Talk:Democratic Party (United States)

Vote on whether to Delete or Change "Center-Left" infobox description

We should vote to see whether there is consensus over deleting or changing "Center-Left" in the Infobox

• Change or Delete We should change or delete the description because multiple sources conflict over where the Democrats are in the American political spectrum. Gamer9832 (talk) 22:29, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Votes like this are meaningless on WP. Arzel (talk) 23:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

They're done all the time in AFD's and discussions over whether to merge articles. It's the only way to see if we can get consensus over an issue. Gamer9832 (talk) 03:17, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

If no one is going to vote, I'm going ahead with what seemed to be the consensus in the discussion and delete the political spectrum from the infobox. Gamer9832 (talk) 21:38, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

!Votes are meaningless and not a substitute for discussion. We go by consensus and the !vote is generally less important than the arguments made. In a heated debate with a large number or people a straw poll may be useful to see where people stand... But this is a small dispute with only a few people. !Voting is not really needed here. I do support removing it from the infobox but we need to reach that through consensus, not vote. Toa Nidhiki05 21:42, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

So if I understand you correctly, since no one has commented on your preferred version you take it to be that there is concensus for your personal opinion? Concensus does not work that way. Arzel (talk) 23:55, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

My preferred version was to characterize as "Center to Center left". Deleting the section entirely was a compromise suggested and agreed upon by a 3 of the 4 editors directly involved in the conflict. Gamer9832 (talk) 01:05, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Delete/Comment -- The concept of "left" and "right" insofar as politics is concerned is completely meaningless. Anyone arguing as if there is some substantial truth in calling someone or something "to the right" or "to the left" doesn't really understand politics at all. My opinion? The Democrats and Republicans are both right wing parties with the democrats being closer to the "center" than the Republicans. I'm sure I could find sources supporting that view too. So, it is probably more honest and encyclopedic to abandon this terminology altogether.Greg Bard (talk) 00:04, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Those that believe the Democrats are right-wing can be ignored at hand for having no concept of US politics. Arzel (talk) 17:17, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

This is an international encyclopedia and one would expect that all the parties labelled center-left would have similar ideologies, bases of support and policies. TFD (talk) 17:53, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Arzel, in a worldwide perspective(which is what Greg Bard was referring to), the Democrats would be considered right-wing (to put it more nicely, Center-right). Conservatives in Britain and Canada support universal healthcare, abortion, same-sex marriage, believe in and want to end global warming, and support relatively progressive tax brackets. The Democrats sometimes can't even get half their party to agree on these issues. Gamer9832 (talk) 04:48, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

The consensus was reached among 3 editors directly involved in the conflict (TFD, Toa Nidhiki, and me) and from another editor (Greg Bard) that the political spectrum should be deleted entirely. Arzel, you were the only dissenter who was directly involved in the conflict. 80% (or 4 out of 5 editors) should be considered a consensus. Gamer9832 (talk) 01:00, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

• Delete We can all agree that the Democrats are mostly to the left of the Republican Party but there is no agreement about where the center lies or whether it is a single point or a range. Info-boxes are for non-controversial information, e.g., when a party was founded, who its leader is, not for disputed info. TFD (talk) 04:32, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

• Change. preferably to: "Centre-right to centre-left". There are conservative Democrats. If there is the issue of the number of conservative Democrats being small in comparison to centrist to centre-left Democrats, then an alternative is "Centre to centre-left". There are centrist Democrats, see here [1]. I would like to see sources of the different perspectives on this matter before making a final decision. And a Request for Comment should be made to get a large view from the Wikipedia community on this.--R-41 (talk) 15:59, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
• delete terms like "centre left" apply to European parliaments not to the US parties. Rjensen (talk) 16:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
  • That is not accurate. That is based on the claim that the left-right spectrum doesn't apply to American politics. American politics regularly speaks of left-wing and right-wing. The Republican Party for instance is in the International Democrat Union, and the IDU describes itself as an organization of parties from the "centre to centre-right" [2]. And contrary to claims otherwise, there are centrist Republicans [3]. That solves the issue of the range on the spectrum that the Republicans by their inclusion in the IDU endorse; the issue of the Democrats' positio should be solved by users by similarly seeking out sources of where the Democratic Party is located on the left-right spectrum. It is true that the left-right spectrum is limited in describing politics, but saying that it has no bearing on American politics is hyperbole, the left-right spectrum is mentioned all the time in American politics. I fear that users here are resorting to deleting any mention of the left-right spectrum out of frustration with past discussions on the issue of the spectrum, rather than seeking to find its position or general range of position on the spectrum.--R-41 (talk) 23:21, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

