Talk:Democratic Party (United States)/Archive 2

message: The historic section has been augmented by some Democratic Presidents who, as Presidents go, aren't all that notable.  Maybe we should create a third category, between the current ones and the historics, for "Democratic Presidents".  JamesMLane 23:18, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: List of notables

message: For the last couple of days, I've been trying to add some depth to the article, thinking it lacked it. I've tried include more clear descriptions of the issue positions shared by the vast majority of Democrats and include some recent history. I tried to discuss some of the inner struggles of the party, given that its bitter division is important to understanding why it is as it is now. I don't know how to make footnotes, but I carefully numbered the references to the section for recent history and listed them in a new section for references. More importantly, I've described the ideological factions, rather than the microfactions previously listed, and tried to assertain why liberals, progressives, conservatives and moderates are all under the same party banner and what caucuses and networks are in each faction.
The results of my work are imperfect and my biases may have crept into it a little. Plus the section for principles needs the Democratic views on campaign finance and enviroment. But I think it's a good model for improvement. I encourage other wikis to further edit it for encyclopedic quality.
:Wow, I'd encourage you to be bold, but it looks like you need no such encouragement.  One thing I'd caution regarding the principles section would be to say that Democrats favor X while Republicans favor Y.  Taking social security as an example, both Democrats and Republicans will say that it is one of their top issues, and they may even mean it, but where they'll differ is in implementation.  Democrats tend to think that public institutions can better serve the people while Republicans think that private industry can use the money more efficiently.  The same goes for education, the environment, and healthcare. --CVaneg 19:58, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dr. K's changes: 2005 mid-Jun. 

message: I've just removed several of PSzalapski's additions to the issues, principles, and values section:
* "Democrats are often against any funding of abstinence campaigns, and are often against abstinence-emphasis sex education." In addition to not being about abortion (the heading under which it was placed), the debate over sex ed is not a major partisan divide (it's mostly between the Christian right and the public health lobby) -- and it's characterized in biased terms (nobody opposes including abstinence in sex ed curricula -- what they oppose is not including information on other practices to limit the spread of STDs).
* "Democrats also tend to advocate increases in funding for domestic Federal programs, hoping that government spending might stimulate the national economy. They also advocate small tax increases, usually on the highest levels of income, to fund these increases and reduce the deficit." The Democrats certainly used to be united in favoring government spending to stimulate economic growth, but they aren't anymore, and the ones who do tend to be the least concerned with budget deficit.
* "a siginficant portion of Democrats advocate a socialized medicine system." 'Socialized medicine' is a term used only by conservative to oppose public investment in health care -- it does not describe a specific proposal or even a specific set of proposals.
Note that I am on record opposing this entire section to begin with, as I believe it to be a magnet for endless debates over which minute policy positions can be attributed to a party which can't even agree which direction is up much of the time.
RadicalSubversiv E 17:02, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  PSzalapski's additions 

message: Hi, I would like to start an article on the various ballot symbols used by U.S. political parties in different states.  I have never seen a source for these anywhere.  I think with the diverse knowledge of Wikipedians, we can compile a comprehensive resource right here.  Help out at User:Pharos/List of political party ballot symbols by U.S. state.  I've already added a few for New York.  Thanks.--Pharos 21:02, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ballot symbols 

message: As I've already stated at Talk:Republican Party (United States), I don't see the need for the infobox to include a blanket "ideology" label in the first place. But if we're going to have it, our obligation is to be accurate, not to create some sort of false parallel between the Democrats and the GOP where none exists in reality. The reality is that the Republican Party is unquestionably a conservative party -- that being a relative broad labels which includes several flavors and degrees. Sure, there are a few outliers (Lincoln Chaffee comes to mind), but they are just that.
The Democrats cannot be thought of as liberal in the same sense. Democratic moderates are not an informal grouping of the "somewhat less liberal" -- they are an organized, dominant faction which specifically eschews the liberal consensus which once dominated their party, in favor of a "third way". The issue here is not an odd outlier like Zell Miller -- it's prominent party leaders like Bill Clinton, Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Harry Reid, and Tom Vilsack.
RadicalSubversiv E 19:56, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: that is all fine and dandy right there what you say. However you are suggesting (ie POV) that the democrat party (it is not democratic by anyone's measure) is less extremist than the republican, and this is false. They are way more radical, this started in 1972 when they nominated poet socialist George McGovern and they haven't stopped veering left since.--82.156.49.1 22:47, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ideological label 

