Dennis Prager undertakes to answer the question, how did a party filled with people with "values" become identified as the party without values. His reply to the question pretty much says it all. Here's an excerpt:
To most Americans, Michael Moore is a Marxist who has utter contempt for most of his fellow Americans, who goes abroad and tells huge audiences how stupid and venal his country is, and in his dishonest propaganda film, portrays the American military as callous buffoons. Yet, this radical was given the most honored seat at the Democratic Party convention in Boston, next to former President Jimmy Carter.
To most Americans, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are race-baiting demagogues. Yet they are heroes to the Democratic Party. Most Americans do not see their country as the bigoted and racist nation regularly depicted by both black and white Democratic leaders.
To most Americans, a man who wears women's clothing to work is a pathetic person in need of psychotherapy. To the Democratic Party, he is a man whose cross-dressing is merely another expression of multiculturalism. The California legislature, which is entirely controlled by Democrats, passed a law prohibiting any employer from firing a man who shows up to work wearing women's clothing.
To most Americans, Eminem is a vulgar nihilist who poisons young Americans' minds. To John Kerry he was a man whose anti-Bush hate video was worthy of endorsement.
As long as these people are the face of the Democratic party, the average Democrat is going to feel like Ronald Reagan and Zell Miller did, that the party had left them in its rear-view mirror. As long as these people personify what it means to be a Democrat, voters in the heartland are going to find it difficult to pull the lever for Democratic candidates. The values embodied by the leadership of the party are the values which define the party. The Democratic leadership, its spokespersons, its big donors, and its celebrities largely embrace the values of Hollywood, trash culture, and the far political left, but these are not the values, at least not yet, of a majority of Americans. It's not that the Democrats are the party without values, it's that they are the party with the wrong values.
Read the rest. It's very good.