Time for the Democrats to Change Their Name

Christopher Hitchens wrote a recent column about Democrats' objections to the elections in Iraq. He was reacting to complaints that the elections had nothing to do with the original mission in Iraq, that they would lead to an Iran-style theocracy, and that elections held ahead of nation-building will lead to strife if not war.

You can read Hitchens's rebuttal to these points but this is only one aspect of a general trend among Democrats - they don't like democracy any longer.

Part of this is a reaction to Bush's foreign policy. Bush is pushing democracy as a general cure for terrorism. Bush has a point. Previous US support for dictators is supposed to have been one of the root causes for September 11 so support for open elections would seem to be a reasonable response. Because of Bush Derangement Syndrome, anything Bush supports must be opposed so the left has been looking for bad news in every foreign election in the last couple of years.

Domestically, a core of Democrats are convinced that American elections are fixed. This started with the 2000 election which they insist Gore won, no matter what independent counts show. It got worse in 2004. According to the reasoning in 2000, the candidate who won the popular vote should be president no matter what the Electoral College shows. Bush won both the popular and the electoral vote but Kerry came close enough that he could have won the electoral vote if Ohio or Florida had voted differently. That led Democrats to insist that Kerry HAD won one or both of those states but the voting machines were fixed. There was no proof, just some statistical anomalies that turned out to be unimportant plus an endorsement of Bush by the management of a major voting machine company.

Then there was the 2005 Ohio initiatives where voter reforms sponsored by MoveOn were defeated despite a poll showing them ahead. The 2004 exit polls are also the main case for vote-tampering.

What this comes down to is that the Democrats no longer trust elections. Either the "wrong" candidate is elected or the election is fixed. There are constant rants about this on the Huffington Post and Kos. Calls for armed overthrow of the USA pop up now and then.

Even the more level-headed Democrats are distrustful of elections. The recent book, "What's the Matter with Kansas" insists that the Republicans get citizens to vote against their own interests through the use of wedge issues that have nothing to do with everyday life.

As one of the two major parties in America, democrats have a duty to uphold democracy. Go ahead and investigate election disputes but be vocal about the results. Investigations in Ohio found that there was no voter fraud. Even the long lines were equally distributed between the parties. A manual audit of punched card ballots in a state where Kerry won but Bush did better than expected proved the accuracy of the tabulating machines. Many counties in Florida were dissatisfied with the lists of convicts and did not strike any of them from the voter rolls (allowing people to vote who were not entitled to).

Democrat leaders know all of this but they are silent. Instead they let rage against Bush fester, hoping to use it to win future elections.

As for foreign elections, 9/11 showed that we have a stake in promoting democracy abroad. Granted many elections will come out anti-American but the whole point of democracy is allowing the marketplace of ideas into politics. Again, Democrat leaders need to support any policy that makes America safer, even if it comes from President Bush.

If they aren't going to support democracy then they can't call themselves "Democrats". Maybe they should change their name to "Autocrats".