message: Thanks for putting other pictures up. I was the one who added FDR's picture. Do you think we should add Howard Dean's picture, as he's the chairman of the party? --Revolución (talk) 00:27, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Thanks for adding those pictures

message: Do you think this is a good idea: A graph of how the Democratic Party has changed politically over time, you could show it starting out as conservative, then moving to liberal in the '60s, then moving a bit centrist later. I guess we should have it resting a bit left of the center for the current situation. And if it moves to the left or right politically then somebody could update it. (although I have no idea how to update an image, if somebody knows please give me some info on User talk:Revolución.) --Revolución (talk) 21:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how you could get an objective basis for setting each data point so as to draw a graph.  Furthermore, the party has moved differently on different issues.  No single number could represent the party's overall ideological location at any given moment. JamesMLane 07:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some sort of political change graph

message: 1. You cannot state unequivocally that Nader was a spoiler, because there is compelling evidence that Gore would have lost to Bush even without Nader in the race.
2. You cannot trivialize the similarities between Bush and Gore by listing only two issues. Their similarities were many and varied and were the main reason why all those people voted for Nader and Buchanan.
3. Never, never, never say that one candidate "stole" votes from another, unless you have proof of electoral fraud. Liberal votes didn't belong to Gore and conservative votes didn't belong to Bush. They belonged to the people who cast them, and if those people cast their votes for Nader and Buchanan, that's their right as Americans.
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1. By the definition of "spoiler" in this encyclopedia, Nader was a spoiler. See the link.
2. You cannot trivialize the differences between Bush and Gore by not listing all of them. The past five years ought to have demonstrated what the differences are between these two candidates.
3. I was using "stole" in the colloquial sense.
The problem here, I think, is that the description of the 2000 election focuses on the Greens and Nader, when really the election was between Gore and Bush. How do you analyze that? If not for Nader's role in Florida, he would have been a footnote to the election, just as he is a footnote to the 1996 and 2004 elections and is not mentioned here. Nader's role in the 2000 election would better be covered in the entry about Nader and the entry about the 2000 election. The description here should be written in a Bush-Gore context. Why did Gore lose to Bush, not to Nader (Gore clobbered Nader). I'm going to give some thought to this and write it up in the next few days.
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1. It could be argued that a variety of factors, including but not limited to Pat Buchanan, sight-challenged old folks, Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided this election in favor of George W. Bush and you cannot lay the whole thing at Nader's door.
2. Since you don't have a crystal ball and you cannot see into a parallel universe, you really can't say what Gore would have done differently than Bush. And I did not, by any means, list all of their similarities. I summarized.
3. Don't use "stole" in any sense. Nader and Buchanan didn't steal anything. Those votes belonged to the people who cast them, and if they cast them for someone other than Bush or Gore, hard cheese.
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No doubt a number of factors contributed to the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. That goes without saying. But Buchanan, butterfly ballots, and the like aren't the main reasons. The real question is: Why did so many vote for Bush? This Wikipedia entry deals with the Democratic Party. Why did it lose the election? The Nader discussion from the subject, as I argued earlier, and Nader in 2000 is a more fit subject for Ralph Nader. The Green Party has become a footnote in American politics.
:That's actually not the main question. The main question is, "Why did the 35,000 people who voted for Ralph Nader in Florida vote for Ralph Nader?" Why is that the question? Because most of them had previously voted Democrat and voted Democrat for other offices that year, so why did they vote for Nader over Gore for president?
::First off, there were 97,000 votes for Nader in Florida. The election ended up hinging on these votes, but really they are a small part of the larger picture that has to do with why the Demos have largely been failing to win national elections since LBJ. Carter and Clinton were anamolies. Carter benefited from Watergate and Clinton from the Perot candidacy. A real analysis of the 2000 election would look at a bigger picture than the Nader candidacy, whose chief feature was its spoiler role. Nader only got 2.7% of the vote.
:::The fact that almost 100,000 people voted for Nader in Florida alone when they could have voted for Gore actually furthers my point. And the reason that Carter and Clinton are the only two Democrats to win since LBJ is tied into the many similarities between Bush and Gore. I believe it was Harry Truman who first said that if the voters are to choose between a Republican and a Democrat pretending to be a Republican, they'll go with the Republican every time.
::::I'm pretty sure Nader and the Green Party would consider Harry Truman an imperialist warmonger if he were alive today.
::::97,000 votes is not very many votes. It constitutes only 2% of voters in Florida. I stick to my main argument, that this entry in the Wikipedia deserves a better treatment of the 2000 election, as the current one focues to narrowly on Nader and Florida.
:::::When a presidential election is decided by less than 500 votes, 97,000 votes is a lot. And the reason that those 97,000, or even 500 of those 97,000, chose Nader over Gore bothe xplains why Gore lost and ties into the section's explanation of the Party's rightward slide.
::::::Statistically, the 97,000 didn't amount to a hill of beans. Anyhow, I sure wish about 1200 of them had heeded the warnings -- some from Nader's own raiders -- and voted for Gore instead of Nader. Good night.
:::::::Something like 97% of all of Nader's Raiders backed him in 2000. The guy who didn't worked for him for six months in the '70s. "Statistically" doesn't matter. "Actually," they cost Gore the election.
::::::::Of course Nader cost Gore the election.  But in an election which is that close, there are literally thousands of things which can just as legitimately be said to have cost Gore the election.   I see no especial reason to focus on Nader. john k 04:26, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent 2000 election dispute. 

