DLC: "The Republicans' favorite Democrats"

[Q]

I would like to invite you to join with me in a discussion about the Democratic Leadership Council, Progressive Policy Institute and the hundreds of elected Democratic officials around the country that entail the 'center-right' of the Democratic party called the 'New Democratic Coalition'.

It has been said that we shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about the DLC, that they have no real power in the party and that even if they did...they're still (D)emocrats and have a right to their 'opinion'. But the truth shows a different reality...where the DLC can't disguise their disdain for 'New Deal Liberals', have a powerful hold on the party's infrastructure and discourage debate about their support since the 80s for the Reagan and now the Bush agenda.

This discussion is important to those of us who would like to see an even playing field when it comes time to decide the direction of the party and nominees for president. Many rank and file Democrats are still under the impression that we use a democratic process to choose which candidate the party will run for president. But the DLC has built up enough power and influence within the party to steer the nominating process towards their chosen candidates. At the same time...they use millions in corporate 'donations' to spread suspicion and doubt about liberal and progressive candidates...insisting their anti-Iraq war, corporate accountability and social democracy positions makes them 'unelectable' in a nation gone conservative.

I believe we're going to see a repeat of the 2000 and 2004 elections in 2008. The DLC will manufacture consent for a 'New Democrat' candidate like Hillary Clinton while attempting to frame the debate by once again insisting that ONLY they can win with their center-right agenda. Unless a grassroots movement is formed to counter their anti-left rhetoric and abandonment of traditional Democratic principles...the Democratic party will suffer the same fate as the Right when they were taken over by powerful corporate interests.

This is not to say that the party should simply accept the agenda of either the left or the right. It IS a call for a new approach to building a consensus within the entire party that encompasses a broader spectrum of ideologies and ideals. Every candidate needs to be treated fairly and the DLC needs to back off and let a true majority of Democrats choose their leadership without the interference of dirty politics and manufactured consent bought by lobbyists of corporate welfare.

Below you'll find some background on the Players in the DLC and the Progressive Policy Institute. It's a long read...but take the time to follow the links and study what they're all about and decide if that's what you want YOUR Democratic party to become.

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DLC's (co-founder) Will Marshall: "the rancid anti-Americanism of the conspiracy-mongering left."

"Most rank-and-file Democrats, of course, are just as patriotic and zealous about vindicating our national honor as any Republican. But let's be honest: Cultural elites with influence in the party often give off more than a whiff of fashionable anti-Americanism. They tend to equate patriotism with jingoism, see America more as a global bully than as a victim of a terrorist conspiracy, haul out the tired Vietnam metaphor anytime U.S. troops encounter difficulty abroad, and are as hypercritical of America's faults as they are forgiving of those of our adversaries. Take Iraq. It's one thing to say, as many thoughtful Democrats do, that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But it's quite another to depict it as the expression of a new U.S. imperialism, or as a Bush family vendetta, or as a plot to grab Middle East oil, or, most ludicrously of all, as a pretext to enrich Halliburton. What leftish elites smugly imagine is a sophisticated view of their country's flaws strikes much of America as a false and malicious cartoon. And while heartland voters may be too reluctant to hear reasoned criticism of U.S. policies, they are essentially right in believing that America has mostly been an indispensable force for good in the world. So let the glitterati in Hollywood and Cannes fawn over Michael Moore; Democrats should have no truck with the rancid anti-Americanism of the conspiracy-mongering left." --- http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253055&kaid=127&subid=171

Will Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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Democratic Leadership Council (aka: 'the white male caucus')

Excerpts:

