Why I am a Democrat - Senator Patty Murray

When I think about why I am a Democrat, the answer is very simple: I am a Democrat because I believe everyone deserves a fair chance to succeed and an opportunity to achieve their dreams, not matter where they are born or who they are. This is one of the guiding principles of my public life. Even during difficult times, we, as a party, know that our core values and beliefs are right.

We have an opportunity to prove that our ideas for the future of this country are the ones that will carry us into the next century. Through many partisan battles, we have maintained our basic principles and brought a common sense approach to solving difficult issues.

But there is much work to be done. We must communicate our ideas effectively. Everyone must be involved. Talk with your neighbors and friends about the ideas you care about. And most important, be proud that you are a Democrat.

Together we can bring victory to Democrats in our state. We can let people know that we are the party that provides hope and opportunity for everyone. We must be loud and voice our thoughts about what is right and wrong. Then we can be proud of our work and know that we have succeeded in making our party and Washington State better.

Senator Patty Murray: Strategies: Winter 1998
(editors note: Some words hold value over time)

I am a proud Liberal - Val Smith

Enough already! I am a Liberal who is tired of being maligned, miscast and mislabeled.

I am a Democrat who takes pride in our contributions like: The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act honoring the sacrifices of veterans and providing low interest loans for home mortgages/businesses, education , job training assistance, medical care; Social Security Act providing pensions for workers, help for widows/orphans and disabled; Medicare Bill guaranteeing health insurance for those over 65; Head Start, Civil Rights Act; National Labor Relations Act protecting decent wages, safety conditions, banning unfair labor practices; Clean Air Act; and Clean Water Act .

I have been proud to be a member of the party that cares about the little guy...in contrast to the legacy that Bush and Republicans are building where “Big Business is king and the middleclass and poor are left to pay the price in terms of jobs, wage levels, environment, war casualties, taxes, medical services and infrastructure /community needs.”

Democrats remain an integral part of this country and have nothing to be ashamed of. The flag belongs to us too. We mourn the maiming and loss of our sons and daughters in the military and deaths of innocents in Iraq as do Republicans.

Why I am a Yellow Dog Democrat - Ken Burns

In 1998, Ken Burns of PBS fame gave a speech that still resonates today. The following are excerpts from that talk. “Why I am a Yellow Dog Democrat”

I was asked to speak...because some in our party thought that as a student of history, I might have a perspective on our doings.

They were also curious as to why I am a Democrat. Let me tackle the easier question first...why I am, in fact, what is called a yellow dog democrat.

First of all, I want to be in a party that looks like my country...that represents all of its people, not just the narrow interests of a moneyed few, who have by force of that unnatural wealth, been able to appeal to the lowest common denominators of fear and prejudice to advance an agenda not of positive change, but of self-interested retrenchment.

I am proud to be in a party that acknowledges that the strength of our Republic is a vigorous two-party system, that senses in its guts the infinite wisdom and genius of our founders in designing a government based on the lawful dynamic of opposition....unlike the other party which makes it clear, in word and deed, that they would be just as happy in a world without Democrats, without opposition, without healthy dissent...that is to say without the fresh air of dialogue, the fresh air of democracy.

Though it is sometimes difficult and painful to say, I am pleased I live in a world with Republicans, if only to set in spectacular relief the overwhelming good sense of my party...its staggering achievements over the last two hundred years and its positive message of growth and hope for the coming millennium.


I am proud to be in a party that has for most of its history taken the high road, refusing to divide people from each other, all the while offering a powerful vision of a prosperous, united America....all pulling in the same direction.

Remember, it is the modern Republican Party that has, for the first time in our history, run against our government...not just its policies, run against our government. Just think of it. We live in the freest, richest, least taxed country on earth, and still to them the best government ever invented is somehow not good enough. There is, of course, a honorable tradition throughout the two centuries of our history to rein our government, to ask tough questions of our elected representatives, to demand a more accurate accounting of its finances and affairs, to insure the power of states and individuals in exquisite tension with the Federal Government, but it has been the strategy of the Republican, for the first time in our history, to run against government itself.

In doing so, they have given comfort and strength and courage to the most un-democratic in our midst, sometimes with devastating consequences, avoiding the very real and complicated task of true patriots who have rolled up their sleeves and worked to constantly question, constantly reinvent government.

I am proud to be in a party informed at every level by passionate and active interest in good government, not no government.

In a party with a realistic vision of a proud future, not of a party clinging pathetically to a few old, utterly outdated slogans of knee-jerk conservatism like ”tax and spend” to tar a party, this Democratic Party. The party that is most responsible for the balanced budget and the stunning prosperity most Americans, of every political stripe, enjoy.

We are the party a majority of Americans have turned to in times of gravest national peril and doubt, a party that has seen and shepherded us throughout two cataclysmic world wars, a devastating depression, a technological race to the moon and beyond, and balanced the budget, all the while committed – in true Christian fashion – to the needs of the least among us, That is our party. We should be proud.

