The DLC wants to eat your children?

[jobycom]

Can anyone thing of a horrible thing that the DLC won't be blamed for? I believe they shot MLK. They caused the Challenger to explode. They broke up the Beatles. They invented SUVs. I hear they coax sharks into shallow water in Florida and kidnap blondes in Aruba! Oh my God, what a horrible group! Next they'll have us all voting for a third party candidate to throw the election to Bush!! Oh, wait, that was another group....

[H2O Man]

1. They do.

I see that you read the horseshit on DU:GD about their plan to do away with primaries, and execute everyone who complains.

[jobycom]

7. What makes you think that!

:-)

[H2O Man]

9. Your response

to the thread. I'm hoping you have responded to the response to your post there. I'll venture over and have a look.

[jobycom]

10. Oui. Not my best. I'm too tired to edit and I'm planning to go to Crawford

To fight the real enemy.

[William769]

2. They also shot JR.

[jobycom]

6. AND kept it secret for a whole season!!

[William769]

8. ROFLOL!

[NoPasaran]

3. They turned me into a newt!

[Redneck Socialist]

4. You don't look like a newt. n/t

[nickgutierrez]

15. He got better.

:)

[cprise]

5. Yeah and even the GOP is plannin a 'conspeeeeeeracy' against Americans

...in fact they forced my elderly aunt to clean the messhall with a toothbrush!

[chaumont58]

11. You may find it funny, but the DLC backs the War in Iraq

You want to vote for DLCers, do so, vote twice, or three times, for all I care. I despise the sons of bitches. Only a fool would have believed that Iraq was a threat to the US, let alone another country in the Middle East. How many American soldiers have died for that stupid, stupid move? How many more will?
Evan Bayh says Dems are perceived as being weak on national defense. What a bullshit statement! It isn't 1976 anymore. There is no Soviet Union, armed to the teeth with nu-ku-lar weapons( I figure the DLC pronounces it just like chimpie, they ape so many things he does).
I have voted for DLCers in the past. I voted for Clinton, twice. I voted for Feinstein, once. Just a few weeks, I went to the DLC web site and read their essays on the War On Terror. I can not and will not ascribe any good reasons for their support of chimpie's efforts. I think they have their positions on the War, not because they are right, but because they think it will gain them votes.
I've been a Democrat for a long time. I am very much a senior. No part of my effort will go to support a DLCer again. No money, no vote, no support in any form.
I consider Lieberman, Bayh, Biden, even both Clintons as the most craven of people. The god damn war is wrong, and can not be made right.

[jobycom]

13. And I despise anyone who attacks Democrats instead of Republicans

The Republicans started the war. The only chance of stopping it and future wars is to defeat the Republicans. The DLC is just a damned boogeyman. Every candidate we nominate is going to seek their support, as well as the support of every other faction within the party. Which means you will be voting for the Republicans if you are voting against a "DLC" candidate.

I don't agree with much they say, either. But anyone who shouts "Defeat the DLC!" is as much an enemy to me as BushCo or Nader. We will NEVER win by splitting our own party. The Democrats have NEVER won by splitting off the moderates, and they never will. JFK chose LBJ just to win the south. FDR took the middle road between the communists and the Republicans. Carter campaigned as a moderate southerner. If the DLC had existed in JFK's or Carter's day, they would have belonged to it. When Clinton helped found it, he was following JFK's blueprint, as he tried to do with everything he did. JFK opposed Civil Rights actions and supported military action in Viet Nam (no matter what he may have said privately). His private goals may have been to support both, and he wound up doing good for Civil Rights, but read up on what Civil Rights leaders say about him. He was in their way, at first.

That's just the way it is. I don't like it. I just deal with it.

