The New Breed of Democrats: Psychologically Healthy and Intellectually Empty

By

David Gottfried

Although in some ways I have been favorably impressed by the quadrennial Democratic Convention, it is almost impossible for me to write about it – and that’s because I have suffered to listen to it for four days, and the convention’s steady stream of platitudes, cliches and simplistic nostrums keep echoing in my brain and stifle any thought more provocative than the thoughts residing in an eighth grade social studies text book – and this is not in any way an attack of Tim Wolz.

A few impressions:

The Same Themes Shouted Again and Again and Again as the Democratic Party becomes a Women’s lounge

I thought I was going to go out of my mind.  The Democratic Party, for four days, worshipped at the altar of burdened,  hard-working, single Mothers without cessation.  Every third politician cited, as evidence of his merit, his childhood watched over by a Mother Mary of a Single Mother.  Women spoke at length about their foibles and fancies and when they spoke of their fears they seemed as hopelessly girlish  as “My favorite things” from the Sound of Music.”

I felt as if I were in a women’s lounge, surrounded by buxom, bawdy and most of all insufferably loquacious ladies who would complain about groceries and diapers and carpools and then, in a burst of semi psychotic self-assertion, whipped their bloody tampons in the air and chanted “we are women and we are proud of it.”  (Speaking of tampons:  One of Andy Warhol’s “girlette stars” -- guys who pretended to be female, thereby becoming absolutely Faaaaabulous -- was asked if he got his period in the manner of real woman.  Candy responded with these inimitable lines,  “I get my period every day.  I am such a woman.”) 

Of course, the Democratic Party knew it couldn’t sound just like an ob-gyn consultation room and so decided to introduce something male and hearty into the mix.  The celery sandwiches and mint cookies and herbal teas were balanced-out with meat and potatoes in the form of Tim Wolz.

In some ways, he seems truly great. Sometimes, I fear he is on the precipice of disaster. 

He reminds me of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.   Hell, that family  is so genuine their facial expressions even betray their thoughts. When  a speaker discussed issues pertaining to economic hardship, Tim and his wife both broke out in deep frowns and appeared inconsolable.   And their son.  Oh, my god.  I fear that sweet, sensitive boy is bound to be viciously dissected on Fox News which will proceed to allegedly psychoanalyze his life. 

I hope a good, pragmatic and most of all tough-as-nails friend takes that family aside and teaches them to wise up and to sport nothing but frozen, “Tricia Nixon” smiles whenever newsmen come into the room.

I never saw so many Democrats who seemed happy.    

The emotional wavelength of the Democratic Convention slightly freaked me out.  A very new breed of democrats is very much afloat, frolicking and then running and sprinting toward the finish line of victory.

Most of all, I was amazed because many of them seemed so stunningly well-adjusted.  Kamala could laugh with abandon, slump in her chair and screw up her face and through all of it she was so unselfconscious and at ease.  Schumer didn’t merely walk to the podium; he seemed as if he was dancing while ambulating.  

Can you remember Democratic Party luminaries, just a few decades ago,  looking happy ?  Edmund Muskie was so morose, and so much like Lurch of the “Adams Family,” that  it seemed as if he was genetically predestined to be a mortician.   Do you remember Michael Dukakis, the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 1988.  The man was polished, prim and proper, and it seemed as if his blood were made of lemonade.  In some ways, he seemed to be the psychosexual antipode to Tim Wolz:   Tim Wolz is a tough guy, and he isn’t afraid of homosexuality, and he is supportive of gay rights.   Michael Dukakis seemed to be what I call a timid  heterosexual faggot.    He is heterosexual, but he’s such a nerdy, weak schlemiel that he will never fight for anything.   Although the savagery of AIDS was, by 1988, quite apparent to anyone with  half a brain,  and although sympathy towards gay concerns was greater in Democratic primaries, Dukakis kept his mouth shut about AIDS.  It’s as if that sniveling coward feared that if he expressed concern about AIDS, people would think he was queer.  Do you remember Adlai Stevenson.  He was one of the Brightest Democratic Politicians of the 20^th century, and he always seemed like a deer caught in the headlights.   The New York Daily News routinely called him “Adelaide,” and Lyndon Johnson said that he sat down to urinate. 

