PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Disaster in the DLC
by AntiChimp Tuesday, Jul. 26, 2005 at 10:07 AM
antichimp2005@yahoo.com

...corporate-centrist and Bush-lite Democrat Hillary Clinton has signed up for the DLC kool-aid klub, and has agreed to help define the DLC agenda for 2006/08 elections. What a disaster.

According to Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, "Democrats' most important task is to articulate a tough but smart strategy for winning the ideological struggle against Jihadist extremism. Yet many liberals remain fixated instead on Iraq. It's true that Team Bush has badly fumbled the occupation, but an anti-Iraq message alone won't reassure voters that Democrats can take charge of the nation's security. On the contrary, the conflation of partisan animus toward Bush with anti-war sentiment has shoved Democrats in a decidedly dovish direction." He goes on to say, "Democrats need to be choosier about the political company they keep, distancing themselves from the pacifist and anti-American fringe." Note to Will Marshall: Hey, go fuck yourself buddy!

In a piece appearing on the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) web site Marshall mendaciously blathers on in an attempt to solidify a Republican-Lite Democratic party, complete with faux patriotism, hawkishness, corporatism, and perpetuation of the mythology of the "war on terror".

Marshall, sounding to me like a more articulate version of George W. Bush, goes on to say of Americans: "...their frame of reference is not the Vietnam War, but Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks evoked the most powerful upsurge in patriotic feeling since Pearl Harbor, and thrust national security back into the center of American politics. Democrats have yet to come to grips with this new reality. More than anything else, they need to show the country a party unified behind a new patriotism -- a progressive patriotism determined to succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror, to close a yawning cultural gap between Democrats and the military, and to summon a new spirit of national service and shared sacrifice to counter the politics of polarization."

Gah. Please, this is exactly what the Democratic party doesn't need. How does he come to the conclusion that Democrats have not come to grips with reality? It seems to me that Marshall is the one who is out of touch; he has failed to move on from the September 12 mindset that doomed the Democrats in the last election. Marshall wants to blur the ideological line between the two parties, in an attempt to co-opt some of the more moderate Republicans who don't trust Bush anymore but still support the war in Iraq, and who might be persuaded to think that Democrats aren't so bad after all, if they only act more like Republicans. And now, corporate-centrist and Bush-lite Democrat Hillary Clinton has signed up for the DLC kool-aid klub, and has agreed to help define the DLC agenda for 2006/08 elections. What a disaster.

The saying goes that those who don't learn from the past are destined to repeat it, and so it goes with the DLC. Remember John Kerry? Pathetically corporate Bush-lite candidate from last year? Yeah, that worked out great, didn't it?

The Democratic party, if it seriously wants to win elections, needs to abandon the DLC ideology. As David Sirota warns, Democrats will be doomed to "permanent minority status" if they followed the DLC direction.

"The fact is, the Democratic Party has to make a choice: is it going to continue to follow the DLC, be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America, and lose elections for the indefinite future... Or is it going to go back to its roots of really representing the middle class and standing up for ordinary people's economic rights?"

www.antichimp.com

And now, corporate-centrist and Bush-lite Democrat Hillary Clinton has signed...