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Richard Weinberg's avatar

Your essay is generally reasonable, but I think it reflects a distorted leftist view of the real electoral problems faced by Democrats. The problems of US society can be viewed as an economic struggle between the haves and have-nots, but this fails to explain why so many Americans loathe the contemporary Democratic party. As you suggest, Democratic theorists are often too blinded to recognize the nuggets of wisdom in critiques from e.g. Fox News. I suggest that THE electoral problem Democrats face is their Culture War extremism.

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Jens Heycke's avatar

"Democrats were the principal supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965..."

Give me a break.

Both these measures passed with a much higher percentage of Republicans supporting them than Democrats.

The Civil Rights Act suffered a 24-hour filibuster by a Democrat. The Voting Rights Act had a 60 day filibuster by Al Gore (Sr.), Will Fulbright, and Robert Byrd. Any of those names sound familiar? They were all Democrats.

Without the strong support of Republicans neither measure would have passed.

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