Mark Shields Has Some Advice

. . . which I’m not interested in as it has to do with saving the Democratic party and consists of something other than (a) flip on abortion, (b) stop dissing Christians, and (c) embrace traditional moral values.

But he does want to sound a wake-up call to the Democratic Party:

Since the beginning
of the Civil War and the election of the first Republican president,
Abraham Lincoln — with the exception of the sainted Franklin Delano
Roosevelt — only two Democratic presidents have won a majority of the
nation’s popular vote, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in
1976.

That’s right. Elected Democratic presidents Grover
Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill
Clinton all failed to win a majority of the popular vote. By contrast,
in the same span, Republican chief executives have 17 times been
elected with a majority of all votes cast. The GOP majority list:
Lincoln, Ulysses Grant (twice), William McKinley (twice), Teddy
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge,
Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower (twice), Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
(twice), George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Bluntly put, Democrats are historically not the natural
majority party in the United States — Republicans are. That means the
most totally efficient get-out-the-vote campaign of all Democratic
voters won’t, by itself, ever be enough for the party of Jefferson to
recapture the White House.

Other than waiting for another Great Depression like that
which first elected FDR, or your opponents’ nominating an ideologically
unelectable candidate like Barry Goldwater, or a constitutional crisis
like Watergate when an un-elected Republican president pays a huge
political price for pardoning his resigned predecessor, or the good
fortune of a self-financed, third-party maverick challenger like Ross
Perot, whose strong support comes disproportionately from Republicans,
Democrats have no choice but to conclude that — in spite of their
obvious charm, intelligence and high-mindedness — they need to make
some changes.

SOURCE.

I’d have some questions about whether Shields is right about whether the Republicans were really were the majority party during all of this time (particularly in the early period), but concerning the present it appears that he’s right, and the Democratic Party need to be educated on the need for "change."

That’s what they’re big on, right?

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

9 thoughts on “Mark Shields Has Some Advice”

  1. I don’t think the Democrats are in such a bad way as they seem to think.
    John Kerry had to be the worst presidential candidate ever (admittedly, I can only remember as far back as Ronal Reagan) and he still won 48% of the popular vote, and could have won the electoral college if he had some better luck.
    In Canada, 48% would get you about 90% of the seats in the House of Commons and the greatest mandate in the history of our country.

  2. Billw,
    The democrats are in bad shape actually. There is very little they control. The democrats controlled at least one branch of Congress for 40 years straight. (This is where I disagree with Fields about the dems never being a national party.) Demographics aren’t really in their favor either. Generally I try to have a good answer before I criticize, but in this case I don’t have one. There are factors, but I don’t know how to weight them.
    1) Median age. People have been having fewer children for over a generation now. The young generally vote liberally.
    2) Collapse of the 60’s programs. Anti-poverty programs have been judged to have fail miserably. This was deemed a liberal experiment that failed by many.
    3) Crime Rate. The liberals were seen as aggravating this through policies such as societal normalization of the mentally ill, rehabilition of criminals, and so forth.
    4) Civil Rights Era ending. While this is just starting to show up in the black vote, I think this started showing up in the white community in the early 80’s.
    5) Suburbanization. As the mass exodux from the cities occured, the tax burden of city services moved to the state. The suburban/rural population swelled and so did their taxes.
    6) The decline of the Catholic Church in America. Catholics had been a dependable constituency. As the Church lost members (both literally and practically), her influence left the party. People like to talk about late Gov Casey (PA) not being allowed to speak at the convention, but, quite frankly, there wasn’t anyone in the Party who wanted to hear him.

  4. Michael, since WWII, the farm population has shrunk from 40-some percent to about 1%, so, no, the rural population has -not – swollen. It has shrunk massively, on a level with the Highland Clearances.

  5. Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe makes a similar plea to Democrats to separate themselves from the Hollywood elite.

    “AS DISPIRITED Democrats mull various routes back to relevance, here’s a quick and easy first step: Say goodbye to Hollywood. The attitudes and behavior of the film-industry elite are out of sync with much of the country, and linking the party with the West Coast glitterati makes national Democrats suspect with too many voters.
    […]
    Now, the celebrities’ contempt may well mirror the sentiment of confirmed Democrats. But it was hardly the way to win undecided votes. Or to offer an effective critique of a president voters are inclined to like personally, but whose policies have left us entangled in an unnecessary war and awash in red ink. In the same way, post-election polemics that denounce Bush supporters as simple-minded rubes are unlikely to persuade them to consider Democratic candidates in future elections.
    The sooner the Democrats come to realize those points, the better their future prospects will be.”

  6. Read in context circuit-rider. rural/suburban. Probably should have emphasized the suburban portion more. City should have also been defined as an urban environment over 250,000. Some of the fastest growing parts of the country are suburban Atlanta and the interstate corridor between Orlando and St. Pete. Big decliners include Milwaukee and Detroit. One of David Brooks’s books goes into this. BTW, the people you spoke of, farmers, have been a traditional democratic constituency.

  7. With an honest switch on one issue (by honest, I mean back it up with action) the Dems could win every branch of gov’t. But they will never do it. I am at a loss to understand why.

  8. Microsoft beefs up push to small businesses

    Reuters – Microsoft Corp. unveiled a new rebate and free service offer for its small business accounting software on Monday, aimed at luring customers away from rival Intuit Inc…

Comments are closed.