The media doesn't usually refer to any specific party in terms of a political spectrum. Collectively, they refer to the "right", which is most closely associated with the Republicans-- but can also be used for Blue Dog Democrats (who are Conservative). The media also refers to the "left" which is most closely associated with the Democrats-- but the problem with that is that the Democrats don't identify as the left: there are Centrists, Conservatives, and Libertarians in addition to Liberals and Progressives. To say "Left" is to make a broad generalization of the Democrats. The Republicans are becoming more ideologically pure, but that doesn't include the number of Centrists still in their party (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are excellent examples, as is Jeb Bush). Both are big-tent parties that embrace multiple ideologies historically and aren't ideologically pure, like European parties are. They work with multiple viewpoints (on abortion, there are GOP members in favor, and Democrats who oppose, for example). There's a lot of justification behind just removing the field altogether, in addition to the fact that finding compromise is what we should all aim for as Wikipedia editors. Gamer9832 (talk) 04:44, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

• Abstain. I "vote" to abstain. The fundamental problem is not with what is the field populated with (left, center-left, center-center, center-right, blah blah blah). The fundamental problem is with the existence of the field itself: this filed is open to so much subjectivity(read: POV), by Wikipedia editors and by authors from reliable sources alike, that it just has no place in an infobox. To add insult to injury, even if each human being on Earth agreed today that the Democratic Party is, say, center-left, it is bound to fluctuate and be considered left-left in a few weeks, just to bounce back to center-left again in a few more weeks/months, etc. I had the same problem with the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico, where every so often someone would drive up and change it to center-left and then sometime later someone else would change it to left-left and someone later back to center-left, etc etc etc. The best resolution/consensus, IMO, is if the field was removed from the template altogether. This would apply to the Democratic Party, GOP infobox, Green Party, etc etc etc, and then let the citations in the articles present how some authorities feel the Democratic Party (in this case) is center-left while others feel it is left-left, etc. My name is Mercy11 (talk) 00:13, 23 June 2012 (UTC), and I approve this message.
• Delete. This field must definitely be removed from this article. This field only provokes pointless "battles" on this talk page ("It's leftist!" - "No, it's centrist!" - "No, it's center-left!" - "No, it's [...]!"). For example, there were Talk:Democratic Party (United States)/Archive 10#RfC: Political Position, Talk:Democratic Party (United States)/Archive_10#"Center-left", Talk:Democratic Party (United States)/Archive 9#Center-Left? How?, Talk:Democratic Party (United States)/Archive 9#Center-left revisited, Talk:Democratic Party (United States)/Archive 9#Right Wing .2F Left Wing etc. (yes, all that has been taken from just two archive pages). It is clear that if we want to follow Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, we have to remove this field or to expand it with all qualifications. The later option is unfeasible (the whole point of the infobox is having short descriptions), thus only one remains: we should remove the field. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 21:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Change - Left-Right politics are globally understood and carry significance around the world. The Democratic Party is centre to centre-left if the Republican Party is categorized merely as "centre-right".--Ðrdak (T) 16:44, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
• Change - I am in favor of changing to "Center", "Centre", "Center-right", or "Centre-right", as that would be closer aligned to a worldview of the subject. -Kai445 (talk) 03:42, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Susequently (sp.) is misspelled in the 1860 subsection of History on the main page.

