Old Democrats in 2024

Listening to Old Democrats talk, center-left liberals, many disoriented, some wishfully projecting old JFK or Truman values on their left-lurching modern Democrat party is like watching someone visit the site of their old home, imagining it there, when it is not.

Putting aside their reflexive dislike for Donald Trump, you learn by listening. Shining a light on what these old Democrats wish, what they imagine is not there but is, can be helpful.

What old Democrats hope is that their party’s leadership is not as radical as the media reports, not as openly hostile to Christian and Jewish faiths, ordinary education, peaceful campuses, traditional values, free markets, and the Bill of Rights – as it seems they are.

What old Democrats want to believe is that the center-left and far-left media are accurate and that the risk to democracy is not from the left, but from the constitutionalists on the right.

They want to believe that the threat to normal, stable, traditional life comes from zealous freedom-lovers, what Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan might call populists, those who favor what modern Democrats oppose.

What old Democrats are intent on not seeing, want passionately not to believe is not so, is that the party they call home has been corrupted, that their White House, Justice, State, Homeland, and Defense Departments, US Senate, many governorships, state legislatures, elected judgeships, and prosecutors, are somehow not responsible for all the chaos.

They want to imagine integrity across our voting system is not happening or not the fault of those in charge, that the millions of illegal aliens set to vote in November without identification, coordinated by “New American” offices in 18 states, sudden voting rights for tens of thousands of illegals married to Americans, is justified to stop Donald Trump.

They want to believe that the jump from 1.2 percent inflation in January 2021 to nine percent in August 2022, still at 3.6 percent and rising, comes from something other than modern Democrat fiscal irresponsibility, and killing American energy independence.

They want to imagine that Democrat spending of eight trillion dollars over revenues collected, interest at a 22-year high, making everything unaffordable, and 90 anti-energy regulations, are all irrelevant.

They want to think the horrifying withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving 100,000 US allies to die at Taliban and ISIS hands, is moral – running from and paying terrorists defensible.

They want to think giving tens of billions to Iran will stop their nuclear and terror ambitions, and appease a fanatical, ruthless, ideology-driven government, funder of Hamas, and Hezbollah.

They imagine profound foreign policy failures by the Modern Democrats, from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea to Venezuela, Mexico, and the world, are all bad luck.

Old Democrats want desperately to think the nation is, to parrot a friend, “not at war,” just having “policy” disagreements, Modern Democrats just having a bad day, no one’s fault.

Actually, none of the old Democrat’s fictional hopes are true. The Modern Democrat party has betrayed them, and sown lawlessness. They have seeded demoralization of the police, release of felons, ending bail, unprosecuted crimes, unprecedented drug trafficking and overdoses, politicization of local prosecutorial and judicial courts, illegal alien-driven homelessness, crime, impact on schools, hospitals, housing, and civil order.

The Modern Democrat party is at odds with old Democrat values, pushing lawlessness on campuses, 35 trillion in debt, unaffordable everything, confusing kids on gender and sexuality, transgenderism, assaulting girls’ privacy, dignity, and safety, eviscerating Title 9, boldly chilling speech by arresting parents for speaking up and jailing pro-life protesters.

The Modern Democrat party is really – for all intents  – the anti-old Democrat values party, making modern Republicans the last best hope for maintaining normalcy, some semblance of values old Democrats have long held, keeper of America’s flicking flame.

If we could take a poll of veterans in graves across the country, Republicans plus old Wilsonian, FDR, Truman, and JFK Democrats, they would all resent Modern Democrats.

In short, the nation is at war with itself, with old Democrats and traditional Republicans having far more in common than they admit. The foundations of American society are cracking, radical, so-called progressive Democrats delegitimizing institutions, traditions, rights, and the rule of law, Supreme Court to citizen voting, and police to the impartial administration of laws.

When one party uses words from the French revolutionary Robespierre, calling half the nation “enemies of the people,” mimics a man who literally destroyed churches, imprisoned and killed his opponents, something is very wrong.

When one party delegitimizes families, morality, the Jewish and Christian faiths, patriotic traditions, biology, states’ rights, individual liberties, and on and on, the nation is at risk. Modern Democrats tend toward a historically indefensible, non-American, non-rule-of-law set of outcomes, driven by well-financed, disruptive leftists, whose apparent aim is chaos, perhaps to justify the use of force and further centralizing of power, and less liberty.

Not to put too fine a point on it, centralized, unaccountable, anti-liberty powerholders are inherently corrupt – have always been – and corruption unchecked grows. Our founders knew it, we do, and in their hearts, old Democrats do. They just wish it were not so.  Their moment of truth, alas, is coming – November 2024.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.