the republican party.

The Democratic Party hasn't offered a coherent alternative to the republicans for a long time except to be the "not as bad" republicans.
The republicans have successfully played to the darkest side of the American electorate. Jingoism disguised as patriotism, greed disguised as success, racism disguised as Americanism, colonialism disguised as defense. The Democrats have, in all too many instances, tried to water down those excesses while condoning them and offering little except that they "aren't as bad".

As I see it, the only hope for the Democratic Party, and the nation, is to offer a real alternative that appeals to the nascent goodness of the American people. Equality, Peace, Justice, Compassion, Generosity, and the courage that it takes to make them happen.

I was vociferously anti-Vietnam at the time, and I still think that it was a mistake, however, Bill Maher said something that really made me think. He said that although Vietnam may not have been the right war to fight, America HAD to show military will in standing up to communism somewhere in the world at that time.

I'd never considered that, and looking back, he was probably right.

Why did America have to "show military will in standing up to communism at the time"? Because of the famous "domino" theory? Remember that? Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, then the yellow hordes landing at Malibu.

So, we managed to slaughter millions of SE Asians and lose the war. And, now? I haven't noticed too many red flags flying above the post office, or citizens lustily singing the "Internationale", or hammer & sickle stationary on the IRS forms. Have you?

LBJ launched the war to prove that he was a patriotic anti-communist.

Unfortunately for him, and the militarists behind him, the Vietnamese didn't give a rip for his display of his red, white, and blue jockstrap.

Question. Why were you against the war back then?

I was against the war because I thought it was a mistake, and I still think so. I also understand that we supported a lot of murderous dictators back then, and did a lot of other unsavory things.

But, talking about that statement, what would you have had us do in the larger struggle against communism worldwide? That was what Bill Maher was talking about, at some point America HAD to show military resolve. Are you a pacifist or something?

"...so they could be a self-governing country."

You seem to forget that a lot of the really nice people in the northern part of the country had some nasty people on their side too, with little regard for how the "people" felt about choosing a form of government.

So whenever Russian/China backed communist insurgents wanted to force their will upon a country, we should have done what? Offered them a cookie?

This is silly, I was not for the Vietnam war, but some of the naive pacifism here is depressing.

"Emotional and maturity level of teenagers" indeed.

You make it sound like a dirty word. I have never had the courage to be a pacifist. MLK was a pacifist. Do you consider him a "weenie"? Most of those in the civil rights movement were pacifists.

In 1965 I was in the marine corps shooting off a rifle and running around the hills in preparation for killing peasants in Vietnam. Fortunately, my enlistment was up that June, and I refused to extend it.

Pacifist? No. But, I have only admiration for the very courageous people who are.

As to the "larger struggle against communism, worldwide". What struggle? First, there weren't any "the communists". There were many movements that covered a broad spectrum ideologies that were aimed, in one form or another, at overthrowing the existing governments of many countries. Many of them called themselves "Marxists", but beyond that, they had little in common. Communism hasn't been monolithic since the early '20s. The truth is that there wasn't a "communist threat" to the USA. What our leaders saw as the "march of Communism" was often merely the overthrow of some corrupt dictator or oligarchy that they handily labeled the communist bogeyman.

Hell, even the CIA has admitted that the Soviet Union never posed a real threat to the United States.

However, it did fatten the wallets of the "defense" industry and numerous stooge dictators (otherwise known as "unsavory characters").

"At some point, America HAD to show military resolve." What do you think it had been doing all those years between WWII and Vietnam? Sending love letters to the Kremlin? This country came close to nuclear war on several occassions and was only saved by the good sense of a few men on both sides. It fought in Korea, backed the dictators in Greece, Iran, Honduras, Guatamala, Bolivia, all over Africa, etc, with arms, "advisors", and tons of money.

Try reading some history of the "cold" war, and you'll find it was pretty damned hot and ruthless and that America was hardly some wilting lily shivering in fear of the dread "communist" menace.

and being blitzed for a generation by ruthless, well-organized, incredibly wealthy opposition.

With all "DU" respect, asking if it was the Viet Nam War or the civil rights movement is just navel gazing.

We are our own worst enemies and we've gotten our collective ass kicked by the neocon movement.




edits: I can't type worth a damn.

I think if the Dems are to blame for anything, it's the lack of swiftness in responding to the Republicans' bombastic emotional appeals and scare tactics.

they deserve most of the credit for that quagmire

been feeling very down about DU lately so I'm glad to read your post. As a history major, I've always found LBJ fascinating (and yes, he did sell his soul) :-)

I disagree with those who believe the Dem candidate should not be anti-war and "the time is not right" for gay civil rights. I want a Dem candidate who can handle this mess of a war and bring resolution to outstanding social issues. Basically, take a stand and don't avoid issues that are controversial. Some of this is predicated by Daschle's countless flip-flops this past year (so many I lost track of the Dem platform!)I was also aghast when so many Dems supported this bogus war. oh well, time to move on. you raise a very interesting question.

and everywhere else for that matter. Too bad, we all go down with the ship.

It has been the most divisive issue of any. It has been used as a wedge issue because it works.

plus losing the will to fight, thanks to the DLC.

More Dennises and Pauls would fix that, though.