The Divisions in the Democratic Party

Aug. 9, 2006 — -- After Joe Lieberman's defeat Tuesday night in the Connecticut Democratic primary, the question most political observers are asking is whether the polarization so evident in American politics since the 2000 red state-blue state division is destined to become worse.

Clearly Lieberman's defeat exposes a deep division within the Democratic Party, but it may not be the one the most pundits talked about Tuesday night in assessing the implications of Lieberman's defeat.

The division is not between the anti-war left and the pro-war moderates, as most political commentators reported.

Most Democrats, including most Lieberman voters, are anti-Iraq war, and most Lieberman voters call themselves liberals -- the author included.

The division in the Democratic Party reflected in the Connecticut primary election is, in fact, between progressive Democrats who care about holding the center of American politics to reclaim the Congress and the White House from conservative Republican dominance vs. purist ideological Democrats who care more about one or two issues rather than assessing Democratic leaders by the sum of their work and helping them to win elections and reverse Republican conservative policies.

This could be stated, perhaps oversimplistically, as the division between the pragmatic progressives and the purist left within the Democratic Party. If this sounds familiar to baby boomers, it is.

In the 1960s, the Vietnam War similarly divided the Democratic Party.

Anti-war Democrats -- the writer included -- worked and voted to oust an incumbent Democratic president because he had led the nation into a tragic war in Vietnam.

President Johnson's outstanding liberal record creating the anti-poverty program, the Great Society social programs, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were completely ignored.

The only thing that mattered was the Vietnam War.

Even in the general election, when the great Democratic liberal, then Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, was the nominee against the hated Richard Nixon, the purist anti-war left spoke openly that it would be better to elect Nixon and "purge" the Democratic Party of the impure pro-Vietnam War moderates and lose in 1968 rather than compromise and support Humphrey, who was overly apologetic about Johnson's tragic Vietnam War policies.

Well, the liberal purists of 1968 got a lot more than they bargained for. Beginning with Nixon, the conservative-dominated Republican Party won five out of six presidential elections by landslide margins.