The DLC is NOT a Democratic Party organization

[Q]

They are an independent 'think tank' financed by corporations to influence the Democratic party agenda. They could be called 'lobbyists'.

The DNC IS an official organization of the Democratic party.

It's important to recognize the difference.

[jonnyblitz]

1. so are we allowed to talk about this?

jesus fucking christ. :eyes:

[Q]

2. I hope so...

...I corrected the references in the last thread in order to more closely conform to DU rules.

[jonnyblitz]

3. maybe i misunderstood why it was deleted.

:shrug: time to calm down. :P

[LittleClarkie]

4. I reckon the mods disagree with Q's assessment

and consider it a Dem organization. Since our most recent president was among them, unless we want to disavow him too, I would tend to agree.

Hence, wave bye bye to this thread too in a moment, I imagine.

[jonnyblitz]

5. i honestly don't know one way or the other...

i just figure that it is an important, yet divisive debate , especially since one of the most popular progressive sites on the net is taking up the cause of "going to war" with them. it will be hard to ignore THAT elephant in the living room.

[ulysses]

6. I think Q means an official organ of the party,

which the DLC is not.

[LittleClarkie]

I think the fact that their name starts with

"Democratic" may be where the disagreement lies.

He may have to take it up with the administration directly.

The DLC probably thinks they're a Democratic org.

[ulysses]

14. well,

I've been here for a little over four years, and this just seems like an extension of the same DLC argument we've had for at least that long. I suspect the mods and admin understand the argument.

The DLC probably thinks they're a Democratic org.

They may. I doubt that, though.

[Q]

16. Someone called them a "Democratic organization"...

...which inferred that they're PART of the Democratic party. They are NOT.

[democracyindanger]

7. It's akin to a primary fight.

And, frankly, will be just as important.

[LittleClarkie]

23. Not getting a feel for how important you think primary fights are

Not important at all is what I thought I was getting, but I wanted to clarify.

[Q]

12. Even the DLC admits that it's working 'outside' the party...

The truth is that they're not an "official organ' of the Democratic party. They're an organization set up to influence the Dem agenda...something else they readily admit. That they're financed by the same corporations that finance RWing think tanks is something they don't like to talk about.

The DNC is the only organization that officially represents the party.

I just thought people should understand the facts when they're discussing the DLC.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

thank you

I didn't realize this!

[wli]

8. interesting, I wasn't aware of that

I have even less respect for the DLC now.

[Hidden Stillness]

9. A Corporate Club of Consultants, Not a Part of the Party Structure

The "D"LC is a group of corporate consultants, Republican/corporate-funded, who will, like cowards, go to the most ridiculous extremes to avoid revealing their sponsors, despite the fact that they have been documented by many people, such as Thomas Frank, people on this website, etc.

Three questions they will squirm like Bush rather than answer:

1) Complete list of funders, with specifics.
2) Amounts given.
3) What promises were given by the "D"LC for each donation. They do not give this money for "nothing"--what was agreed on, as a goal for their consultants to accomplish, as they infiltrate the Democratic Party from without?

They have made the middle class and women totally unwelcome in our own Party. Get rid of the bastards.

[jonnyblitz]

13. it's bad enough we have rush limbaugh and hannity and

every wingnut on the planet marginalizing us , we don't need our own DLC DEMS joining in using the same slurs. AND THEN their apologists have the fucking NERVE to yell "big tent, big tent" when we call them on it!!

[AtomicKitten]

10. Ignore the DLC

They are given too much credence here at DU. They are responsible for their own irrelevance.

[LittleClarkie]

11. God, that would be nice

It's getting to be a redundant obsession.

[jonnyblitz]

15. they are a huge problem to many of us

we ignore them at our own peril. some of us take this war very seriously and don't need to hear crap from our own party when we speak out.

[LittleClarkie]

20. Aye, but some are starting to see them behind every tree

Despite what Schumer may have said about primaries, neither he nor Reid are DLC, and yet recent threads on their houseparty decried what the "DLC" were trying to do. If it's not about the DLC, some folks try to make it about them anyway.

[ulysses]

18. when you fight a snake,

best make sure it's dead before you turn your back on it.

[bvar22]

17. The DLC was NOT and is NOT a movement.

The DLC was NOT and is NOT a movement that emerged from within the Democratic Party to represent a popular opinion. The DLC has NO grassroots. There was no convention of Democrats that got together to decide to form an organization to represent their voice inside the Democratic Party.

The DLC IS lobbying organization financed exclusively by BIG Corporations whose purpose is to DESTROY the traditional Democratic Party by INCREASING the POWER and INFLUENCE of BIG Corporations inside the Democratic Party, formerly the party that represented Human Rights, LABOR, the Middle Class, The Working American, and the poor!

<snip>
Have Clinton and his allies in the Democratic Leadership Council succeeded in changing the philosophy of the Democratic Party into a New Democratic one? To the New Democrats, the answer seems clear. To them, not only is the era of big government over, but, in the words of the DLC's chairman, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), "the era of the party of big government is also over."

<snip>

In 1998, New Democrats began to look beyond the impeachment scandal -- and even the Clinton presidency. They focused on ensuring that their philosophy, and the politics and policies implicit in it, outlasted Clinton's second term. For instance, the New Democrat Network (a political action committee independent of the DLC) and the New Democrat Coalition (the DLC-allied bloc in the House) intensified their activities to elect New Democrats to Congress. Looking toward the 2000 elections, the DLC in September 1998 launched Blueprint, a quarterly journal designed to elucidate core New Democratic beliefs, new policy prescriptions, and political approaches for the next election. The DLC even looked beyond the country's shores to add meaning and gravity to the New Democrat philosophy. Beginning in earnest with the election of Tony Blair and his New Labour government in Great Britain in May 1997, the DLC began advancing its philosophy as the core of a worldwide "Third Way" revolution in center-left politics.

<snip>

Indeed, surveying the state of the DLC, Bill Schneider wrote that the elected officials who founded the organization "could hardly have imagined, back in those dark days, that 14 years later, the DLC would succeed in changing the country's governing philosophy. But it has." As Frank Watkins, a close political aide of Jesse Jackson, lamented about the Democratic Party, "The DLC has taken it over."

<snip>

The New Democrats apparently have begun this long march. The DLC has made training of a new generation of New Democrat leaders one of its primary objectives, continuing its efforts to work with and influence up-and-coming state and local officials. The New Democrat Network has grown quickly, increasing its ability to fund New Democrat candidates for federal office, including those running in primary contests.

http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=955&kaid=127&subid=171

The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

[Roland99]

19. Hear! Hear!

[jonnyblitz]

22. I found this in "the black commentor"

an interesting perspective:

<snip>
As Associate Editor Bruce Dixon recounted in a June 12 commentary (“Muzzling The African American Agenda – with Black help”), a “rump faction” of white Democrats founded the DLC in the mid-Eighties as a reaction to “the 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, in which the black candidate received a percentage of the vote considerably higher than the proportion of black votes in several states, and sparked a significant expansion of the party's base constituencies among minorities, labor, and even some white rural voters. The Democratic Party was actually growing - but in the wrong direction to suit the ‘rump faction’ centered in the white South.”
<snip>

http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_dlc.html

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

21. I prefer to call them

Protorepublicans.

[LittleClarkie]

24. Unlocked

the other thread, just in case y'all didn't notice.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2025294&mesg_id=2025294

[Skinner]

25. I'm locking this.

The thread in question has been unlocked.