The tradition of the Yellow Dog:
By tradition, a "yellow-dog Democrat" is someone
who would vote for a yellow dog if that's what the
Democratic Party ran for office.
Some say Sam Rayburn coined the term; I think it's much older than that.
In recent years, the term has shed its unsavory connotations
(well, except perhaps among Republicans!) and is applied to anyone
who votes unwaveringly for Democratic candidates.
UPDATE: Thanks to
Mad Kane,
I have the following new info on the phrase, obtained from
Just Politics
via
Political Wire:
A "Yellow Dog Democrat" is an unswerving Democratic Party loyalist.
The term comes from the 1928 elections. During the election, Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support fellow Democrat Al Smith. Instead, Heflin chose to support Republican Herbert Hoover, who would go onto become President.
Many Alabamians disagreed with Heflin's choice and in retaliation popularized the line "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket!" Compared to the hapless Smith, it illustrated the lengths some Democrats will go to support their party.
About Doggerel:
Doggerel is rough, rude poetry. The
tradition
is ancient, and the term is at least as old as Chaucer.
(NOTE: the previous link contains turgid scholarly prose from the early 20th century.
Don't say you weren't warned!) The term is typically a bit of an insult, so I am hesitant
to name its current practitioners.
One who embraces the term is
Calvin Trillin,
who titled one of his books Deadline Poet: My Life as a Doggerelist. Trillin actually
earns his living in part by writing doggerel, something I dare not even aspire to,
so I'll do him the courtesy of not reproducing his work here. Go buy his books!
A couple of my favorite poets who are not still living... and therefore are easier to tag with the
dreaded term "doggerelist"... are
Ogden Nash
and
Dorothy Parker.
There are poets who are hard to classify. G. K. Chesterton was clearly writing doggerel in
this
example, dear to my heart for its send-up of vegetarians (I am one) though troubling for its sideways
reference in one verse leading me to wonder if he was possibly an anti-Semitic (I am emphatically not one).
Then there is
Piet Hein,
whose
Grooks...
epigrams, aphorisms and proverbs... all 10,000 of them, in various languages... happen to rhyme.
Doggerel? Well, maybe...
I know... I'm leaving out a hundred masters of the craft. Perhaps you will be so kind as to remind me
of your favorite doggerelist that I've unintentionally omitted.
About the Yellow Doggerelist:
You may choose your favorite word to apply to me: liberal, progressive, perhaps even to some degree populist, and I won't argue with you. I'm a Democrat in the tradition of FDR and JFK on their good days. And I'm utterly unapologetic about my beliefs and my partisanship. Here's a favorite quote from FDR that sums it up pretty well for me:
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.Franklin Delano Roosevelt
I have written rude, rhymed, relentlessly metrical poetry off and on all my life, made politics my focus starting a few years ago, and reached fever pitch during the Late Unpleasantness, as Molly Ivins always calls the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Beyond writing doggerel and blog entries for distribution on the net, I have no literary aspirations at all, and it's a good thing, too. I make my living as a contract programmer and spend some of my time as a semiprofessional musician. (You're damned right I'm a union musician... AFM Local 65-699.) You can find a picture of me on either of my web sites, but you'd best give your hired assassin the one on the programmer site: I haven't looked as good as the photo on the music site in a long, long time!
I live in Texas, the state that has the misfortune to be the home of... never mind; I can't even bring myself to write that obscenity of a name outside the context of doggerel. Anyway, if someone tells you a Texas Democrat is just a Republican with a coat of paint, please refer them to my site!
I hope you enjoyed your stay!
-- Steve Bates,
The Yellow Doggerel Democrat
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Yellow Doggerel Democrat