My hometown of Simi Valley, CA, is also home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. In school, the sentiments of my peers made it clear that it was uncool to visit this nearby national landmark. Republicans were routinely ridiculed by many of my teachers, and from what I could gather in the news, Republicans were religious extremists who were uncharitable to the poor of our society. In high school, I naturally registered as a Democrat, and as a freshman at Berkeley, I freely called myself a “liberal.” This is not surprising, because at Berkeley it is considered uncool and even immoral to call yourself anything else. I stuck to this title throughout my first semester, clinging for dear life to a label that I soon realized did not fit my actual beliefs.
Since I didn’t have a TV in my dorm room, I regularly went to the Institute of Governmental Studies library on campus to watch speeches given by President Bush. The library was often so crowded that there was barely room to stand, and the incessant laughter and mockery of President Bush made it nearly impossible to hear what he was actually saying. It became clear to me that no matter what Bush said, he would be ridiculed by his opponents, because liberals would never in a million years give a Republican president a fair hearing.
In addition to attending these events at the IGS library, I was a member of the Cal Democrats. There, I saw the same behavior that I’d seen at the IGS library. There was barely any discussion, and there was no democracy. When an issue would be put to a vote, everyone else would invariably vote the same way, while I would vote often differently, unafraid of the inevitable glares that I would receive afterwards. Those with more moderate views were clearly not welcome there. Many club members informed me that I was not a Democrat. When I told them I was registered as a Democrat and that I’d identified with the Democrats throughout my life, they insisted that this meant nothing, and that in fact I was a Republican.
This plunged me into a political identity crisis. I agreed with the Democrats on most social issues, but in the arenas of economic and foreign policy, I was mostly opposed to their views. Feeling quite alienated from the Cal Democrats, I made the bold move of re-registering as a Republican, despite being told that President Bush’s days were numbered and that he was only in office because of the “injustice” of the 2000 election. I believed these claims, giving in to the notion that the country is solidly Democratic, while the Republicans were a wealthy, extremist minority.
After President Bush won re-election, those same Democrats who basically pushed me out of their club began to sullenly whine that the Christian extremists in this country have taken over the government. They make no mention of the fact that if it were only the evangelicals who had voted for Bush, he would have lost the election. The evangelicals are without a doubt a group in the Republican Party’s coalition. However, there are many other groups, including moderate ex-Democrats like me, all of which were necessary to grant Bush a second term.
There are several reasons behind Democrats being “out of touch” with the majority of Americans. They are the same reasons that pushed me, a non-religious and socially liberal person, to vote for President Bush. First of all, today’s mainstream of the Democratic Party excludes those with more moderate views.
Second, the Democrats are inconsistent and contradictory in what they claim to stand for. When I chose to register as a Democrat, I thought that I was registering with the party that emphasized the ideals of freedom, women’s rights, and tolerance. Amazingly, the Democrats support a woman’s right to have an abortion, but they neglect to denounce the mistreatment of women in Iraq and other Islamic nations. The Democrats stress the importance of freedom and often talk about the first amendment, yet they do not rejoice in the fall of the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein and the success of a democratic election in Iraq. Their trumpeting of diversity and tolerance consists of shouting down conservative voices and supporting a college admission system that gives preference to people based on their skin color.
The third reason is illustrated by Democratic leaders like Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, who would like nothing more than to see Bush fail-- no matter what the issue. This is especially dangerous in the time that we are living in, after 9/11 and after the removal of Saddam Hussein. Democratic leaders have political capital in seeing Bush fail, because the fall of President Bush would prove all of the liberals’ outlandish allegations against his policy both domestically and in Iraq. Liberals’ opposition to Bush’s firm policy against the terrorists ultimately leads to only one conclusion: they want the U.S. to lose to the terrorists in Iraq. Their hope to see Bush’s policies fail, even in this crucial time in Iraq, originates in their desire to see Bush defeated.
The Democrats do not understand that it is the issue of terrorism and their immense hatred of Bush combined, that lost them the 2004 election. The majority of Americans love the United States, and they want the terrorists defeated. Bush has proven himself to be the worst nightmare of Al Qaeda, and the Democrats’ hatred of a Republican in a time of war against terrorists leads them ultimately to downplay the successes and magnify the failures of Bush’s anti-terrorist program. In the end, it is natural to question which country the Democrats stand for. The Republican Party clearly has the interests of America as its top priority, but the Democrats feel that they must oppose everything that the Republican Party advocates. Britney Spears was ridiculed in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 for saying, “I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." After the votes for war had been cast, the Democrats should have listened to these words rather than mock them. To call the war in Iraq unjust is to wish for the failure of the U.S. troops who are fighting valiantly there, and as was shown in the 2004 election, most Americans want their country to win.
If the Democrats want their party to become relevant and powerful again, they should stop accusing other Democrats of being Republicans. When mainstream Democrats insist that moderate Democrats are actually Republicans, it is little wonder that ever greater numbers of moderate Democrats are taking this to heart and either switching parties or withdrawing their support for Democratic candidates. In my own case, the failure of the Cal Democrats to include me in their discussions and the closed-minded rhetoric coming from prominent Democratic leaders in the country both led me to abandon a party that I would have otherwise supported. If the Democrats are serious in their quest to find out why they lost the 2004 election, they should stop agreeing with each other that it is the evangelical factor that led to their defeat this year. Instead, they should pay attention to the party members that they are losing through their refusal to accommodate other opinions. If they only talk amongst their like-minded selves, they will not recognize the necessity of opening the party to mainstream America. And if the Democrats do fail to broaden the appeal of their party, the Republican Party can look forward to many more years of success.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting the Patriot