The Democratic Party has walked away from being the natural majority political party in the United States, with 60% of the adult population in 1964, to a 37% total in the 2004 election. This is a loss of market share of approximately 40%, an astounding amount equalled by other disasters like the self-destruction of General Motors over the same period of time. The Democratic Party has accomplished this feat by ceasing to appeal to the broad national security and cultural concerns of the American people in favor of kook leftism, reflexive anti-military sentiments, and the boutique social issues of various elites and interest groups.

Probably the most profoundly negative results for the Party come from its anti-military stance. How’s this for anti-war: 85% or so of Democrats, according to Gallup:

Or this, regarding Gitmo, with 55% of Democrats in the Durbin camp — or is that gulag?:

These numbers should be extraordinarily disturbing for Democratic Party leaders for several reasons: (1) this is a poll of 1006 adults, not voters, so it understates substantially the GOP’s advantage in real elections and real voting; (2) notice in each question — the war in Iraq and Gitmo — that independents favor the Republican positions by significant margins. Given that the 2004 vote split 37/37 D and R in party affiliation, a big loss among independents is really big trouble for Democrats at the polls.

But what to do? We noted in January that the polls showed that a large margin of Democrats and Democrat voters favored obstruction of the Bush agenda, and no compromises with the administration. Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, many of the big donors and activists are in the lunatic fringe, and no party leaders, understandably enough, choose loudly to oppose the money and the energy of these people.

The sad reality is that the Democratic Party has simply walked away from being the majority political party in the United States. In 1964, according to the Census Bureau, over 60% of the adult population of the US were Democrats. You have to alientate a lot of people to lose 40% of your market share.

The systemic problem that the Democratic Party faces is that as it continues to shrink, the wing-nuts who were once a minority of the party come to be the majority; the normal people keep exiting. Hence the nuts continue to gain influence, as is evidenced by Dick Durbin’s comments and John Conyers’ fantasy impeachment hearings. Durbin and Conyers no longer are told to cool it by a loud majority of sensible members of their party, because a lot of them, a lot of us, have already left the building.

A final thought

Perhaps you think the use of the word “lunatic” is imprecise, rash, or improper, and would prefer a term that is more political, such as “hard Left.” However, comparing US soldiers to the trifecta of Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot is more than a political act; it bespeaks a deeply deranged view of the world. Similarly, the Conyers fantasy impeachment included not only the canard about the Jews being behind 9-11, but plenty of paranoid rantings about Bush’s desire to invade Iraq — prior to September 2001 — to profit Halliburton and his and Dick Cheney’s friends.

When you take grand conspiracy theories out of the realm of summer beach reading and make them the core of your political beliefs, you have exited the world of political discourse and entered that of psychology.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Left of Left, Polling, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.