I found this on
Plastic.
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I've also cracked many a Democrat-Whig joke, and if I recall correctly, Hunter S. Thompson was making that connection back in the 1980s in his newspaper column. A
closer inspection draws some curious parallels and non-parallels to today's Democratic Party*.
Selcected excerpts:
In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch and favored a program of modernization and economic development...The Whigs saw President Andrew Jackson as a dangerous man on horseback with a reactionary opposition to the forces of social, economic and moral modernization...They argued that Congress, not the President, reflected the will of the people...Whigs sought to promote faster industrialization through protective tariffs, a business-oriented monetary policy with a new Bank of the United States, and a vigorous program of "internal improvements" — especially to roads and canal systems — funded by the proceeds of public land sales. The Whigs also promoted public schools, private colleges, charities, and cultural institutions.
When one reads this description of the Whigs, it isn't clear that they are similar to the modern Democrats, because the Democrats haven't been much of an opposition: Hell, they've basically enabled the Bush agenda: 29 Senate Democrats voted for the war, 21 against. In the House, there were 81 Democrats for and 126 against. Then there is the reauthourisation of the Patriot Act, which Democrats enabled, and the Bush Tax cuts, etc.
So I don't think that the Democrats are nearly as active in thwarting Bush as the Whigs were intent at thwarting Jackson.
Where that funny Dem-Whig connection comes in is in these excerpts:
The Whigs' internal disunity and the nation's increasing prosperity made the party's activist economic program seem less necessary, and led to a disastrous showing in the 1842 Congressional elections...The Whigs, both northern and southern, strongly opposed the war with Mexico, which they (including Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln) saw as an unprincipled land grab, but they were split (as were the Democrats) by the anti-slavery Wilmot Proviso of 1846... In 1848 the Whigs, seeing no hope of succeeding by nominating Clay and pushing their economic policies, selected Zachary Taylor, a Mexican-American War hero and adopted no platform at all....Increasingly politicians realized that the party was a loser. For example, Abraham Lincoln, its Illinois leader, simply walked away and attended to his law business.
The eventual fallout within the Whigs was one of the contributing factors in the formation of that era's Republican policy, which was more progressive and liberal than some within the entrenched leadership of the parties, who preferred power over principle. Democrats who deny that a better political party can form from the faction that splits off should note the Whig-Republican connection.
I also enjoy the old canard about how a Green party candidate cost the Democrats the 2000 election. The thought that enough Nader voters would have voted for Gore is charming, but I'm not entirely convinced that Nader voters wouldn't have just voted for some other far-out guy, or no one at all. I didn't want to vote for Gore, and I wouldn't have voted for him even if Nader had dropped out. Why? Because Gore and his cabinet would have been every bit the hacks that Clinton's team were, and GW Bush's team is, and Kerry's team would have been. I don't understand this gilded memory of the Clinton years that distinguishes it much from the Reagan years or the current Bush terms: some good, a lot of bad, and a whole bunch of "meh". Clinton-Gore may have cultivated a nice economic touch, but Reagan did for a while too, remember. Clinton-Gore may have destroyed Saddam's WMD in 1998, but the also gave legal recognition to the concept of "regime change" there. That administration also had a hand the glorious adventures in the former Yugoslavia and didn't have a hand in the Rwandan genocide. In addition, Clinton's oil policies were equally cynical when it came to money vs. human rights.
The thought of four more years of slick Democratic profiteering didn't appeal to every person left of center, the the implication that Gore rightfully deserved the votes of progressives is insulting.
The political insurgencies such as Perot and Nader (and even "mavericks" like McCain and Dean) are based in a revulsion of "empty politics", i.e., naked political greed. However, the Democratic party* is rife with such power lust.
Politics is great as a concept, expressing one's ideals through public service, but it is also great as a business, and it employs a great many people whose sole ambition is to collect a paycheck via marketing, not any real impetus for change. I have a feeling that a majority of the power brokers on the inside of the Democratic party structure are far more concerned with keeping up the mortgage payments on their upscale homes than ensuring home ownership for the working class, or releasing enough capital gains to pay private school tuition for their own children, instead of improving public education for all.
The Democratic party takes private citizen's money and funnels it back into its own employee's salaries, using political advertising as their medium to attract more money. The party, as evidenced by the Clinton years and the acquiescense to the Bush agenda, is more concerned with incumbency than with an agenda.
Enter Mr. Hackett, who while not a standard progressive by anyone's imagination, was compelling enough to attract nearly half the vote in a solidly Republican area, while running left in his race. But just as compelling to voters as his politics was his attitude, and that's what scares the Democratic establishment the most: they are terrified that he will rightly call them empty suits, with the authority of the junior senator from Ohio. Because if he's on television questioning why the hell they bend over and take it from the Republicans, they too may fall victim to voter discontent.
By only standing for their own power and not any values that aren't based on the whims of the polls, the Democrats are marching towards the same fate as the Whigs--and again, it was the progressive Whigs who catapulted the fledgling Republican party to success.
*when i say "Democratic Party", i am referring to a corporate cadre of several thousand paid employees, who decide "the message", not the millions of Americans who consider themselves Democrats based on an assumed set of center/left values.
