Peaceniks can join the Greens or some other third party instead of continually reinforcing the impression on most people that Democrats are somehow weak on national security.
Not content with constantly attacking Republicans, you turn on your own party members and help confirm it's status as the official minority party.
Frodo is a warmonger. I oppose the Iraq war, and wish that the Democrats would be less spineless on the issue. Bush has horrible ratings on the issue. If we followed Frodo's advice, the Democratic party would implode. Frodo probably wants people like Senator Kerry to leave the party.
I doubt you have any clear idea what my advice was, J
fraud. I was talking about our need to re-establish our credibility on national security that was lost originally because the Democratic Party decided to align itself with the anti-war movement beginning in the later half of the Vietnam War. It is not a coincidence that as long as the Republican Party was associated with its isolationist wing, it was almost never trusted to defend the interests of this republic throughout the first half of the Cold War. With the exception of the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and perhaps two brief spells in control of Congress shortly after the end of the Second World War, Republicans were almost permanently in the minority.
And before you mention it, the Democratic Party's hold on the South was predicated not just in its decision to overlook Jim Crow, but also on the perception that it was strong on national security. It is no secret that then as now southerners were strongly supportive of the military and sent many of their sons to serve in it. The South was and is perhaps more strongly associated with the military than perhaps any other region in the country. Once this perception began to break down from 1972 onwards as the Democratic Party associated itself with the antiwar movement (and with it, the counter-culture), it was the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party as a majority party as southerners defected to the Republican Party, first at the presidential level, then at the congressional level, and later the state level. The South is a microcosm of what has befallen us at the national level. From 1968 onwards through the duration of the remainder of the Cold War, Republicans for the most part controlled the White House. It is no secret that as long as national security was not the preeminent issue guiding how voters voted, we were able to regain the White House. Once it regained prominence, as we all saw in 2004, we paid dearly for our negligence on this issue.
What is the point of this history lesson, you ask? The Democratic Party sought to make short-term gains by turning against the Vietnam War when it became unpopular, and by so doing shook people's confidence in its ability and willingness to defend the interests of this country against threats and dangers from abroad, and thereby lost more over the long-term. Our weakness on national security is a direct legacy of the decision to align ourselves with the antiwar movement then. Your advice on having the Democratic Party define itself by its opposition to the Iraq War simply because you regard it as being politically expedient at present to do so given its unpopularity now is short-sighted as well as foolish. We are never going to dig ourselves out of minority status over the long-term if we cannot regain some semblance of credibility on national security. If we define ourselves by our opposition to the Iraq War, the electorate will condemn us to continued minority status through the duration of the War on Terrorism because we will have reinforced the impression in people's minds -as I have said before- that we are weak and untrustworthy when it comes to our willingness to defend this country from threats abroad.
