democrats lost the US Senate, so one of their so-called principles went right the window

Well, it does have it's purpose...

The Civil Rights Act had been before Congress, in several forms, since the late 1950s. A turning point was reached in March 1964, when a group of Southern DEMOCRATIC senators started a record-setting filibuster. No full-featured Civil Rights Act proposal had ever survived a filibuster attempt on the Senate floor

They are a failed party.

They have demonstrated in real life the reason George Washington warned in his farewell address;

[A political party] "serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."

He was a remarkable man, who would have been great in any century.

He seemed keenly aware of himself and the gamesmanship of politics.