Sam Stein writes at HuffPo today that increasingly libertarian social attitudes in the Republican Party combined with the failure of Democrats to live up to campaign promises, has led Democratic Party insiders to worry that “the Obama administration risks losing the gay rights community (or at least depressing their votes) with its tepid embrace of their priorities.”
I thought about this point this past weekend, but in the context of the Democratic Party stranglehold on the black vote, and to a lesser extent, the Latino vote.
The ferocious reaction among Democratic Party elites and the left-wing blogosphere to the Restoring Honor rally was in part personal (they hate Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin), but also driven by fear that core constituencies may be drawn to a race-neutral movement.
Nothing worries Democrats more than a movement which actually practices the philosophy of judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
The Democratic Party thrives on group politics, in which trumped up claims of racism or homophobia are used to keep the electoral troops in line. These group politics are all the Democrats have left, and if that political bubble bursts, the Democrats will need to go through a major reincarnation in personnel and spirit.
The current political atmosphere reminds me of the scene in Doctor Zhivago when the crusty old Czarist General leads his young soldiers through a crowd of army deserters near the war front during the First World War.
The deserters beseech the soldiers to come over to their side, which does happen, as the soldiers pull the General off his horse and beat him to death.
Yes, I see the irony of using a movie scene about the Russian Revolution in the current context, but I think we are witnessing something similar in the upcoming elections, at least if recent polling is accurate.
Core Democratic groups either are switching sides or staying out of the battle, as attempts to portray the Tea Party movement as racist fall flat. The Democrats are at risk of being left with all Generals, and no troops.
Once the false charges of racism are cast aside, these core groups will realize that the modern Democratic Party has nothing to offer other than crushing deficits and national debt, high unemployment, and a ravenous desire to control individual lives.
We are not there yet, but I sense we are approaching that tipping point.
Update: In this post at ChicagoBoyz (linked by Ben Smith as reflecting Glenn Beck’s view), the strategy is to undermine the Democratic Party’s use of race as a perpetual weapon:
Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.
He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence…
Like I said.
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