The once great Democratic Party

People have said to me, “What personnel examples do you have of the demise of the Democratic Party?”

I have argued in academic circles and elsewhere that the Democrats have not always been so unprincipled as they have since they have become exclusively the anti-Donald-Trump Party, unable or unwilling to set policy that will benefit Americans in general.

Their uniting to defeat several times that which passed the House of Representatives to fund again the Department of Homeland Security-which has disabled a number of important agencies such as FEMA, the Coast Guard and more-is just indefensible. ICE, their Bête noire, is an item of allegedly unavoidable anguish, but it is already funded for the foreseeable future.

Since the Democrats are almost uniformly irresponsible, I thought I would demonstrate how some previous political senatorial leaders from the responsible left might have made a difference.

I have written and will continue to write about the plunge in responsibility, integrity and quality of today’s Democratic senators and representatives.

Here are some quality Democratic senators of the last 30 years of the 20th Century — Outside of Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, I am unable to come up with any current Democratic senators, for example, who reach their level of governing and representative excellence in the 2020s.

Going back to the 1970s and 1980s, however, there is a change in kind — here are some senators who are patriotic Americans who would not have voted to hurt the country in order to visit their vitriol on a Republican president.

Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) [Such a good, decent man]

Pat Moynihan (D-NY) [Great and personally impressive — the analogue to today’s Republican John Kennedy]

Frank Church (D-ID)

William Proxmire (D-WI)

Edmund Muskie (D-ME)

Abraham A. Ribicoff (D-CT)

Birch Bayh (D-IN) [One of my personal favorites]

Gaylord Nelson (D-WI)

Thomas Eagleton (D-MO) [Such a decent man]

Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX)

Sam Nunn (D-GA) [So intellectually on top of everything]

John Glenn (D-OH)  [So impressive in substance and demeanor]

Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WASH)

Joe Lieberman (D-CT)

I do not always find the answer to ill-advised or even reckless behavior by political leaders by looking to the past, but this contrast seems striking.

Does anyone know why this transformation of the Democratic Party has occurred? Is it just cowardice in opposing the Squad? Just cowardice in general?

Are there no more John Fettermans left in the party?

Amy Klobuchar, what happened to you?

It seems that there used to be two parties populated by a majority of senators and representatives who cared more about country than momentary self-serving political gain.

There shouldn’t be any Profiles in Courage written about any of these men and women.