Quote:
Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I think this is an area where conservatives fundamentally misunderstand the Democratic party.
Yes, under the influence of Keynes, Roosevelt, and JFK, the Democratic Party of the last century was defined by an economic policy based on spending, and liberalism was defined by a hostility to totally free markets and a belief that government spending could be an economic boon.
At the end of the sixties and on into the seventies, Democrats got creamed politically espousing these views. The period from Nixon to Reagan can be written as a period in which conservatives came up with intellectual alternatives to what had been a truly dominant Keynesian economic outlook and in which Republicans successfully turned the word "liberal" into a perjorative. If you look at Democratic senators who have been in office since the 60s or 70s you'll still see traditional liberals with this outlook.
But the Democratic Party has not been Keynesian for some time, and the dominant views in the Clinton administration were very different. One of the legacies of Clinton is that while most Democrats, yes, have a heart and want to do more for people, most Democrats also recognize that we can do more with a healthy economy and balanced budget.
So, to get to a long-winded answer, yes, the way Bush uses a perjorative liberal to paint Kerry as an economic Kennedy is entirely and completely mistaken.
Kerry has, from the beginning, run as a more pragmatic Democrat. He took the seat previously held by Paul Tsongas, who tried to turn pragmatism into a creed within the party (you may remember, Tsongas coined "New Democrat" as a replacement for "Liberal" or "New Deal Democrat" and tried very hard to build a coalition around middle-of-the-road budget policies). When he took that seat, he ran as the Tsongas Democrat against a guy named Jim Shannon, who was running as the outspoken liberal. But Bush doesn't realize who won back then, and is instead trying to use a label that has worked pretty well for the Republicans.
I believe, after the Clinton administration and 8 years of fiscal disclipline, the country understands that Democrats are fiscally responsible, and after 4 years of Bush, they see that Republicans are not always fiscally responsible.
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I agree with some of this, but disagree with most of it.
Clinton certainly was a New Democrate and, over all, he wasn't to shabby on economic matters. His fiscal dicipline is laudable and his policies on free trade were fantastic. But Clinton, to his dismay, did not fundamentally change the direction, as highlighted by the DEMs nomination of Kerry rather than a true New Democrat such as Lieberman.
I agree that the Democratic party is, by and large, not the party of Roosevelt/LBJ any longer. (For the record, JFK (the real one) was a tax cutter, and I don't consider him in the Roosevelt mold). But that only means that the center has moved right in the last 60 years and they have moved right with it. The party is still a "liberal" party, albeit a wattered down version of its former self.
Kerry is not a New Democrat. He is a liberal Democrat that is more fiscally conservative than the Democrats from the 60s and 70s, but that is just a matter of degrees. Fundamentally, he still believes that government, rather than the individual, is still the primary fix for societies ills, and as long as he holds this view, he is going to need public money to support it.