Our opponents constantly insist they occupy a moral high ground – selectively applying only those aspects of our shared traditions which comfortably and conveniently fit; and encouraging as they go along a form of extremism which goes against nearly every precept of our inclusive, knowledge-seeking, generous Judeo-Christian ethic.

And all in the name of conservatism.

But is it conservative to want to invade the bedrooms of every marriage in this land to impose a state-enforced version of morality, while neglecting at nearly every turn, the lasting health of its citizenry?

Is it conservative to squander the natural wealth and beauty of this great land for the short-term improvement of the bottom line of a select few men of privilege?

Is it conservative to neglect our most important resource – our children – by refusing to join in this administration’s (Clinton) efforts to establish obvious and needed standards of achievement, to set goals and priorities for an increasingly competitive world?

And is it conservative to run against a government which has for two hundred years been a beacon of hope to all he oppressed of the world, which has offered to prosperity a vision of how men and women might govern themselves, unequaled in human history?

I do not think so, and I am proud to be in a party at once conservative in the best sense of the world and progressive in its outlook for our future.

Indeed, that you, we have a job, and enjoy one of the greatest periods of prosperity, is due in a large matter to the combination of vision and tradition that this administration has brought to the most difficult questions of our times.

You know, for most Americans the learning of our history is like castor oil: dreary doses of dry dates, facts and events force-fed in boring classes with little apparent meaning in our daily life; something we know is good for us, but hardly good-tasting. It’s obvious why this has happened: many of our schools are now so concerned with teaching “relevance” that they’ve often stopped teaching history altogether and certainly taken the “story out of the great pageant we call our past.”

We also find ourselves in a mesmerizing media age which tries to convince us at every turn that if we just live in an all-consuming, and thereby forgettable present, surrounded by new gadgets and toys, that everything will be alright. After a while, we begin to suspect that it will not be alright, that we lack some inexpressible “something” that might give more meaning to our lives. I believe it is a yearning, among other things, to have a real and usable past, a yearning for heroes, for authenticity, for something that will connect us all together.

Most of us here, whether we know it or not, are in the business of words. And we hope with some reasonable expectation that those words will last. But alas, especially today, those words often evaporate, their precision blunted by neglect, their insight diminished by the sheer volume of their ever-increasing brethren, their force diluted by ancient animosities that have set one group against another.

We suffer today, the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has said, from too much pluribus and not enough unum. Few things survive in these cynical days to remind us of the union from which so many of our personal as well as collective blessings flow. And it is hard not to wonder in an age when the present moment consumes and overshadows all else – what finally does endure? What encodes and stores the genetic material of our civilization, passing down to the next generation – the best of us – what we hope will mutate into betterness for our children and our posterity?

This government, flawed as it sometimes is, holds the answer. Nothing in our lives offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does an active participation in the nitty-gritty work of self-governing.

In the midst of the Civil War;, the first (and last) great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, said “Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history---the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation”

That, “the struggle of today is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also”.
.......Ken Burns

Social Security Rip Off

Observing President Bush rush to tout his rip-off of Social Security funds for his Wall Street buddies should come as no surprise to us voters. He’s got half a billion dollars in favors to pay back...like Wall Street accessing enormous funding normally put aside for social contracts, and employers forgoing paying their half of the payroll taxes.

It’s not that Social Security will run out of funds, but that he might run out of time and balance of power in this next election period before he can meet his goal.

Appealing to fears and greed, he is willing to drive a wedge between young and old, unweave the safety net, gut the funding base, and place us at risk to repeat history.

Remember the Great Depression, stock market crash, brokers leaping from windows, banks closing, jobs disappearing, soup lines, and seniors losing everything?

The price to our children is greatly reducing their Social Security benefits, subjecting them to the risks of the stock market, and eliminating a safety net for the nation. The price to us tax payers is the trillions of dollars we will pay to subsidize this monumental screw-up.

It’s our call, voters. Which is it...honor or greed?

Coping with Realities

Reality is the well from which optimism is sometimes allowed to flourish and more often cynical pessimism is nurtured. We are the sum total of our experiences – that’s reality. We see the world through the filtered lenses of that experience and react accordingly.

I read in the paper that the poor lost housing vouchers, mental health services; Feds sent nuclear trash to Hanford; Iraqi war based on false data; death tolls rising and chaos reigns. America losing status due to AIDS policy, response to Sudan crisis, no bid contracts; refusal to share documents; torture and missing prisoners; dying from obesity while millions starve worldwide.

America is a work in progress and has need of the responsibility to stop and assess our directions and actions and “make corrections”. Because we have done that in the past is what made us a great nation. We are at the cross roads again.

It is the hard realities reaching into our community and nation that will influence our vote. We will vote a gut instinct to change America’s course and agenda because our current reality is tearing us apart as a nation.

Votes not for sale

There is much about the political season that brings out a case of the gut-busting uglies in campaigns.

I would like to remind folks, that in spite of big money seeming to influence all aspects of our democratic process, “our vote is the only thing not for sale”.

It is up to us to guard against the emotionally manipulative persuasions of media presentations. It is up to us to focus on the issues.