[chaumont58]

14. Then despise to your heart's content

There is some truth to some of what you say. But, the DLC is an enabler for chimpie.
I despise Nader as much as chimpie. I think he was bought and paid for by repukes and as much as any single individual got chimpie installed in the White House. I had a number of posts deleted by moderators for saying so in 2001.
I don't consider the DLC moderate. I am a moderate, and my take on the War in Iraq is not the same as theirs.
I admit to being a single issue voter on this. The only part of the DLC site I read was the section on the War on Terror. I voted for Clinton twice, and I liked what he did as president. He helped the people who needed help. That's what my kind of Democrat does. I thought DOMA was pure fluff, that it had no real meaning. Appearantly even repukes feel the same way, as they are trying for a Constitutional amendment, protecting marriage(sic). Many liberals have bashed Clinton as the best 'republican' president of recent years. Politics is above all the art of the possible. With the Democratic Senatorial Barons in place before '95, and repukes firmly in control of congress afterwords, he did what he could.
As far as bashing fellow Dems, if David Duke were to announce he is now a Democrat, that doesn't mean I have to change my opinion of him. Zell Miller can take a long walk off a short pier. He is as mad as a hatter.
Being a senior and voting in many elections, I have been faced with the lesser of two evils more than once. Once again, to me, politics is the art of the possible. But, young men and women are dying, for the most bullshit of reasons. I won't vote for anyone who supports that 'catastrophic success,' regardless of what party they claim is their's.
That god damn dino, Lieberman, was responsible for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Chalabai bought and paid for a US Senator for a little while.

[jobycom]

18. The DLC is not an enabler for Bush

They are hog-tied by Bush. They believe in their simple little minds that the only way to win is to appear tough on international issues. Thus, they dance around the war, never exactly praising it, but trying to sound tough. If you read their position on the invasion, it's not exactly claiming to support it. It's mostly generalized stuff about needing to be tough on terror and supporting our troops and doing a better job than Bush.

That's better than Bush lying to start a war. Gore, a DLCer, would not have done that, as we both know.

As long as the DLC tries to get Democrats back in control of Congress, they are on my side. If we control Congress, and the presidency, then all of these squabbles have meaning. Otherwise, we are children arguing over what we wish our babysitters would let us do. If we regain control in Congress, then people like John Conyers and Barbara Boxer and Dennis Kucinich come to power. They have to share the limelight with the likes of Lieberman and Feinstein and Bayh, but at least they have a dialogue. A Democratically controlled Congress means that the arguments to govern the nation are between liberals and moderates, not between right wingers and far right wingers.

I'll take that, and I'll take the deal with the devil to get it, because what we have now is worse than the devil.

[AntiCoup2K4]

35. Which is exactly what the *** does

The Al From organization which shall not be named is ALWAYS attacking Democrats. They have attacked Howard Dean repeatedly, and he's the chairman of the party, for fucks sake.

Rule 1 on this board is that DU Members uphold progressive ideals, yet the From Scouts piss all over those ideals on a regular basis while crying that we need to go more to the right.

After each election lost because candidates went to the right, that is.

To say Jimmy Carter would have been a member of this cancerous fraud is beyond ridiculous. Nor would JFK, as the policies of the *** would have been far to the right of Barry Goldwater at that point.

[jobycom]

41. JFK and Carter

Were moderate, at best, in their campaigning. JFK supported the Viet Nam conflict (wasn't a war yet) even though he may have privately opposed it. He also opposed Civil Rights marches and bus tours, and tried to talk Civil Rights leaders out of them. He supported a watered-down compromise as senator on Civil Rights, and even supported McCarthy, who was a disciple of JFK's father. On the day they censured McCarthy, Senator JFK was in the hospital, even though the doctors had said he could leave a week earlier. He didn't want to be seen publicly censuring McCarthy, because he was afraid it would hurt his presidential aspirations in the south.

JFK was also a fine liberal. But you can draw a picture of him to make him look more conservative than the DLC without much effort.

As for Carter, Kennedy didn't run against him because he was too liberal. He ran against him because they considered him too moderate, especially with his actions in Tehran.

[Seabiscuit]

17. Of course the DLC supports the Iraq war - their corporate sponsors

wouldn't have it any other way.

