Reply #24: Fear, writer! It's fear

[wyldwolf]

The eternal slacking 2%ers fear they'll actually have to work to win political influence!

Notice how the anti-DLC hysteria has reached epic proportions here - even by DU standards?

I mean, just earlier this year people on DU were declaring The DLC will no longer have any influence after 2004. Whatever, Nothingburger, De Nada, Yawn, Zen Zen...

But something seems to have happened on the way to the fringe left's "McGovern's Revenge" party and it has the 2%'ers really fired up! The DLC's relevance and influence in 2005 has been severely understated. And all it took was one little meeting of the DLC to get the neoleft McGovernites pouring out of their anthill. They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore... again!

The DLC will no longer have any influence after 2004? Why, Five of the top seven Democratic choices for the nominee in 2008 are DLC. Rounding out the top seven is one guy often "accused" by the left of being DLC and another guy often accused by the left of being a Republican (and who got one of his major campaign 2004 platforms from the DLC.)

Not to mention another DLCer not on the public's radar yet but getting globs or press as a potential Presidential candidate.

How could one "little" meeting, attended by more than 300 state and local elected officials from more than forty states, create such a brouhaha on far left?

Was it Hillary Clinton, who squarely accused Republicans of trying to return the country to the policies and political practices of the 19th century, calling for party unity? How dare she!

Was it Evan Bayh, generally considered a national security hawk, offering a blistering critique of the administration's handling of the war on terror, concluding: "That's not strength, that's incompetence."? How so very Republican of him to even speak about terrorism just a few weeks after the London bombings!

Maybe it was Mark Warner who scorned the Bush administration for choosing to intervene in the medical decisions of the Schiavo family while choosing to do nothing about the 45 million Americans without health insurance.

No, it wasn't really any of that. It's the fact that once again, the DLC is out-organizing the far left of the party and already fielding candidates for local, state, and national races.

Didn't the far left's darling organization, moveon.org, take the party "back" in 2004? Here's what they said, "Now it's our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back.”

The far left bought it and now owns it, so why are they so scared of a little DLC meeting attended by just 300 or so people from more than forty states?

Wait, moveon.org recanted that claim a few months after they made it by saying, "We’re not the party... we are going to take positions on issues... before we acknowledge any sort of notion of Democratic fealty."

Why did the recant it? It came on the heels of a story detailing how they were working AGAINST a Democratic candidate who dared defy them.

Much like the many threads on DU admonishing people to NOT support Democrats who haven't lived up to their purity standards.

So perhaps the far left is seeing their struggle with the DLC (the latest incarnation of "the establishment" and "the man") as some grand epic battle. They're dramatic like that, ya know!

In this corner, we have the DLC! Winners of two Presidential elections (four if you count Gore and Kerry), a "few" local and state elections, and currently fielding practically every Democratic presidential contender in '08.

In THIS corner, the 2%'ers with moveon.org! Responsible for raising millions of dollars and winners of... ummm... well, they won... no... hmmmm....

To quote an article in Rolling Stone:

They signed up 500,000 supporters with an Internet petition -- but Bill Clinton still got impeached. They organized 6,000 candlelight vigils worldwide -- but the U.S. still invaded Iraq... A gambler with a string of bets this bad might call it a night. But MoveOn.org just keeps doubling down...

Moveon is guided by a tiny, tightknit group of leaders. There are only ten of them, still deeply committed to the Internet start-up ethos of working out of their homes and apartments in better-dead-than-red bastions such as Berkeley, California, Manhattan and Washington, D.C. For a political organization that likes to rail against 'the consulting class of professional election losers,' MoveOn seems remarkably unconcerned about its own win-loss record. Talk to the group's leadership and you won't hear much about the agony of defeat...

But some insiders worry that putting left-wing idealists in charge of speaking to the center seems about as likely to work as chewing gum with your feet. 'There's a built-in tension between the views of people who are part of MoveOn and contribute to it, and the people they're trying to reach,' says Ed Kilgore of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. (Understatement, Ed!)

If speaking to the center was MoveOn's goal, 'they failed miserably,' says Greg Strimple, a media consultant who advised the Senate campaigns of three GOP moderates. 'None of their ads had an impact on the center electorate that needed to be swung.' If the group's leadership saw anything broken with its advertising during the campaign, though, it shows no signs of fixing it. In a rush to get its new Social Security ad on the air, MoveOn didn't even test it.

The ad, which depicts senior citizens performing manual labor, was not only paid for by MoveOn members but was also created by them. This kind of closed feedback loop is indicative of a larger problem: the group's almost hermetic left-wing insularity. 'We don't get around much,' acknowledges Boyd. 'We tend to all stay in front of our keyboards and do the work.'

. . .

So who is MoveOn? Consider this: Howard Dean finished first in the MoveOn primary. Number Two wasn't John Kerry or John Edwards -- it was Dennis Kucinich. Listing the issues that resonate most with their membership, Boyd and Blades cite the environment, the Iraq War, campaign-finance reform, media reform, voting reform and corporate reform. Somewhere after freedom, opportunity and responsibility comes 'the overlay of security concerns that everybody shares.' Terrorism as a specific concern is notably absent. As are jobs. As is health care. As is education.

There's nothing inherently good or bad in any of this. It's just that MoveOn's values aren't middle-American values. They're the values of an educated, steadily employed middle and upper-middle class with time to dedicate to politics -- and disposable income to leverage when they're agitated. That's fine, as long as the group sticks to mobilizing fellow travelers on the left. But the risks are greater when it presumes to speak for the entire party.

So the 2%'ers will just continue to "stay in front of (their) keyboards and do the work." They'll put Google's servers in overdrive trying to find one more little piece of evidence that will make everyone see the light about the DLC. They'll continue to rant and rave about evil corporations as they sip their Starbucks coffee.

And they'll ignore the campaign signs from local Democrats who don't give a rat's ass about DLC-this and DLC-that but only want to kick some GOP butt.

The anthill has been stepped on and the little worker ants are mad as hell. Watch them stream out....