message: The wikipedia definition of Political faction states that a faction is "grouping of individuals within a political organisation," and a "power bloc, or a voting bloc." It futher states, "Where factions differ is the amount of organisation and internal structure they possess. Most factions are very loose organisations, having no definitive list of members and little in the way of common goals besides the advancement of particular individuals."
By the wikipedia definition, several of the factions under "Factions in the Democratic party" are not factions at all, but are organizations whose members have joined together to influence the Democratic Party in some way or to advance their political ideas. Under the wikipedia definiton of factions, I believe these groups should be taken out of the list of Democratic Party factions: Democratic Leadership Council, 21st Century Democrats, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Progressive Democrats of America, and African-American Leadership. These are actually organizations, not factions of the Democratic Party. Some have member lists; some are closed to outsiders; all are not "loose organizations."
What say you to making this a true list of factions? -- Groit
Those are factions. sorry, but they're staying. However, I think "Clintonistas" should be taken out, because supporters of Clinton do not even call themselves that, and most likely they could be classed under the DLC. --Revolución (talk) 22:12, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Factions in the Democratic party

message: Gun-control is a significant party platform that deserves attention as the democratic party's position is generally opposed to that of the Republican, and other parties.Tetragrammaton 01:18, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody cares what you think about the Democratic Party's position on gun control.  I don't believe that, as a matter of official party policy, the Democratic Party ever supported "total disarmament."  Nor has any Democratic presidential administration supported this.  I would be interested to see if you can find a democratic gubernatorial administration which has explicitly supported this goal.  And the fact that Clinton "supported" the Brady Campaign, which supposedly supported total disarmament, is a red herring, too - you have to demonstrate actual support for total disarmament.  Beyond this, I would add that there have always been elements of the party, especially in southern and western states, which have been good NRA soldiers, and have opposed most restrictions on guns.  At present, the Democratic position probably ranges between maintaining current gun control laws, on the laxer end, and adding some modest gun control measures beyond those already in place.  Few Democrats probably would support either rolling back the current laws, or massive new gun control efforts, and I would suggest that you'd have a tough time finding any major elected Democrats who support "outright total disarmament." john k 04:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gun Control Added for obvious reasons 

message: Most Democrats support the continued decriminalization of same-sex partnerships and progress in their nationwide acceptance, though their legal standing continues to be debated nationally. As such, the majority of the Democratic Party considers engaging in a same-sex partnership a civil right of the American people.
Is this referring to gay marriage or gay sex? I need to know, so I can change the language in this paragraph to make more sense. --Revolución (talk) 23:32, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarification please

message: Since it is apparently NPOV to add a "Negative Press" section to the Libertarian entry, I am flirting with the idea of adding similar sections to both the Democratic and Republican party articles.  Any objections?Tetragrammaton 03:14, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need input on adding a "Negative Press" section to the article 

message: I turned the list into prose. --Revolución (talk) 22:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  issues