[ScreamingMeemie]

12. While I am not a fan of the DLC (their music is too drab and familiar

to me ;)), I don't believe I could/would accuse them of that. There's enough serious stuff to accuse them of. :hi:

[LoZoccolo]

16. My favorite one was about the Dean scream.

Someone on here said that the DLC made the tape where the sound was mixed so you didn't hear much of the room noise, and then they gave the tape to the media. Like they said this! There's no arguing with someone who's already drawn up the sides and anything that doesn't favor theirs gets adjusted to make it neutral, if not favorable to them again.

[jobycom]

19. The Dean Scream is a scream!!

I watched it live with my wife and twelve year old daughter. If the DLC rigged the tape, they rigged it live, because I will never forget the reactions to that piece of art! My jaw dropped, my wife snickered in disbelief, and my 12 year said "Oh my god, that was weird!"

Dean gives a pep rally speech because he has plummetted drastically in the polls over two weeks and finished a distant third in a race the media promised us he had already won, makes the goofiest sound any politician has ever made, and to some people, the media destroyed him. He was already destroyed, despite the media claiming he was the front-runner.

And how could they not play that thing over and over? It was hilarious! The sad part it, a good politician would have made that air time into a positive. Make a commercial of it, go on the news, do something. Gore would have picked on himself about it and made people appreciate his sense of humor. Clinton would have gone on Barbara Walters with Hillary and apologized for it. ANYONE else would have turned it into face time that would have shut out Kerry and Edwards and Clark from the airwaves. Dean just caves. Gore and Clinton overcame negative press ten times worse. Dean couldn't do anything but cave.

He lost. He just lost. The DLC did it? If it had been rigged, and it wasn't, it would have been by Rove, anyway.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

20. That scream was taken out of context. ABC even apologized

the following Monday for doing so. BTW, the DLC did rig it.

[LoZoccolo]

22. Are you the guy who said that a few months ago?

I've been looking for the post, but I couldn't remember who posted it. Is it OK if I link to it from here? I mean, you brought it up again too, right?

[Crazy Guggenheim]

23. I could have been, but maybe not.

On Edit:

I couldn't find any links to the atory on ABC.

[jobycom]

24. Yeahhhh. Uh huh.

I saw it live. They didn't rig it live.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

25. What I mean is they only showed the scream and not the

context. Besides, I don't know what the big deal was about it.

[jobycom]

32. Oh, yeah, that's true.

Dean's problem with the scream and that whole speech was that it was the wrong context. He had the national attention on him. It was the time for a policy/vision speech, to let the world see what he stood for, how he spoke, what he believed in, and how his supporters liked him. Kerry, Edwards and Gephardt all made marvelous speeches. Then Dean came out with a pep-rally speech aimed at only his supporters.

That was the biggest problem with the speech. He blew his best chance to win an audience. For many viewers, it was the first time they had seen him speak. But it typifies his rise and fall. He spoke well to his supporters, and they were very loyal, but he couldn't get his message to the general audience to convince them that he was the guy. Candidates have to start off preaching to a small base, then expand their message to the party as a whole, then expand once more to the national audience. Dean barely got to step two. He tried a few times, but he blew his biggest chance.

If it had been a better speech, the scream wouldn't have mattered. But coming at the end of such an inappropriate speech, it made him look completely out of touch. That's why the scream stood out so much, I think.

And it was funny as hell! He still could have used that publicity for himself, but again, he couldn't make that next step.

And yeah, the media played it way out of context, but even in context, it was just the wrong speech. I mean, he matched that up against Edwards' "Two Americas" speech. You tell me which would have impressed the most number of people seeing each of them for the first time.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

33. I've seen recordings of that whole speech in context and the

scream was still taken out of context. It was just a rally for the supporters.

[jobycom]

34. He shouldn't have been rallying his supporters by then, though

That's my biggest complaint about Dean. He's always rallying his supporters. He'll never win unless he rallies the nation, and that takes a different tack then rallying supporters. Ideologically, I like him a lot. Politically, he's an albatross.

[LoZoccolo]

37. I never disputed that.

With that in mind, I'd encourage you to re-read my post.

