Senator Schumer
warns Democrats:
I think New Deal democracy, which is still the basis for the Democratic Party, is gone. In this sense, not in certain deep-values senses, but in this sense. New Deal democracy, as it evolved, became a conglomeration of groups, and Franklin Roosevelt patched together a coalition that was diverse in many ways, but he did things for each that each of the groups wanted. And as we went past Franklin Roosevelt, it became more so that way. And so the Democratic Party said, “you’re an environmentalist? I’ll do this for you.” “You’re a civil libertarian? I’ll do this for you.” “You’re a labor-union member? I’ll do this for you.” Technology has changed everything. And one thing technology has done is homogenize all of us. The person who lives in rural Nebraska and the person who lives in south Brooklyn buy the same products, see the same things on TV… They’re far closer today than they were in 1932 or 1962. And so appealing to groups doesn’t quite work. And I think in certain ways it hurts us. On each issue we sort of let the group decide what we want to do, and the group tends to be far over to the left side and it pulls us away from talking to average Americans.
and this gem about Harvard:
I went through was in the late ’60s at Harvard, and it influenced me dramatically. I was against the war; I cut my teeth in the McCarthy campaign, but when the radicals came in, I was appalled. I kept saying to them, “You know, if the war is wrong, why can’t we convince other people?” You know, they had all these theories and Marcuse and al that, the public’s been brainwashed by the media. I had more faith in the average citizen. You know, they’d go over to police officers, right up to their nose and go PIG, so they would hit him … provoke the police officer. And I would go to them, I would say, “What are you doing? That guy’s trying to earn a living.” Those were the people I grew up with, and I lived through a mobocracy. I lived in a mini-French Revolution and it was of the left and it was of well-to-do people, but it influenced me profoundly. The point I’m making, I thought that underneath it all, what was trying to happen then was shifting from a society of self-interest to a society of the greater good, and it didn’t work. And the people I met at Harvard in the late ’60s were the most unhappy people I ever met, and some of them are still my friends and they haven’t been able to put their lives back together. Harvard screwed them up, particularly the guys and gals who came from small towns in the Midwest and South. They couldn’t go home but they didn’t feel comfortable there. So I’m not sure if this eleemosynary Let’s All Work Together for the Common Good can carry a political philosophy and appeal to enough voters to create a majority.
If Senator Schumer keeps this up he will not have too many friends in the Democratic Party.
