Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, "I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell."

Too harsh? I don't think so. Consider these facts. In 1960, the state of Georgia gave the Democratic nominee, John F. Kennedy, a higher percentage of its vote than JFK's home state of Massachusetts. Only the percentage in Rhode Island was greater.

And Georgians were not disappointed in Kennedy's performance as a chief executive. He stared down the Russians over Cuba and he cut taxes in a significant way that stimulated the economy. Had he not been assassinated, he could have carried Georgia a second time.

In the past nine elections, except for 1976, when regional pride was a huge factor and native son Jimmy Carter lost only Virginia among the 11 states of the old Confederacy, the scoreboard read like this: In 1968, Hubert Humphrey carried Texas because of Lyndon Johnson, but no other state. Jimmy Carter in 1980 carried only Georgia; the others left the incumbent. In 1992, another native son of the South, Bill Clinton, carried four: Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. In 1996, Clinton carried Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida. So, four times -- 1972, 1984, 1988, and 2000 -- the Democratic candidate couldn't carry a single Southern state. Not one! Zero! Zilch! And two times, 1968 and 1980, only one Southern state favored the Democratic candidate.

Either the party is not a national party or the candidates were not national candidates. Take your pick.

The national Democratic Party is in imminent danger of being cannibalized, eaten alive by the special-interest groups with their single-issue constituents who care about only their own narrow agenda. This is exactly what happened to the Whig Party as the Civil War loomed on the horizon. With self-interest rampant among a lot of different groups, the center would not hold and the party died.

I own a fiddle that supposedly belonged to Zeb Vance, the great North Carolina mountaineer who was elected that state's governor in 1862. He opposed much of what Confederate President Jefferson Davis was doing in Richmond. He was too young to be involved in the Whig Party at the height of its popularity, but he had been "born a Whig" and many thought this moderate, independent-minded, vigorous young leader might be the one to keep the party alive in the South.

When he was approached to do so in 1865, Vance was typically direct: "The party is dead and buried and the tombstone placed over it and I don't care to spend the rest of my days mourning at its grave."

Like that Whig Party of the late 1850s, the Democratic Party of today has become dangerously fragmented, and considering the present leadership it can only get worse. Compromise will become increasingly difficult and no leader's goal will be to reach consensus or common ground. Instead, they will more than ever blindly champion this group and that group.

The special-interest groups have come between the Democratic Party and the people. The party is no longer a link to most Americans. Each advocacy group has become more important than the sum of the whole. It is a rational party no more. It is a national party no more. So, bang the drum slowly and play the fife lowly, for the sun is setting over a waiting grave.

[L]ord, those current presidential candidates in my party! They are good, smart and able folks but if I decide to follow any of them down their road, I'd have to keep my left turn signal blinking. All left turns may work on the racetrack, but it is pulling our party in a dangerous direction. [...]

Just look at them. They are convinced most Americans will like what they see: John Edwards, shooting brightly through the skies like Halley's Comet. Joe Lieberman, steadily and surely plodding along, one labored step at a time, like Aesop's tortoise. John Kerry, the New Century's Abraham Lincoln, posing for Vogue in an electric blue wet suit with a surfboard tucked up under his arm like a rail just split. It made me wonder, are there more surfboards or shotguns in America? There's also Bob Graham, who made Florida a great governor, and Howard Dean of Vermont. Clever and glib, but deep this Vermont pond is not.

As much as I deplore my party's reputation for sucking up to...left-leaning special-interest groups, there is another rip in our heritage, in our image, that I regret even more. I fear some of the Democratic presidential candidates are treading on very dangerous ground for the party, and, more important, for the country. I do not question their patriotism; I question their judgment. They are doing what politicians often do, playing to the loudest, most active and most emotional group of supporters, feeding off their frustration while clawing to find some advantage. I've done it myself and lived to regret it.

A demagogue is defined by Webster as "a political leader who gains power by arousing people's emotions and prejudices." Isn't that exactly what some of them are doing? Some of the liberal media excuse these actions by calling them "populism." Populism, my butt! Its demagogy, pure and simple.

Howard Dean, while not alone, is the worst offender, and it says a lot about the current Democratic base that he has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president. He likes to say he belongs to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but I say he belongs to the whining wing of the Democratic Party.

Angry and red-faced, these doom-and-gloomers need to take some "calm-me-down" pills. Over the years I've learned to beware of candidates who yell and scream and jump up and down. Usually what they're saying has so little substance they have to make up for it with histrionics. But they should realize that their overheated rhetoric is dividing the country when they should be helping unite it.