What Happened to The Democrats?

First posted as a comment on PJM, Ed Driscoll.
A POTUS on a Squishee Bender can sure do some Crazy Things

The preceding (Driscoll) thread was on how Obama is fostering discontent among traditionally Democratic working class white voters by exhibiting "The Affect of Adlai Stevenson, The Effect of Jimmy Carter."

Would Adlai Stevenson have allowed any of the people around Obama into his wife's house? The extraordinary decline in the Democrats bench over the last 60 years is a story that needs telling. Illinois gave the nation Adlai Stevenson and Paul Douglas. Read up on them, even in the Wiki.

What happened?

Both those gentlemen were liberals, that is to say that they were members of the Democratic Party's Liberal wing in the United States who served with honor. There was no doubt that their loyalties covered the contents of that sentence, in reverse order. First they were Gentlemen. They held themselves to code of honest conduct more demanding than anything they could expect from others. Even those of us who disagree with their preferred policies should acknowledge their basic decency and desire to serve others more than themselves. Second they were Patriots who unhesitatingly offered all they had for their country. Douglas volunteered for World War Two at the age of 50 and earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star as an Officer of Marines. Stevenson volunteered for the Navy during the First World War before he went to college but did not see combat. They were Liberals and Ideologues in the honest sense of the word. They entered politics not as a career for those to lazy to get a job but because they wanted to help. To that end they were Democrats and fought for their party but they were not hacks willing to push the worse man over the better because the machine was all they had. They both worked with the machine but they were never its creatures. These were men who knew who they were and where they came from. They understood and cared deeply about America, its history, culture, values and people.

Compare them to the people who are in positions of power or influence in today's Democratic Party. By every one of the above criteria the current crop are inferior. Their fundamental trait is their mendacity. These are people who will resort to any stratagem, use any operative, promote any slander or panic, to advance their personal power. They distrust and even despise the country, seeing it as either a malevolent threat to others or as a resource to be exploited. Their Liberalism is a far cry from the fight for inclusion and liberty and protection from the petty tyrants of small towns or large factories that had motivated Stevenson and Douglas, and Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey too. The current Democrats have a program of regimentation, stereotyping, grievance mongering and subjugation to bureaucrats and arbitrary bosses everywhere. They effect to resurrect a primitive model of party machine organization, although they have no real loyalty to the party, being willing to supplant it with outside agents like Acorn. In fact they have no loyalty to anything other than themselves, not even to each other.

Today's people of influence or leadership in the Democratic Party are most distinct from the giants of the past in lacking what I saw s the salient characteristic of the later, people "who knew who they were and where they came from." Consider some of the most influential Democrats of today, Soros Holbrooke Pelosi and Obama.

George Soros has controlled or funded the most influential tools of the Left. He spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars over decades to fight the Bush Republicans. His opinions have sunk deep into America's psyche. He personally promoted Barack Obama from an obscure local politician and supported his presidential run. He is a man completely cut off from his roots. He is a former Jew who collaborated with the Nazis and openly or secretly promoted the most extreme or divisive elements that can weaken Israel, the United States or our allies, such as the British.

Richard Holbrooke is of a similar if lesser status. He holds positions of great influence over American policy but he has no knowledge of his own origins. His grandfather was Jewish but he does not even know his name. It is not that his near ancestors were immigrants, it is that his values are purely a matter of personal choice or fashion. They can be selected or dropped on a whim because they reflect no larger legacy. A person can come to America from China or Russia or some other place with a history steeped in repression. Nearly all of us came or have ancestors who came from such places. For most they can reflect on the attributes of that culture that reaffirmed human dignity and the examples, often punished in parable, of arbitrary authority. They can bring that heritage to the Anglo-American tradition that underlays our Constitution and personalize it. Holbrooke cannot do that. He can only evaluate our traditions like a dispassionate outside observer. As a diplomat he could be technically proficient but how could he represent America to the Other?

Nancy Pelosi is the scion of a notorious Baltimore family. The level of corruption and Mob influence in that city during the 1930's and 40's is a given although nothing can be proven against her father the Mayor. Her wiki has no reference to any questionable sources for her wealth or that of her husband or father. Her background is possibly as artificial as her facial appearance.

Last, I will leave it to the reader to judge if he is the least, is Barak Obama. He is a man whose entire life has been the construction of a public facade that served two purposes. One is the projection of an acceptable image to manipulate and control the hated majority power structure. That was openly discussed in "Dreams of My Father." The second purpose was the need to create a secure shell so that he could explore or invent who he is. Here is a man of apparently approximately 1/6th Black African ancestry who has based his values on his identification with a man, his presumptive father, who he barely knew who had himself largely invented himself as a leader of the native population in an anti-colonial movement. The voyage of self discovery for Obama is a continuing process. He has not internalized his identification, either with the legacy of Africa or his inheritance from America. Therefor he cannot bring that with him when he meets the world. He must arbitrarily choose what he finds appropriate and valuable every day.