Other Columns by Horace Cooper
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How the mighty have fallen. In the space of forty years the world's oldest continuing political party went from absolute dominance throughout the United States to a shell of its former self. Now, with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean as its chairman and chief spokesman, the Democrats have fallen even further and are threatening to become a permanent minority for at least several generations.

Though seldom mentioned, the current political environment is, for the Democrats, more inhospitable than at any time since the Great Depression. Party leaders and the activists who make up the base have been remarkably stubborn in their refusal to learn from experience. They fantastically maintain that their election losses are a product of their inability to explain their ideas and views effectively. Actually, they are rather honest about their desire to raise taxes and neuter the U.S. military, to name two examples of where they do a fine job of explaining what they are for. Meanwhile, they do nothing to stem their downward spiral.

The 2006 elections will probably yield more disheartening results. Party switching, candidate recruiting difficulties and further losses proceed apace and, given the scope of Bush's victory in 2004, may even accelerate as the party's self-immolation accelerates. Yet Democrats within and without the party can't see what's happened and continue ineluctably towards political party denationalization.

No matter what the explanation, the Republican Party is now the majority party and is expanding its scope and range in much the same way the Democrats did in the last century.

It turns out that the Democrats reached the apogee of their political power in January 1965, when they were the masters of all they surveyed. Just forty years ago, the party held a staggering super-majority of 68 seats in the U.S. Senate and a veto-proof majority of 295 in the House of Representative while Lyndon B. Johnson was elected to his own term in the White House by the largest popular majority up to that time, winning 44 states and 486 electoral votes against Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater. And the Democrats held 33 of 50 governorships and 59 percent of all the state legislative seats.

The party truly had strength -- it was America's sixty percent plus party.

Ending perceived gaps between rich and poor, black and white, men and women and fighting Communism; you name the dramatic cultural and societal transformation goal both at home and abroad, the party put its muscle into tackling each.

Today, the Democrats are in shambles. They are on the wrong side of just about every issue and are in the process of winnowing down their base to ever smaller numbers. They have confused the voters they need to win over and keep if they are ever to regain the majority by opposing the first Hispanic attorney general, the first black woman secretary of state and many parts of the war on terror. The party that created Medicare and Social Security has adopted a shortsighted legislative policy of opposing all reforms presumably until some unknown later date.

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