Have Democrats Been Marginalized Within Their Own Party?

We have heard a lot over the past year or so about how President John F. Kennedy wouldn't be able to garner his political party's nomination for the presidency in today's Democrat Party. An examination of his political platform and the principles he embraced would today place him on the right side of the aisle. So, why is it that in just under fifty years the political ideology of the most revered Democrat to hold office in modern times is shunned by the party he served? It's because his party – the Democrat Party – isn't the party of Democrats any longer.

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Sure, there are still some issues that Democrats view in the same light they did back in the 1960s. Democrats are more prone to being anti-war than their Conservative counterparts. They still believe in a larger role for government in the private sector. And they still believe that government has a significant role to play where poverty and the disenfranchised are concerned. Many, like Kennedy – and Roosevelt before him – also continue to believe in a strong national defense, although they still possess a great deal of concern about the “military industrial complex.” But today's Democrat Party agenda, while holding to these core issues, has evolved into a completely different political party, complete with a foreign – as in not of the Democrat Party of old – agenda. In fact, many a Democrat has come forward to espouse, “It isn't your Dad's Democrat Party anymore.” Today's Democrat Party is led by a zealous, almost fanatical faction of the party; the Progressives. This faction is more pronounced in the House of Representatives and is led by Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and her Progressive Caucus. While the Progressive ideology is less apparent in the US Senate, it does drive the Democrat majority's agenda on the major issues, especially where spending and entitlement are concerned. In the Executive Branch, the Obama Administration is born of the Progressive movement. In the Judiciary Branch, which is supposed to be apolitical, newly seated Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor joins former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsberg as the most notable Progressives. More...