A follow-up to my first post...trying to show how much of the party's agenda is already set and has been. It is important because the forum is filled with angry people saying where is the plan. So I am showing that the plan is basically done, hope we get input this time. The agenda was set a long time ago late 80s and early 90s. It continues to be set, but not by the DNC itself. Dean is trying to get more people elected at state and local levels, and build from a strength that does not depend on these strategists. It takes a different money base, smaller donors...thus the Democracy Bonds.
The people who are yelling that the party does not stand for anything...well, yes, it does. The agenda is set. The agenda was set a long time ago in the late 80s and early 90s. It continues to be set, but not by the DNC itself. If we don't like some of it we have to change it by getting involved.The DNC is building up the start parties and helping get candidates elected below federal level. Why? One word...redistricting. We won't win much if we don't have that redistricting, and if we don't have local wins.
The DSCC and DCCC are gathering money for the candidates of the House and the Senate. That is their job. In fact since Governor Dean had a record breaking year, they want some of his money.....and he is trying to stick with his own plans.
So the policy setters are free to set policy, just as they have for years. Howard Dean was explicitly told from the beginning..."hands off the policy." He slips something in now and then, but they are setting it. Who are they? The think tanks. I won't call them left wing think tanks, because they are not. We are mostly in Iraq because of this group's policy, the Democratic Leadership Council. I don't believe Bush had his congressional majority in October 2002 when the IWR vote was taken. The DLC, a think tank,
approved of this war strongly. Here is a column from the editors there in 2003.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251490&kaid=124&subid=158 The administration's multiple diplomatic blunders in the run-up to the war naturally undermine confidence in its ability to win the peaceful struggle for democracy in Iraq that must follow victory in war. Worse yet, it's already clear that Republicans will use the war to distract attention from the administration's manifold domestic policy failures.
But Democrats must overcome both their own and the opposition's partisan instincts, and act in the national interest. The president's decision to prosecute this war without explicit authorization from the United Nations was a close call, but it was the right call.
Well, actually it was not the right call, but we the people of the party had no choice. The Democrats helped give Bush his Iraq war with the DLC leading the way.
NDN is the New Democrats Network, led by Simon Rosenberg. Recently they announced their Hispanic Strategy Center, and they are setting the policy on that apparently. Rosenberg helped found the DLC and in his own words it was to free the Democrats from depending on traditional interest groups.
http://www.ndn.org/hispanic/It is not so much is the Hispanic strategy good or bad....not my point. My point is they have the strategy all set up, and they just announced they are in charge of it.
Remember the words tough and smart that permeate the national security project? Dean used those words Saturday in New Orleans to reply about other issues. Nothing wrong with that, they are good words. Here is where they came from. It is the group started by the Clintons, and the Blairs, and Germany's Schroeder. Some good ideas, but some I don't care for. A think tank.
http://www.third-way.com/Take a look at these two strategies for a start...on the right of the page.
Message Memo
Tough and Smart: A Winning National Security Strategy
http://www.third-way.com/products/31Message Memo
Tough, Fair, and Practical on Immigration
http://www.third-way.com/products/30I have not compared this one with the NDN strategy.
What's more, they are also setting the agenda on Abortion. They are after the "Abortion Greys". They are not at all concerned about the majority of women in the party who believe it is our right to choose.
http://dispatch.third-way.com/articles/2006/04/18/abortion-reduction-the-new-common-groundIt is called Abortion Reduction, the New Common Ground. There is a lot here that is fine with me, but I believe they use the Democrats for Life model. Many Democrats exclude the use of the morning after pill to avoid conflict. That is wrong for them to do that. I believe the goal is to reduce abortions as much as possible. The DFLA goal was the 95/10 initiative, I believe. Cut back abortions by 95% in 10 years. They gave their presentation at the DNC.
And the DLC started setting policy on Social Security and other social programs back in 1998 and before. Here is one paragraph from 1998:
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=1455&kaid=127&subid=173"The Skeptical Generations do not reject government; they object to inflexible bureaucracies that move too slowly, limit choices, and resist sensible innovations in areas such as welfare, education and criminal justice. That is why, for example, charter schools - a new form of public school not controlled and run by the central school bureaucracies - are spreading.
It is why New Democrats have proposed converting federal training and social programs into vouchers, so that citizens can make choices formerly delegated to so-called experts. And it is why many Democrats are talking about modernizing Social Security to include individual savings accounts." http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=728&kaid=111&subid=141Here's your plan for the Medicare programs, including ideas about the drug plan...from 1998. John Breaux was one of the authors of this.
"Senator Breaux's proposal aims squarely at the political center, and it follows the "third way" principle of achieving public goals through market means. While it would harness competitive forces to restrain health care costs, it does not go as far as a voucher system that would leave seniors without an entitlement to basic coverage, as Republicans proposed in 1995. It also challenges the assumption of many Democrats that a tax increase is the only appropriate solution to Medicare's fiscal problems. The Breaux plan would help ensure that the baby boomer generation does not take more out of Medicare than it adds to it. "
And of course the plan by the DLC for privatizing Social Security, though people still deny that is what they advocate.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=695&kaid=131&subid=207"One of the major reasons the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has supported a two-tiered or partial privatization approach (one that maintains a government-provided retirement "safety net" while moving towards private savings accounts for individual pensions) to Social Security reform is to give the poor a means for accumulating income-producing wealth for retirement. In the past, we have praised the Moynihan-Kerrey proposal to carve out a portion of the Social Security payroll tax to seed private accounts, in part because that may be the only way to get low-income families onto the savings ladder. "
I could go on, but this will be enough. This is Bob Rubin's economic plan through the Brookings' Institute. It marginalizes teachers' unions, supports vouchers, decries Democrats who oppose foreign ownership of our infrastructure. Here is an article about it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/18/AR2006041801176.html"Unfortunately, some of Hamilton's disdain for democracy seeps into their statement as well. The problem of "entitlement imbalances is so large," they fret, "that the regular political process seems unlikely to produce a solution," so they recommend a bipartisan "special process" insulated from popular pressures. They also place such traditional Republican boogeymen as teachers unions on the list of problems that need to be solved. On the other hand, their list of national problems includes nothing about a corporate and financial culture that richly and reflexively rewards executives who offshore work to cheaper climes and deny their American employees the right to join unions.
Indeed, much of their statement amounts to whistling by the globalization graveyard.The authors place great stress on improving American education -- a commendable and unexceptionable goal, but one that may do little to retard the export of our jobs since, as they acknowledge, it's increasingly the knowledge jobs that are going to India and even China. But then, Rubin was the guy who promoted both NAFTA and unfettered trade with China. In a sense, the Hamilton Project can be seen as Rubin's sincere but inadequate attempt to grapple with the consequences of the policies he championed. Like the side agreements to NAFTA, which were advertised as protecting worker rights and environmental standards but which in fact did neither, the Hamilton Project comes up short on genuine solutions. There's nothing in the statement about raising the minimum wage or mandating a living wage; the word "unions" is nowhere to be found, though unionizing our non-offshorable service sector jobs is the surest way to restore the broader prosperity for which Rubin and his co-authors pine."
People are always asking "where's the policy?" Well, the policy is already set, the agenda is done. We can either accept it or try to change it by building a new party base that is not so dependent on this bunch who is setting the agenda for the benefit of corporations.
The agenda is set. About all we can do is get involved to try and change it if we don't like it.
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