Democratic Party

From Conservapedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rockamerica (Talk | contribs) at 20:29, July 17, 2007. It may differ significantly from current revision.

Jump to: navigation, search
Official logo of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States of America. It is generally seen as being politically between center and left of center, while the rival Republican Party is positioned to the right of center (see political spectrum theory). Members and supporters of the Democratic Party are known as Democrats.

The Democrats currently control the 110th United States Congress together with the majority of State governorships and legislatures.[1] According to a Pew Research Center poll, 50 percent of Americans identify themselves with the Democratic Party as opposed to 35 percent for the Republican Party.[2] However, Democrats have served out only three of the last ten presidential terms. Democrats in the US Congress currently have a 66.0% disapproval and only a 25.0% approval rating -- the lowest in ten years since the Impeachment trial of President Clinton -- according to the RealClearPolitics Average of several dozens of Congressional Job Approval polls conducted 06/11 - 07/11. [3] Investor's Business Daily remarked, "For all the promises of its new Democratic leaders, Congress seems truly interested in doing only one thing: surrendering in Iraq. No wonder its public approval ratings have sunk below the president's." [4]

Like the Republicans, the Democrats are currently selecting their candidate for the 2008 presidential election; the front-runners in the contest are Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. The most recent president who was a Democrat was Bill Clinton, who served from 1993 to 2001.

History

The Democratic Party was founded in 1792 by Thomas Jefferson as a congressional caucus to fight for the Bill of Rights and to oppose the elitist Federalist Party led by Alexander Hamilton, which fought for the Constitution.

In 1798 , the party was officially named the "Democratic-Republican Party", and in 1800 Jefferson was elected as the first Democratic President of the United States. Jefferson, a member of the landed gentry and a slave owner, served two terms as president with distinction, and was succeeded by another Democrat, James Madison, in 1808 . During Madison's tenure, the United States fought the United Kingdom to a draw in the War of 1812. James Monroe, another Democratic-Republican, was elected president in 1816 and led the nation through a time commonly known as "The Era of Good Feelings". In this period, the party dominated American politics with little opposition. Monroe was followed by John Quincy Adams who won the hotly contested election of 1824, becoming the first son of a former president to be elected president.

Andrew Jackson, defeated Adams in the 1828 election and signed into law the Indian Removal Act of 1830 [5] according to the Democratic National Committee's website is "considered — along with Jefferson — one of the founding fathers of the Democratic Party." [6] Annual Jefferson-Jackson Day celebrations nationwide by local chapters of the Democratic Party commemorate the two founders of the Democratic Party. [7] The Indian Removal Act, enforced through a series of dishonest dealings with native people such as the Treaty of Dancing Rabitt Creek and the Treaty of New Echota, resulted in the wholesale deportation of Native Americans from the Southeastern states to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). <http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/>

The Jacksonian period also saw the expansion of the voting franchise as most states did away with, or decreased property requirements for voting. The beneficiaries of the expansion of the franchise however, were nearly all white males. Annual Jefferson-Jackson Day celebrations nationwide by local chapters of the Democratic Party commemorate the two founders of the Democratic Party. [8]

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who served as President from 1933 to 1945, led the United States during the Great Depression and throughout most of the Second World War. Due to his popularity and courageous leadership during the war, he remains the only President elected to three terms. Under his successor, Harry Truman the United States emerged a victor from World War II and articulated the Doctrine of Containment which committed the U.S. to stop the spread of global Communism. Truman ordered the Berlin airlift in 1948 and sent U.S. troops to Korea in 1950.

Policies and criticism

In June 2005, while Democrats held a mock impeachment inquiry in President's Bush's foreign policy, anti-Semitic materials were distributed at the Democratic Party National headquarters. The literature claimed that an Israeli company had warning of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and an "insider trading scam" on Wall Street had occurred simultaneously. [9]

The views of individual Democrats sometimes diverge from the party's official stance as expressed in its national platform, however unlike the Republican party, the Democratic National Committee has not allowed dissenting opinions to share the podium on matters such as abortion at National Conventions.

R. Emmetrt Tyrell has been highly critical of the currect Democratic leadership, stating, "Can anything embarrass Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership? Frankly I doubt it. They are all neatly shut off from the world in their fantasy of moral and intellectual superiority." [10]

Economic policy

In the field of economic policy, Democrats favor high progressive taxes, higher government spending and increasing the minimum wage.'[Citation Needed]

The Democratic Party has historically had ties to organized labor. The National Education Association,[11] the largest union of public school teachers, is a backbone of the party, supplying the largest number of delegates to its national conventions.[Citation Needed]

In addition to the Democratic party's alleged stance to "tax the rich," Democrats have proposed a 50 cent per gallon tax increase on gasoline which would disproportionately hurt those least able to absorb the cost at a time when worldwide gas prices are at historic highs. [12]

Foreign and military policy

According to its platform, the Democratic Party has the objective of strengthening America. Democratic national leadership has been accused of being ambivalent about terrorism[13] and insufficiently patriotic. [14]

Education

An organization affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council called the Progressive Policy Institute which claims a long standing opposition to school vouchers [15] reported Jonathan Alter of Newsweek saying,

"Can wealthy white liberals - many of whom send their kids to private school - really say to poor parents: 'We can have choices, but you must not?'...This is a glaring hypocrisy sitting at the heart of the liberal opposition to targeted vouchers… Right now, Democrats are in a highly compromised position on education." [16]

Environment vs Labor

Two other important coalition groups also find themselves in direct conflict with each other within the Democratic party coalition--Environmentalists and Labor Unions.[Citation Needed] While environmentalists support efforts like clean air and alternative fuels, for example, this creates tension with the workers of American automobile manufactures whose jobs are threatened by environmental policies such as increasing regulations and high costs. Such policies can lead to cutbacks and layoffs. Balancing these issues is difficult because some sacrifices of interests must be made by both sides.