[LoZoccolo]

21. Yes, I remember him crashing over two weeks.

And I remember one of the things that did it was that he got caught up in Al Sharpton attacking him for not having any African-Americans on his cabinet, which was a totally ridiculous attack. You can go back to posts that happened at the time and find that I was actually a Dean supporter.

That having been said, I think Dean's supporters did a fair job in shipwrecking his candidacy as well. I think a some people interpreted Dean's "you have the power" slogan as a call to bring whatever abrasive, fanatical, angry tendencies they harbored into his campaign with them. Here's a guy who wanted them! I think it rubbed off onto Dean's image, which he ended up having trouble controlling and defining due to the overabundance of leeway he gave his campaigners (and again, I was one of his campaigners). Remember, these people did phone banking and letter writing, and could pretty much put what they wanted into these efforts. We were encouraged to personalize our letters. Well, I think a lot of co-opting got done. I like Dean's call to volunteerism, but I think he left a few gaps in the strategy that ended up being a liability.

A lot of people are still up to these tricks, but further emboldened now, seeing themselves as a movement to tug the party over to something they see themselves as. What a lot of them don't realize is this sort of bold activist strain is something that Al Sharpton, who contributed to bringing Dean down, was a part of! If we flood the party with people like identity-politics activists, or people who tend to get overzealous, be prepared to have trouble steering in terms of presenting something that people can understand and relate to. Part of the reason the DLC was formed was to depend less on funding from activist groups whose leadership might get carried away and twist the candidates' arms into supporting untenable, unfair, or unelectable policy under threat of a funding cut. I can't say I like the practice of taking so much from corporations in order to wean us off that cash, but people should know something about the dynamics that led to the formation of the DLC if they don't wish to repeat the problems that put us there.

[jobycom]

27. Over-zealous Dean supporters

One supporter I dealt with had gotten fired up by Dean's instructions to take over the party and control the precinct chairs. He tried to run against one of the strongest liberal activists in Austin, not even knowing who she was, just because Dean told him to. If he had won, he would have weakend that precinct, since this activist was a strong chair in her district, and turned the vote out heavy.

This same activist teamed up with a local campaign manager who also supported Dean, but this guy was snaky. He got the kid to go gungho into dirty politics for all his candidates, using his "Take back the party" fervor created by Dean. This kid joined a Democratic club I had been with for three years. I was president, and along with a solid core of Dem activists and liberals (plus one or two moderate but involved Dems) built this club from around 40 members to over 140 in three years. We did endorsements in the primaries, and had worked hard just for this election so that our voices could be heard as a collective. This kid at the last minute stacked our club with a whole slate of new members who supported a group of candidates tied to the campaign manager, and stole our whole endorsement. Worst, the candidates he backed were the moderate ones. One had been a Republican until a few years before. But Dean had made him so gungho he didn't look at the work that had been done before he got there, and he didn't look at who he had been working for. He just ran with the first Democrat who got ahold of him.

Not Dean's fault, obviously, but that's one reason gungho grassroots activists butt heads with long-term activists.

[LoZoccolo]

44. That having been said, Al From and Bruce Reed...

...certainly messed up as well, and bad. Maybe even worse than Dean in the long-term, seeing how dedicated people are against the DLC now, whereas Dean is unlikely to run for public office again. I think they expected that they could give the Dean campaign a good hard kick with the statement they put out in the summer of 2003 and forget about them. It was a terrible mistake to think that that's how you would deal with people enamored with their newfound empowerment, that they would just shrink from that. I can think of at least two other ways the DLC could have dealt with that without suffering the kind of blowback they're seeing now...either by addressing Dean in private to try to get him to emphasize the things they thought would win, addressing the activists on same, or even laying out the case measured enough to be compelling without the condescension. The DLC was unknown to me before then, now they're being blamed for all sorts of things because they've made so many enemies I don't think they had to.

[Capn Sunshine]

26. The Scream

was recorded through a directional mike, used to filter out crowd noise. It was further cleaned , then recorded on thousands of cassettes and MP3s, and sent out that night, so that it was in the in box of every morning radio show and TV network in the country.

All in all, it was played just on network TV news over 600 times between Iowa and New Hampshire.

