the democratic party still operates largely in the image of the very very centrist democratic leadership conference, of which clinton was a good representative. him and dick morris were able to drive the republicans a bit crazy with their strategy of triangulation, which was about co-opting republican issues. to deal with it, the republicans started shifting hard to the right ideologically, even as the organizational basis for that shift was in place as a result of ralph reed et al's use of the christian coalition as the basis for a republican political machine amongst social conservatives in the old democratic party mode.
in my more pragmatic modes, i'm closest to a social-democracy and can tell you that the democratic party has no resemblance to social democratic politics. you can see it by the way things are going now---they're not thinking in fiscal terms, they're still playing along with the right, whose policies created the crisis we're in to begin with.
a single-party state with two right wings.
there's no correlate of old-school democratic party social liberalism of the new-deal/post new-deal variety at this point. doesn't mean there couldn't or shouldn't be, but the fact that basically everyone's still a neo-liberal despite the travesty neo-liberalism is should tell you something.
if by classical liberal, you mean you find something compelling about ricardo and mill and other quaint musty volumes of 19th century political economy, then i guess that's nice.
that shit's been materially irrelevant for over a century at this point, but i suppose it's ok to find it appealing much in the way it's ok to like hobbits or elves.
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o yeah. have a look at this naacp report from last week about the tea party as providing a platform for racism:
http://teapartynationalism.com/
it's interesting reading.
it's always better to know what you're interacting with. things are not always what they appear from the "people i know at local meetings"---hell, the people i know from the tea party around here are lots of different things. a few of them are racists. alot more of them think along lines that normalize racism. and that's a line like what ace has been working here.
he'd have us believe that it's sensible to be racist.
but every racist thinks that.