Since the page is protected, noting it here for resolution. Jknight6 (talk) 19:51, 19 August 2012 (UTC) jknight6

Fixed Peacock28 20:50, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit request: section on LGBT discrimination

The section concerning LGBT discrimination is now out of date. Since May 9 2012 Barack Obama's stance is now in favour of same-sex marriage.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyle96 (talk • contribs) 17:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

(He said his views had 'evolved').— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyle96 (talk • contribs)

File:Liberal opinions.png

File:Liberal opinions.png has one of my biggest pet peeves in politics. It lists as one of the topics "immigration" and gives liberal support at 58-36%. But that's an absurdity. Does it mean that 58% of liberals think we should have immigration and 36% want to completely close our borders to outsiders? The problem is with conflating "legal immigration" with other kinds of not-so-legal immigration (insert your preferred term here). The actual question polled, according to http://web.archive.org/web/20060214150029/http://people-press.org/reports/tables/242.pdf, was "Allowing immigrants to enter the U.S. legally and work here for a limited amount of time". Of course, that's a horribly worded question - but what I'm sure it was referring to was a guest worker program where we would allow day laborers to come under employment visas, as opposed to the current system, where our guest workforce is for specialists, artists, skilled professionals, etc. Rather than just unilaterally doing something to the image, I wanted to run it by here first. Option 1 is to change the caption from "Immigration" to "Guest Worker Program". Option 2 is to simply eliminate that line item all together since the question is out of date and doesn't really tell us anything meaningful today. --B (talk) 19:18, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

This whole file should be deleted, or at least not used in an article, since it has a deadlink as a "source" and is so poorly worded as to be meaningless. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:23, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't think the dead link is itself a reason to remove it since we have a perfectly good copy of the source at archive.org. But I agree with removing it for another reason - it's very much out of date and really rather off topic. The poll is from 2005 and was a poll of liberals in general, not liberal Democrats. There are liberals who are not Democrats and having the poll in this article is not very useful. I'll remove it. --B (talk) 14:31, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 4 September 2012

Title of this page is "Democratic" Party....there is NO Democratic Party in the United States. It is the DEMOCRAT Party. It should say Democrat Party. Feel free to see the Democrat page at http://www.democrats.org/about/our_party Celine712 (talk) 21:44, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

N Not done That site uses the phrase "Democratic Party" in numerous instances (several of which are here. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 21:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Change in party platform

I added this edit about the removal from the party platform of recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the reinstating of the recognition the following day. It was covered on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and I included a reference from the Washington Post. My edit was reverted twice because editors considered it trivia. I thought I would bring the issue to the talk page to reach a consensus one way or the other. Thanks, 72Dino (talk) 00:03, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

It is a big deal, since the party changed it and then changed it back over the objection of a large portion of the DNC delegates. Toa Nidhiki05 00:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

(ec)It was on the front page for one day (just like many other trivia) and then this silly trivial one day change disappeared at the platform and in the news so it doesn't seem to have had a major impact notable in a historical way. Reminder: We're not the news.TMCk (talk) 00:45, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how this is important. For instance, I don't see the platform recognising Beijing as the capital of China. Illegal Operation (talk) 08:37, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Beijing isn't disputed as the capital of China, i.e. no other groups of people lay claim to it. I don't know how important the issue, the capital of Israel, is to the party and US politics. It was some good comedy watching the "vote" that Viragosa held for changing it back. The "yays" and "nays" were at best 50/50. But a woman directed him to call it for the change, because they need the Jewish vote more than the Muslim vote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:DA8:D800:107:D07C:2B8C:97BD:E617 (talk) 08:53, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

There are millions (if not billions) of things that are NOT written on the party's platform because they are implied. Illegal Operation (talk) 02:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Drugs?

