Making History With the Democratic Party

This week Obama will be sworn in as our first black President. We were told it wouldn't happen in our lifetimes. We were told Americans in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina would NEVER vote for a black President. We were told the first black President would HAVE to be a Republican.

None of this proved true. America IS ready for a black President and the Democrats did it first. Which should come as no surprise.

America wasn't going to accept a Catholic President...until the Democrats made history and nominated John F. Kennedy, and he was elected our first Catholic President.

The Democratic Party also made history as the first major party to nominate a woman for Vice President, with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. And when Democrats nominated a woman for VP we nominated a QUALIFIED woman, not one whose biggest story was how much campaign money she wasted on clothes and how little she actually knew about government. (To be fair, the first woman elected to Congress was a Republican, Jeannette Rankin of Montana...but the first woman Senator (appointed) was Democrat Rebecca Felton, of Georgia (1922) and the first woman to be ELECTED to the Senate was Democrat Hattie Caraway of Arkansas in 1932.)

The Democratic Party was also the first major party to nominate a Jewish VP candidate, with Joe Lieberman in 2000. Whatever I may think of Joe now, I was pleased with him as a VP nominee and it WAS a historic choice. (The first Jew elected to Congress was ALSO a Democrat: Florida Democrat David Levy Yulee first elected to the US Senate in 1845.)

And now the Democratic Party was the first major party to nominate and then ELECT a black President with Barack Hussein Obama.

Of course, again to be fair, the first black elected to Congress was a Reconstructionist Republican, Hiram Revels of Mississippi in 1870. Interestingly he was almost blocked from serving by racists who refused to accept him as a citizen of the United States (sound familiar???):

Masking their racist views, they argued that Revels had not been a U.S. citizen for the nine years required of all senators. In their distorted interpretation, black Americans had only become citizens with the passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, just four years earlier. Revels' supporters dismissed that statement, pointing out that he had been a voter many years earlier in Ohio and was therefore certainly a citizen.

Fortunately racism lost and reason prevailed and Revels became America's first black Senator. No one would deny that the Republican Party of Lincoln and Grant led the way back then, but the Republican Party of Lincoln and Grant was far different than the Republican Party of Jesse Helms and George W. Bush.

So remember, Democrats gave us the first Catholic President, the first black President, the first woman VP nominee and the first Jewish VP nominee. And I fully believe that the first woman President and first Jewish President are likely to also be Democrats because the Democrats are today the party of Progress. Republicans started as the party of Progress under Lincoln, but they lost their way somewhere in the 1920's and are now the party of fear and intolerance.