Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1904 — PARTY THAT NEVER DIBS. [ARTICLE]

PARTY THAT NEVER DIBS.

Indianapolis News (Ind. Rep.): Oliver Wendell Stewart said to the Prohibitionists Wednesday night that the Democratic party is dead. The remark has been made a great many times, and yet somehow the party has managed to survive. At the present it is a pretty lively organization. Any one that is familiar with the history of the country is likely to conclude that the Democratic party is endowed with something like immortality. It is more than a century old. It has seen many parties born and die, and yet it has lived on. Up to 1860 it controlled almost uninterruptedly the policy of the country. It only ceased to thrive when it ceased to be Democratic —when another party arose which was for the time more Democratic than it was. Since the war it has been through many vicissitudes and has suffered enough to kill any political organization of lower vitality. But it has not been killed. On the contrary it is more alive and vigorous at this time than it has been since 1892.

We do not think, therefore, that the time has come to chant a requiem over the party. It is going into this campaign with a confidence that it has not known for years. That it will make a great fight is—or ought to be—clear to all. It will manage to find issues that will appeal to a great many people. One-half the people of the United States are proud to call themselves Democrats. In spite of mistakes and false and unwise leadership they have clung to the party because they believed that it stood for a philosophy that was valuable even when it was wrong on temporary issues. And its philosophy is valuable. We cannot afford in this country to get very far away from the old Democratic doctrine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none.