Out of context hardly describes what Gov Dean was doing: yelling to be heard over 3500 people packing a room to applaud their hero.

Who was responsible?

Certainly not the Dean campaign. Beyond that, one simply has to ask
"who benefits?"

Now, I've been a member of the DLC since it's inception, I am a Clinton/Gore alumni, and I worked for Howard Dean since 2002.

Even Howard will tell you, the DLC is an interest group and their day has come and gone.

Yet, you still see a little kick in them, they seem bound and determined to preserve the status quo as it currently exists in DC today. Which is all about corporate influence and the collection of money for campiagns via this influence. As someone who performed this task for the DLC, I can tell you, that is what they are about.

Do they want to eat your children? Well, they want to help those that do, if you believe that the War Machine is a profit driven actual thing that rears its ugly head every generation or so.

That a few of their mostly harmless remnants still bother to post on DU is interesting though.

Too bad that the Third Way isn't more what they are about. They have morphed into a bunch of pimps and panderers for sale to the highest bidder.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

28. THANK YOU!!

[Capn Sunshine]

29. you're welcome.

Now I'm going back to the Jungle Room to make fun of the Lounge. :hi:

[Crazy Guggenheim]

30. BTW. Let's not forget how Dean made the statement about how

"we are no safer after the capture of Saddam" than before. The DLC went crazy! And a year ago he questioned the Terror Alerts. Well what's happened to them since Nov. 2.???

[LoZoccolo]

36. "Who benefits" is an overheated Lenin tactic for type-A zealots.

It's a manipulative way of getting people to go against some entity with the level of force reserved for someone who attacks you. If anything happens, it must have been planned by them and their fault, so you can feel free to hack at them for intentionally harming you, and it's no surprise that it was advocated by the guy who felt that people were too stupid to revolt so there has to be a vanguard party to force it through now and control everything until it's set straight. It's a sociopathic tack, in my opinion.

The Republicans use the phrase "Dean Democrat" is a pejorative. They've benefited from Dean in that way, who gave them that talking point, so Dean must be a secret Republican. One simply has to ask, "who benefits"?

[jobycom]

47. The "who benefits?" trap is one historians discuss a lot

Sometimes it gives you an insight into who might have been behind something, but too many history students and people in general take it as evidence in itself. It leads to many conspiracy theories. The problem with it is that it ignores a person's ability to take advantage of incidents that they didn't cause. This is an especially common talent in politics, since that's most of what politics is about. Bush didn't have to cause 9-11, for instance, in order to benefit from it. He was waiting for something to happen that he could use. It happened, he used it. There doesn't have to be cause and effect.

[jobycom]

46. The Scream was Dean's fault, pure and simple.

He did it, it was too funny to ignore. That's why it got played. But Dean was dead before it got played.

As for the rest, I'm not preaching for the DLC. I'm preaching against the goofy-assed extremist attacks meant to divide the party. I don't like the DLC's positions (as I've said) and I don't think the DLC is very effective at controlling the party. They are one faction, as I've said repeatedly in this thread and others. We need all the votes we can get, so we need them, too. Any candidate running has to court their vote. They don't have to adopt their platform.

All these "DLC is going to destroy the universe" threads are just assinine. That was my point. Most people seem to have gotten it. Not saying you didn't-- I can't tell if you were disagreeing with me or just explaining. It's a good explanation.

As for Dean, unless he learns to campaign to the nation as a whole instead of his supporters only, he's always going to be a dead end. He shouldn't have been made DNC head, though I hope he succeeds at it, and he has shown an ability to learn from his mistakes. I hope that continues.

[KitchenWitch]

31. Don't forget the Hindenburg.

[TroubleMan]

38. They don't wanna eat them-they just want them to be corporate wage slaves

That's not sarcasm either....that's what I actually believe about the sellouts who are the DLC.

[jobycom]

42. What do you believe Bush wants with them?

Are you serious that you can't tell the difference between a politician campaigning from the left and trying to look appealing to conservatives, and an actual conservative?