In his “Saving the Democratic Party” memo of January 1985, From advocated the formation of a “governing council” that would draft a “blueprint” for reforming the party. According to From, the new leadership should aim to create distance from “the new bosses”—organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups—that were keeping the party from modernizing. From’s memo sparked the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in early 1985. According to Balz and Brownstein, “Within a few weeks, it counted seventy-five members, primarily governors and members of Congress, most of them from the Sunbelt, and almost all of them white; liberal critics instantly dubbed the group ‘the white male caucus." - Regarding foreign policy, the DLC attempted to resurrect the hard-line anticommunism of Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson but rejected the New Deal politics that Jackson and other traditional “New Deal liberals” embraced. In the late 1980s, DLC Democrats supported aid to the contras, applauded President Reagan’s “Evil Empire” rhetoric, and offered their support to those militarists calling for missile defense and rejecting arms control negotiations. While the neoliberals foresaw an end to the cold war, the DLC still viewed the Soviet Union as an unmitigated threat.

In a 1986 conference on the legacy of “Great Society” of the Johnson administration, DLC Chairman Gov. Charles Robb of Virginia took up the neoconservative critique of liberalism first articulated in the early 1970s by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman Podhoretz, and other neoconservatives. According to Robb, “while racial discrimination has by no means vanished from our society, it’s time to shift the primary focus from racism—the traditional enemy without—to self-defeating patterns of behavior—the enemy within.” This speech signaled the end of the “New Politics” of the 1960s and 1970s in the Democratic Party and the rise of a new social conservatism in the party. Robb’s speech opened room for Democratic Party stalwarts to back away from political agendas that proposed government initiatives to address poverty, discrimination, and crime, and to join the traditional conservatives and neoconservatives in opposing affirmative action, social safety-net programs, and job-creation initiatives. Thus, the New Democrats of the DLC added their voices to the chorus of those calling for stiffer sentences, an end to affirmative action, reduced welfare benefits, and less progressive tax policies.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of neoliberal technocrat Dukakis opened up new political room for the DLC and validated its claim that a conservative agenda was the only hope for reviving the Democratic Party. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, who accepted From’s request to become DLC chairman in 1990, helped synthesize the various currents driving the Democratic Party to leave both “New Deal” nostalgia and “New Politics” of the Sixties’ progressives behind. Clinton successfully redefined the Democratic Party, molding it into an organization led by New Democrats, who seized hold of the political center by targeting swing votes of the middle class and advocating the politics of growth rather than redistribution and safety nets. - As Kenneth Baer observed in his book Reinventing Democrats, the DLC, after several clashes with the leadership of the party’s progressives and traditional liberals, refined its mission to function as “an elite organization funded by elite—corporate and private—donors.” (10) However, leading DLC voices such as Al From have continued to harbor hopes that the DLC and its think tank will one day constitute the core of the Democratic Party, not just a fifth column working within the party’s elite.

In May 2003, Al From and Bruce Reed sent a memo to party leaders arguing that Dean’s efforts to energize traditional party constituencies around a populist, anti-war, and liberal message would doom the party to the fates suffered by George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984. Then, at the July 2003 DLC annual conference, the DLC leadership blasted Dean and other presidential hopefuls for flirting with a “far-left” critique of the Bush administration and pointed out the political folly of attacking Bush’s tax cuts and his national security leadership. Commenting on the “Democratic Weaselship Council” in Salon.com, Joan Walsh observed that the DLC was “in danger of adopting a political terror strategy involves doing the enemy’s work for them: damaging your own party’s candidates by declaring them ideologically flawed and unelectable.” Though claiming to be centrist, the DLC leadership often manifests itself as extremist and conservative, as charged by many on the center-left like Dean. - But, blinded by their own triumphalism, New Democrat ideologues fail to acknowledge that they have fallen in line behind the ills of neoliberals, neoconservatives, militarists, and social conservatives who have transformed the Republican Party over the past three decades. What’s more, the DLC/Progressive Policy Institute has also proved itself an effective shill for transnational Wall Street capitalists, although it faces competition in this role from the Republican Party and its array of affiliated policy institutes and think tanks. Such rightward leanings prompted the America Prospect’s Robert Kuttner to call the DLC the “Republicans’ Favorite Democrats.” --- http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/demleadcoun.php


Also:
Progressive Policy Institute
Will Marshall