When I was involved in Democratic Politics, in the last few decades of the 20th century, Democrats, particularly if they were Jewish and intellectual and liberal, often were decidedly meshugenah (Yiddish for crazy) in large part because of their obsession with Freudian psychoanalysis.  In fact, a famous psychological study, conducted in the mid 60’s and known as the Mid-Manhattan study, found that about two thirds of the populace of Midtown Manhattan was severely disturbed.    Of course, by the 70’s most people who were going to therapy were not seeing Freudians, but the psychological and social residue of Freudian psychology lingered on like the smell of a skunk that wouldn’t go away.

If you think my impressions are mistaken, just consider three cultural phenomena which demonstrate the pervasiveness of Freud:  Woody Allen, in one of his films in the late 70’s, refers to his mother, apropos of nothing, as the “castrating Zionist.”   In his films, he tells that us he is the only man in the world who suffers from penis envy, that everyone in his family was a neurotic and a blabbering pain in the butt, and most of his crazy behavior seems to have been caused by his obsession with Freudianism.  Also, in the novel “Sophies Choice,” the author, William Styron, opines that huge numbers of bright, New York Jews were somewhat warped by their obsession with Freudian analysis.  In addition, the early novels of Philip Roth seem like an annex to NYU or Columbia devoted to the discussion of mommies, daddies, sons and Oedipus Complexes.   Years ago, I was a member of Chelsea Reform Democratic Club – a left-wing New York Democratic club – and I remarked that my colleagues all seemed to have walked out of the pages of a Philip Roth novel.    

In rebuttal, someone might say that New York Jews are not America and that the psychological status of American Democratic conventions are not contingent on the sundry and all too often stupid tribulations of Manhattanites in the New York Delegation.    However, New  Yorkers, though small in numbers, manage to throw their weight around and make others agree with them. 

For example, modern feminism was invented, in large measure, by two Jewish girls from New York, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinum – and soon it took over America and a good part of the world.    Similarly, FDR’s New Deal, the   veritable 5 books of Moses of the Democratic Party, were developed  in New York by Jewish political activists like Belle Moskowitz (who conveyed her ideas to Governor Al Smith) and the Jewish Labor Leader Sidney Hellman.  (Anti-Semitic Republicans complained that before FDR made any decision of substance, he would ask his aides to “check it with Sidney.”  Of course, there were only so many Jews in New York Unions, but Sidney Hillman knew how to evangelize, and he gave his objectives legs by expertly exporting his ideas to unions which were Irish or Italian or Polish in virtually every large city on the Eastern Seaboard and in the Mid West.)    Just as New York once disseminated  its political liberalism to America and thereby enriched American life by giving the nation the New Deal, New York may have also had profound psychological consequences for America, first by spicing up the American Zeitgeist with the melancholic German, Jewish philosophy of Freud, and then by bestowing on America that which was often the negation of Freud, modern day Feminism. 

The Convention, like all conventions nowadays, amounted to four days of Free political advertising

Years ago, conventions were exciting and often defined by fierce acrimony.  In large measure this is because the convention had  a job to do:  Pick the nominee of the party, and the competition was often severe.  Years ago, only very few states had primaries that selected delegates to the convention who were bound to support a specific nominee.  Years ago, many delegates were uncommitted and controlled by political bosses who bargained with the various candidates up until the roll call vote for the nominee.  

Because so much was in doubt until the very end, issues were debated with ferocity and zest.  For example, at the 1952 Republican convention the old isolationist wing went to battle against the internationalists and the latter won and redefined the Republican party.   At the 1948 convention, the Democratic Party joined the modern civil rights movement – and three states walked out of the convention.  In 1960, Lyndon Johnson and John F Kennedy nearly killed each other as Johnson disseminated a story to the effect that JFK had Addison’s disease.  They settled their dispute in the time-honored fashion:  LBJ became JFK’s running mate.    

Nowadays, there is no opposition at the convention and so the party simply gives us a very choreographed, scripted, not the least bit spontaneous 4-day affair in which they seem to be suffering perseveration:  They say the same thing again and again and again; they make the perennial broken record appear innovative.   And they bore us to death.