[TroubleMan]

45. They're not campaigning from the left

They campaigning from the right, and give a few reach-arounds to the left.

Check their contributors....big pharma is a huge contributor to them. They're just protectors of the status quo just like most of the repugs. They're just little corporate overseers....puppets that are controlled by the purse strings that the corporations use to control the left.

[jobycom]

48. So the answer is

No, you really can't tell the difference. Sigh. Oh well, that's what brought Gore down, too.

[TroubleMan]

50. That's right .... they need to differentiate themselves more from the

opposition.

It's like the DLC and the repugs are playing "good cop bad cop" with us. I'm too old to fall for that shit now.

It's like flipping a coin where it's "head I win, tails you lose." I just want to chuck the whole coin and start from scratch.

IMHO....the DLC is on the same team as the repugs. They empower them. They won't call them out on their lies, they won't fight back, they won't do nothing except attempt to lord over the Democratic party and lead it down a corporate controlled nightmare. They agree with the repugs more than they do with Dems.

Our failure as a party in the last few elections is due to a big shift to the right. We failed to differentiate ourselves enough. Sure the voting machines and the media are part of the problem, but it should have never been close enough for them to steal.

[LoZoccolo]

49. Look who Democracy For America is supported by.

Democracy For America is supported by PACs or people from Lehman Brothers, United Liquors, Heritage Capital...looks like a bunch of capital firms. Check it out:

http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/leadpac_contrib.asp?id=N00025663&cycle=2004

By your logic, is Dean a corporate overseer now?

[TroubleMan]

51. Has he voted in favor of those companies yet?

Has he made laws that are favorable to those companies?

The DLC has done this. Look at all the stuff they vote for: CAFTA, Iraq War, NAFTA.

Did Dean vote for any of that crap? No (but to be fair he wasn't in Congress, but I don't think he would have).

[LoZoccolo]

56. Hello, he can't vote because HE'S NOT IN OFFICE!

In a similar vein, the DLC voted for none of that which you list there.

[TroubleMan]

59. I said that

It looks like I stand corrected on CAFTA, but I'm pretty sure most of the DLC voted for the Iraq war, and 40% of Dems voted for NAFTA. I can't find a roll call vote on it.

[LoZoccolo]

60. Dean supported NAFTA.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/31/elec04.prez.gephardt.trade.ap

Gephardt, on the other hand, is a DLC member.

My point isn't to slam Deam or promote Gephardt or anything like that. It's that these issues, and these tasks we face in politics, are way more complicated than people are treating them. Even the issues surrounding the DLC are way more complicated. I'm asking people to do them justice and to not gloss over and simplify things, and especially to not use rhetoric devoid of good compelling details.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

61. I know he supported NAFTA. But later he saw the damge it was

doing and became against it.

[LoZoccolo]

62. The argument was that 40% of Democrats voted on it.

That was also a long time ago.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

52. Oh my God!! If there were any more he could have broken

$100,000!!



Oh Here's the side note to the donaations!

HOW TO READ THIS CHART: This chart lists the top donors to this PAC from the 1990-2002 election cycls. The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

So it wasn't from the companies themselves ........

In Edit:

They left out the $3000 speaker fee from CATO in 2003.

[LoZoccolo]

53. That would be against the law.

So?

[Crazy Guggenheim]

55. So what's this thing about these corporate donors?

[LoZoccolo]

57. Um...

...read the thread?

[LoZoccolo]

54. Take a look at Dean's campaign as well.

http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/contrib.asp?id=N00025663&cycle=All

[Crazy Guggenheim]

58. Again it's from the employees and PACs. Besides that's not a lot.

HOW TO READ THIS CHART: This chart lists the top donors to this candidate from the 1990 cycle through the 2004 election cycle.The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

[the_spectator]

39. Old news.

Everyone already KNOWS that Lieberman and other "neocons" like him have their passover matzos made out the blood of Christian babies! Tell us something we don't know!
:sarcasm:

[jobycom]

43. LOL

Great medieval redux, thanks!

[sasquatch]

40. They give a better you know what to Bush than Monica did for Bill