Yellow Dogs

By Jay -- Ottawa

“Yellow Dog Democrat” defined: an unflinching party loyalist who votes for the Democratic ticket even when the party elevates as its candidate a scoundrel, a dead man or, for that matter, a mangy four-legged cur.  The term goes back to the nineteenth century.  The term is applicable today in the twenty-first century.  I speak of Democrats who will not budge, who will not think out of the box, no matter what.

The term is key to help me understand why many an otherwise sensible commenter, in this blog and elsewhere, continues to stick with Obama, despite his consistent betrayal of the best principles that stand for – or used to stand for -- the Democratic Party.  Yellow Dog Democrats are rarely enthusiastic about Obama.  How could they be in light of his abject failures and acknowledged willingness to turn his back on truth itself?   And yet they back him. 

Humanist ideals like compassion, or philosophical principles like the lesser of two evils argument, are usually advanced in defense of the sure thing Yellow Dog vote for Obama in 2012; but I’m not convinced about their being motivated by high principle.  Fear of Republican candidates and justices is often mentioned.  I think it’s just life-long habit, inertia, timidity and, most importantly, a failure to see the equal sign between the labels “Democrat” and “Republican.”  Note how the Yellow Dog Democrats regularly criticize just about everything and everybody affiliated with the Republican Party.  They have sidebars in their blogs mocking Republican gaffes and misdeeds.  They are trying to erase that equal sign.  Republicans bad, Democrats not so bad.  See the difference?  Is the Democratic Party of Obama, Pelosi and Reid much better?  Couldn’t right wingers post entertaining sidebars about Democratic hypocrisy?  Well, maybe the Democrats are a wee bit better.  But statistically significant, as they say?  I don’t think so.  At times the Democratic leadership under Obama has been out in front of the Republicans in pleasing the elites.  If Republicans gave away honorary degrees, Obama would gotten one for each of the past three years he's been in office. 

Since Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party has been in the ring against the Republican Party like a boxer who intends to throw the fight.  Republicans and Democrats take big money from the same corporate and financial giants.  Neither side touches the Pentagon’s bloated budgets for endless, pointless wars.  The Patriot Act, tax breaks for the rich: extended.  The aggressive Republicans and the spineless Democrats have been moving shoulder to shoulder down the same road to the same goal: national collapse.  If principle had motivated Obama and the Democrats since January 2009, the nation and the world would be in much better shape today.  The Democrats got a mandate in 2009, which they didn’t want.  They shadow boxed with the other party.  The Republican party should be on the ropes today.  Instead, the world is on the ropes.  The elites at ringside smile and puff their cigars. 

Yellow Dog Democrats write, but they don’t fight.  Yellow Dog Democrats take the crumbs and lick the hands of those who abuse them.  Where were the Yellow Dog Democrats in 2000 when the election was stolen, votes not counted, the losing candidate appointed to office by five Justices with a decision that didn’t parse?  Yellow Dog Democrats hardly even barked.  They should have been in the streets.  Where are the Yellow Dog Democrats today when the young, the old and the Middle Class are being thrown under the bus?  They bark, but they don’t bite.

Yellow Dog Democrats brag about the accomplishments of FDR and the New Deal.  But the Democratic Party of  FDR is extinct.  It is a light extinguished, fading into myth.  In fact, the Democratic Party of today, lead by Trojan Horse Obama, works diligently to overturn the New Deal, as well as to gut the Great Society programs of President Johnson. 

All three branches of government are bought.  Both major parties are bought.  These once great institutions and once great parties dance to the tune of the elites.  Both parties ignore the will of the people; just ask the pollsters.  And still, Yellow Dog Democrats, the party loyalists no matter what, swear allegiance to the likely party ticket of November 2012.  Shifting support to primary challenges or Third Parties, like the New Progressive Alliance, is labeled naïve, impractical, risky.  The Yellow Dog Democrats are right: Obama will become the Default President in 2012.  The best of the Empire will disappear; the worst of the Empire will endure -- and continue to be funded.

America is trapped in a two-party system subverting democracy.  And Yellow Dog Democrats are helping to seal the trap.

(Ed. note: For more fun and colorful facts about Yellow Dogs, Yellow Dawgs, Rabid Yellow Dawgs, Blue Dogs, check out this site: http://www.yellowdogdemocrat.com/variations.htm )