While the debate in the United States seems to center around whether with Barack Obama, there is any there there, it seems that in some places he is regarded as the Democratic answer to the much vaunted Republican idea machine. Alfredo Toro Hardy of Venezuela’s El Universal writes, ‘Confronted with the flood of proposals from their Republican counterparts, the fonts of Democratic thought seem to have dried up. … As if by magic, these past limitations seem to be disappearing due to the impact of the Obama phenomenon. He has been responsible with offering Democrats and his campaign a ‘vision’ which, combined with his oratory and charisma, offers a solid counterweight to the strong conservative tendency that characterizes the national mood.’
By Alfredo Toro Hardy
Translated By Barbara Howe
March 13, 2008
Venezuela – El Universal – Original Article (Spanish)
Democrats have begun confronting some serious limitations. Their lack of policy proposals and ideas has often played into the hands of Republicans – and at times when the Republicans have been particularly prolific in this regard. It’s from the right-wing side of the political spectrum that the majority of the ideas which have fed the public life of that country have emerged
over the past five years. Confronted with the flood of proposals from their Republican counterparts, the fonts of Democratic thought which in the past conceived “The New Deal,” “The Great Society,” The League of Nations and the United Nations, the Marshall Plan and “Doctrine of Containment,” seem to have dried up. This lack of “vision” has placed them in a more reactive posture.The country veered to the right with the ascendancy of conservative values. This not only left Liberals – the most dynamic sector of the Democratic Party – without sustenance, but it left them directionless. To cope with this reality, the Democratic Party has had to cover itself with a cloak of pragmatism and blur its identity. It won the legislative elections of 2006 by putting forward a large number of candidates with conservative ideas that differed little from their Republican counterparts.
As a result of this, the confrontation between various sectors of the party has generated a clear incapacity to offer a sense of direction. On the center-right is the Democratic Leadership Council, which expresses the pragmatic side of the party. To the right are the so-called “New Democrats” who respond to conservative values. On the left is the liberal sector that makes-up the so-called “Democratic wing” of the party.
And then there is the traditional Democratic coalition forged by Franklin Roosevelt (the Northern White working class, Southern whites, racial and ethnic minorities and liberal intellectuals) which crumbled long ago without an adequate substitute having ever been found.
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