What's Wrong With The Democrats?

The identity-politics party doesn’t know how to appeal to middle Americans.

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What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

The identity-politics party doesn’t know how to appeal to middle Americans.

by Steve Sailer

Why have the Democrats proven so inept at electorally exploiting the growing evidence of the current Republican Party’s incompetence at governing? The Democrats certainly have a chance of doing well in the November elections, but why is this merely a possibility?

In 1980, just half a dozen years after the GOP’s Watergate humiliation, voters responded to the Carter administration’s failures by electing a Republican president and Senate and scaring enough House Democrats that Ronald Reagan was able to pass much of his agenda. After five-and-a-half years of George W. Bush’s presidency, it’s reasonably clear that he wasn’t qualified for the job and hasn’t exactly grown in office. The GOP establishment, which anointed Bush in 1999 even though many had personal experience of his unsuitability for the highest office, deserves punishment for negligence. Yet no Democrat—with the longshot exception of Virginia senatorial candidate James Webb—has emerged to offer the galvanizing change in direction and tone that Reagan once brought to the Republicans.

The satirical Onion headline earlier this year said it all: “Democrats Vow Not To Give Up Hopelessness.” If the voters turn to the Democrats this fall, it will only be as the lesser of two evils. America needs a less self-destructive Democratic Party, if just to keep Republican officeholders on their toes.

So, what’s wrong with the Democrats?

I’m going to speak more frankly than Democrats are used to hearing, but political correctness hurts them by shielding them from how the electorate really thinks. Although many Democrats would prefer to keep on losing, a few might want to know what ails them....

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I submit one reason Mr. Sailer didn't offer why the democrats cannot take advantage of the Republicans' failures: Republican failures are the result of their embrace of liberal ideas themselves, such as open borders and nation-building in Iraq. Those two policies (or at least their intended success) are based on the liberal principle that people all over are basically the same, they want the same things out of life, and are perfectly capable of living together in peace. Democrats, who whole heartedly believe the one world ideology even more than Republicans, cannot object on proper grounds without abandoning their own beliefs. It would be like admitting that those brown people over there are not as good as us. That they have an inherent flaw. Good liberals don't think like that.

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What you are saying, and others have said, is that Bush has co-opted the Moderate Liberal positions. So they can either run farther left, and alienate the center, or do what they are doing. Nothing.

The proof will come in November. But I like your and Sailer's premise. It is a good place to start the debate.

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So they can either run farther left, and alienate the center, or do what they are doing. Nothing.

Yep. I actually think most democrats would like to run farther left, and basically live up to every stereotype, but then they'd be as popular and successful as the Green Party.

I'm surprised your response, Dr. Guy, has been the only one.

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