Healthcare

The Democrat fondness for heavy government intervention into the marketplace[Citation Needed] and social engineering[Citation Needed] means that a significant proportion of their base and of their candidates for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election ideologically favor introducing a system of socialized healthcare[Citation Needed]; regardless of the crippling tax burden this would require to sustain itself[Citation Needed] and the low standard of care achieved by socialized health programs in other countries compared to the United States.[Citation Needed] Despite these disadvantages, Democrats generally regard universal healthcare to be a priority because of the appeal to nearly 50 million voters without any kind of health insurance. Among the leading proponents for this idea include Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John Edwards; the latter formerly being the running mate to Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Election.

Homosexual Agenda

Democrat lawmakers and opinion-formers consistently favor measures such as the establishment of same-sex civil unions, gay marriage and gay adoption of heterosexual children over defense of the traditional family. Likewise they are vigorous in attempting to amend "hate crime" laws to make criticism of the homosexual lifestyle illegal;[17] while at the same time supporting efforts to disseminate favorable opinions regarding homosexuality through channels such as the mainstream media and even the educational system in the face of opposition from churches and religious authorities, a broad coalition of Republican and Independent politicians and a clear majority of the American public[Citation Needed]. Democrats reject the idea of a Homosexual agenda preferring to speak in terms of "gay rights" when this issue is raised; the Democratic Party is the recipient and beneficiary of funding from homosexual lobbying groups and can be seen by their positions as the United States' largest and most powerful de facto supporter of the Homosexual Agenda. [18]

Other Policies

Democrats frequently support the minimum wage, workplace protections, the right of women to choose to have an abortion, gun control, gay marriage, and the separation of church and state.

Religion

In the United States, there is some correlation between religious and political affiliation, though people of all faiths and denominations can be found among the supporters of each of the main parties.

Both historically and today, Catholic voters have had a tendency to identify with the Democratic Party[Citation Needed], and a number of Democratic office-holders, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, are Catholics. However, several general ideals of the Democratic Party's platform - most notably, the party's overall support for the legality of abortion - are contrary to the position of the Catholic Church.[Citation Needed]

With regard to Protestant Christians, members of Evangelical churches in particular are associated with the Republican Party. One unusual feature of the Democratic Party, however, is that it draws substantial support both from committed African-American Protestant Christians and from secular and atheist white voters.[Citation Needed] The strong opposition to homosexuality found among many Black Protestant Christians (and, indeed, among orthodox Catholics) contrasts strikingly with the support frequently shown by other Democrats for the homosexual agenda.[Citation Needed]

Democrats also generally believe that religion should be separate from public life, and as such are typically supported by the ACLU. For example, in 1999 the Congress took up a bill to protect the display of the Ten Commandments. In the House of Representatives, over 3/4ths of the Democratic party members voted to remove the display. [19]. The measure did not pass the Legislature, and as a result when Justice Roy Moore posted a Ten Commandments display in his courthouse, the ACLU was able to have the display removed.

Democratic Presidents

See also

References

  1. ↑ Multistate.com Post-Election 2006 Maps
  2. ↑ Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 Pew Research Center, 22 March 2007
  3. ↑ RealClearPolitics Congressional Job Approval Poll, 06/11 - 07/11.
  4. ↑ The Do-One-Thing Congress, Investor's Business Daily, May 15, 2007.
  5. ↑ Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal, by Robert Remini.
  6. ↑ Democratic National Committee, Our History, retrieved 25 March 2007.
  7. ↑ String of Successes Enlivens Democratic Party, Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, 22 February 2007.
  8. ↑ String of Successes Enlivens Democratic Party, Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, 22 February 2007.
  9. ↑ Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War, Dana Milbank, Washington Post, June 17, 2005.
  10. ↑ Vietnam All Over Again By R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., The New York Sun, May 11, 2007.
  11. ↑ National Education Association homepage
  12. ↑ Dingell to propose 50 cent gasoline tax increase, By Chris Good, The Hill, July 07, 2007.
  13. ↑ "Democrats, ACLU Outraged Over Traveler Terrorism Screening Program" C. Johnson, Associated Press
  14. ↑ CNN Saturday Morning NewsTranscript: December 1, 2001
  15. ↑ 21st Century Schools Project Bulletin: Special Edition Putting Vouchers in Perspective, PPI E-newsletter 2 July 2002
  16. ↑ Center For Education Reform, Monthly Letter to Friends No. 75, Back to School 2002.
  17. ↑ Christian belief a 'hate crime' under plan, WorldNetDaily, March 3, 2007.
  18. ↑ Human Rights Campaign, opensecrets.org
  19. ↑ http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/06/18/gun.rollcall/ten.commandments.html

External links

Retrieved from "https://conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Democratic_Party&oldid=238280"