50
How long, O Lord, how long?
(hexbear.net)
The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasing likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct. A lot of people are seriously worried about this, but I am not one of them. I have never been much of a Party Man myself. . . and the more I learn about the realities of national politics, the more I’m convinced that the Democratic Party is an atavistic endeavor – more an Obstacle than a Vehicle – and that there is really no hope of accomplishing anything genuinely new or different in American politics until the Democratic Party is done away with.
From Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
appreciate the really detailed answer, was mostly wondering if using this on blueanon would work without them countering with “but they were the bad party back then”
is this taught in schools over there or something that has to be learned outside the classroom?
The Blueanon people basically believe the Democratic Party started in 1964 and believe the first 150 years of the party's history didn't happen. They don't want to reckon with the legacies of Jackson, Bryan, Wilson, or even Roosevelt given how they're all diehard neoliberals. I'd say they're ideological descendants of the original Progressives but with less racism, with some even calling them "neoprogressives."
This amount of nuance is not typically taught in state-funded American public schools. I wanted to include some of it in the sort of units I wanted to teach for high schoolers but, my teaching career never materialized. Typically you most likely would learn this amount of nuance in the party's history in a upper level undergraduate course on the subject.
It's easier for me to see some ideological continuity in the Republican Party than the Democrats, given the original Democrats were a coalition of jingoistic yeoman settlers, slave-owning planter-aristocrats, and migrant- powered urban machines with a smattering of early conscious laborers. Nearly all those categories don't exist anymore. In contrast, I can at least see the theme of nativist middle class people in the Republican coalition going all the way back to when they absorbed the Know Nothing's in the 1850s. Though there were nativists in the Democrats at times pre 1964, especially in the Southern wing following the Civil War.
Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in 1968 is probably still taught in schools, for classes that make it past WWII before the end of the year.