Would it be appropriate for this page to have a section on Democratic opinions on drug decriminalization/legalization? I understand that even marijuana legalization is a controversial issue among Democrats (though I think most support it), but many more seem to support decriminalization or medical permits, and Democrats tend to be a lot more liberal on these issues than those of other parties. Tezero (talk) 01:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

This is one of those issues where the overlaps between the Dems and the Reps are so enormous as to make an effort like that a futile one. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

moderate

I'd say the politicas of the Democrat are somewhat moderate rather than as it is currently described "modern liberalism" especially when compard with other western nations. Pass a Method talk 20:58, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

The party's moderate faction is covered in "internal factions". Multiple reliable sources (at least three including Oxford Press) confirm the Democratic Party as being a modern liberal and center-left party. Further, the party's largest wing by membership is the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a liberal/progressive group that advocates a very standard liberal/progressive platform. Comparison to other western nations is really not useful, since most political party articles (with the exception of communist/far-left parties and fascist/far-left parties) go by their own countries' systems, not some imaginary international scale. Toa Nidhiki05 21:23, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. While the Democratic Party embraced some social liberal policies from the 1960s to the 1960s, there was no reformulation of basic liberal principles. TFD (talk) 21:37, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Since when are on-demand, taxpayer-funded abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and hate crimes laws not 'social liberal policy'? Regardless, reliable sources view the Democratic Party as a modern, American liberal organization. Toa Nidhiki05 22:03, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

You'd be hard put to get a majority for any given one of those proposals in a lot of Democratic caucuses, and in a lot of Democratic legislative caucuses in particular. At best, you'd get one-three out of the four; and which one(s) would vary all over the map. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

They didn't have a hard time getting those into the party platform, which is what I got those from. Toa Nidhiki05 22:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

You agree with me or Toa? Pass a Method talk 21:42, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you. TFD (talk) 21:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Conversely, conservatives in other countries support those policies and the American Right will as well in ten years time. But social liberalism usually refers to the ideology formulated by British liberals in the late 19th century and implimented after the Second World War, which did not include any of these things. TFD (talk) 22:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

A bit of a bold statement there - to pick one, support for abortion has been steadily decreasing in the US since 1995. Most Americans identify as pro-life and pro-choice identifiers are at a record low. Further, the vast majority of Americans oppose abortion after the first trimester. On other issues such as gay marriage support is gaining, but to say the same of gun control and hate crimes laws are a bit silly.

Now, in the American sense social liberalism essentially supports abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and hate crimes laws as well as affirmative action and welfare. This isn't Britain, so semantic differences are to be expected - we don't call a toilet a 'loo', we don't call oil 'petrol', and we don't call cookies 'biscuits' for instance. :)Toa Nidhiki05 22:59, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

abortion is interesting in this regard – its importance as a political issue has been steadily declining. Majorities of all groups, except a slim 54% of evangelical Christians, reject the idea that Row v Wade should be overturned. See the Pew poll results at http://www.pewforum.org/Abortion/roe-v-wade-at-40.aspx Rjensen (talk) 23:50, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

It is interesting, but that poll only gives the option to completely overturn or leave as-is. Since most people support abortion for the first trimester, women's health, rape, and incest, this makes sense. But the numbers also show only 13% think abortion is moral. Toa Nidhiki05 00:00, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The word "social" in "social liberalism" refers to economic policies to help people not cultural issues. Compare with social democracy, which has nothing to do with same sex marriage. The American Right generally accepts liberal attitudes about a decade later. Notice that today they no longer support slavery, exclusion of Jews, oppose the Bill of Rights, etc. TFD (talk) 03:59, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Better define areas of History

The history section of this article needs to be better divided into eras. Currently, the only three sub-headings are "1860", "1900", and "Modern Era". This places unjustified significance on both the 1860 and 1900 elections, and utterly neglects the other portions of the party's history. It also suggests that the Democratic Party began in 1860, which is NOT the case. There needs to be an effort to better define the existing text (and make it more proportional to the actual history of the party. I would suggest dividing it into the following categories: Early history, 1824-1860, the Civil War, 1868-1932, 1932-1964, Modern Era, but I'm not an expert in this field. Suggestions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.162.58.181 (talk) 22:28, 9 February 2013 (UTC)