No there there.

• Author: Ellsworth, Eric
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

"Thank you for a very thoughtful article ("The Myth of the Democratic Establishment" by Nicholas Confessore, January/February) about the lack of a cohesive Democratic organizational structure. I happened to be listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio some two or three weeks ago, and oddly enough he provided a breakdown very similar to yours on the weaknesses of the Democratic machine. To paraphrase Limbaugh, the problem with the Democratic Party is that it has long been a party of loosely allied groups on the ground. In the past, these groups were held together by strong leaders who told them what to do. No longer. When the leadership became weaker, the groups began to fight directly with each other Given how well, conservatives are able to intuit the weaknesses of the Democrats, maybe Democrats should be able to better analyze their own structural shortcomings.

Anyway keep up the good work, gentlemen. You're definitely the need-to-read for forward-looking lefties.

Eric Ellsworth

via email

I was recently reading the article "The Myth of Democratic Establishment" when I noticed it contained another long-standing fallacy. The piece implies that the Republican Party was against the Civil Rights Act, by asserting that the loss of southern whites to the GOP was because of Democratic support of the Civil Rights Act. This, while widely believed, is false. In fact, in the Senate, the act was supported 27 to 6 By Republicans and 46 to 27 by Democrats, with all southern Democrats voting against the bill. Likewise in the House, 80 percent of Republicans supported passage, and all but 11 out of 103 southern Democrats voted against. Many of the governors...