Yesterday I was angry (as I so often am) at negative comments that mischaracterize progressives and or the left wing of our party. I went and looked up the Democratic Party platform and in addition I found this, the 1940 Democratic Party platform. I have included some of the interesting portions for people to look at:
Industry and the Worker
We pledge to continue to enforce fair labor standards; to maintain the principles of the National Labor Relations Act; to expand employment training and opportunity for our youth, older workers, and workers displaced by technological changes; to strengthen the orderly processes of collective bargaining and peaceful settlement of labor disputes; and to work always for a just distribution of our national income among those who labor.
We will continue our efforts to achieve equality of opportunity for men and women without impairing the social legislation which promotes true equality by safeguarding the health, safety and economic welfare of women workers. The right to work for compensation in both public and private employment is an inalienable privilege of women as well as men, without distinction as to marital status.
We shall continue to emphasize the human element in industry
More over the jump
So, we pledged to support equality for men and women in jobs even back in the '40s.
Capital and the Businessman
To make democracy strong, our system of business enterprise and individual initiative must be free to gear its tremendous productive capacity to serve the greatest good of the greatest number.
We have defended and will continue to defend all legitimate business.
We have attacked and will continue to attack unbridled concentration of economic power and the exploitation of the consumer and the investor.
We have attacked the kind of banking which treated America as a colonial empire to exploit; the kind of securities business which regarded the Stock Exchange as a private gambling club for wagering other people's money; the kind of public utility holding companies which used consumers' and investors' money to suborn a free press, bludgeon legislatures and political conventions, and control elections against the interest of their customers and their security holders.
We have attacked the kind of business which levied tribute on all the rest of American business by the extortionate methods of monopoly.
We did not stop with attack—we followed through with the remedy. The American people found in themselves, through the democratic process, ability to meet the economic problems of the average American business where concentrated power had failed.
We found a broken and prostrate banking and financial system. We restored it to health by strengthening banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. We have insured 62 million bank accounts, and protected millions of small investors in the security and commodity markets. We have thus revived confidence, safeguarded thrift, and opened the road to all honorable business.
We have made credit at low interest rates available to small-business men, thus unfastening the oppressive yoke of a money monopoly, and giving the ordinary citizen a chance to go into business and stay in business.
We recognize the importance of small business concerns and new enterprises in our national economy, and favor the enactment of constructive legislation to safeguard the welfare of small business. Independent small-scale enterprise, no less than big business, should be adequately represented on appropriate governmental boards and commissions, and its interests should be examined and fostered by a continuous research program.
We have steered a steady course between a bankruptcy-producing deflation and a thrift-destroying inflation, so that today the dollar is the most stable and sought-after currency in the world—a factor of immeasurable benefit in our foreign and domestic commerce.
We have enforced the anti-trust laws more vigorously than at any time in our history, thus affording the maximum protection to the competitive system.
If our current crop of Democrats would support and enforce even this much of the 1940 Democratic Platform, we would be miles ahead of where we are now. Is this really so far left as to be unreasonable?