Friday, July 21, 2006

Post-1972 Dems: Unlovable Losers

The national Democratic Party is just like the Chicago Cubs. Both organizations are lovable losers. Come to think of it, neither is all that lovable anymore. Both have become just losers.

[...]

The Democrats sealed their doom at the 1972 convention when they threw out Mayor Richard J. Daley and union leader George Meany, cutting themselves off from their working class and urban ethnic bases. Since then Democratic leaders (mostly from the East Coast) have been so concerned with feminist activists, gay activists, African-American activists -- though not with Latino activists -- that they have lost any sense of their own identity. They don't ask themselves where the activists will go if they don't vote Democratic. Nor do they give a hoot about Catholics, the second largest minority in the party, because they conclude the "Catholic vote" is an anti-abortion vote.
Andrew Greeley, Why Dems strike out like the Cubs


My mother being a Chicago native, I've long wondered why the old Chicago Democrats I know are nothing like the party leadership today. I have an old biography of Daley in my ever-growing "to-read" pile, which I hope can expand on his alleged expulsion from the party.

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