Democrats still vote and support the candidates of their choice. Ned Lamont proved that!
Here is the outline of the DLC agenda:
These new realities include:
# An information-, technology-driven, and ever more global New Economy that is changing the way Americans work, live, and communicate with each other.
# A population that is rapidly becoming more diverse, more affluent, more educated, more suburban, more "wired," less political, and more centrist.
# The emergence of a new social structure, in which the "learning class" of well-educated and skilled citizens prospers while those without education and skills are at risk of being left behind.
# The aging of the population, creating new intergenerational tensions over resources for schools, retirement, and health care.
# A generational change in attitudes as the New Deal/World War II generation gives way to the baby boom and GenX generations that are far more skeptical about politics and government, even as they crave a "higher politics" of moral purpose.
# A rapidly changing global environment in which American values and interests are predominant, but in which we face a new series of international challenges based not on a monolithic threat from another superpower, but on regional instability, economic rivalries, ethnic conflicts, rogue states, and terrorism.
Where We Stand
In keeping with our party's grand tradition, we reaffirm Jefferson's belief in individual liberty and capacity for self-government. We endorse Jackson's credo of equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none. We embrace Roosevelt's thirst for innovation and Kennedy's summons to civic duty. And we intend to carry on Clinton's insistence upon new means to achieve progressive ideals.
As New Democrats, we believe in a Third Way that rejects the old left-right debate and affirms America's basic bargain: opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and community of all.
We believe in free enterprise to stimulate economic innovation and growth and in public activism to ensure that everyone can share in America's prosperity.
We believe that government's proper role in the New Economy is to equip working Americans with new tools for economic success and security.
We believe in expanding trade and investment because we must be a party of economic progress, not economic reaction.
We believe that global markets demand global rules and institutions to ensure fair competition and to provide checks and balances on private power.
We believe that fiscal discipline is fundamental to sustained economic growth as well as responsible government.
We believe that a progressive tax system is the only fair way to pay for government.
We believe the Democratic Party's mission is to expand opportunity, not government.
We believe that education must be America's great equalizer, and we will not abandon our public schools or tolerate their failure.
We believe that all Americans must have access to health insurance in a system that balances governmental and individual responsibility.
We believe in preventing crime and punishing criminals and that America's criminal justice system should be rooted in and responsive to the communities it serves.
We believe in a new social compact that requires and rewards work in exchange for public assistance and that ensures that no family with a full-time worker will live in poverty.
We believe that public policies should reinforce marriage, promote family, demand parental responsibility, and discourage out-of-wedlock births.
We believe in shifting the focus of America's anti-poverty and social insurance programs from transferring wealth to creating wealth.
We believe in replacing top-down bureaucracy with more flexible public institutions that enable citizens and communities to solve their own problems.
We believe government should harness the forces of choice and competition to achieve public goals.
We believe in enhancing the role that civic entrepreneurs, voluntary groups, and religious institutions play in tackling America's social ills.
We believe in strengthening environmental protection by giving communities the flexibility to tackle new challenges that cannot be solved with top-down mandates.
We believe government must combat discrimination on the basis of race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation; defend civil liberties; and stay out of our private lives.
We believe that the common civic ideals Americans share transcend group differences and forge unity from diversity.
We believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
We believe in progressive internationalism -- the bold exercise of U.S. leadership to foster peace, prosperity, and democracy.
We believe that the United States must maintain a strong, technologically superior defense to protect our interests and values.
Finally, we believe that American citizenship entails responsibilities as well as rights, and we mean to ask our citizens to give something back to their communities and their country.
http://www.ppionline.org/ndol/print.cfm?contentid=1926What's this a version of the Democratic Party's agenda? Oh, wiat, it was Clinton's agenda. A broad set of principles do not constitute an ideology. This is a laundry list (no doubt the result of compromise) of principles, left to center, resulting in doublespeak:
We believe that public policies should reinforce marriage, promote family, demand parental responsibility, and discourage out-of-wedlock births.
We believe government must combat discrimination on the basis of race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation; defend civil liberties; and
stay out of our private lives.Here is From's "ideology":
That's why this summer's nasty campaign by anti-war activists and liberal bloggers to drive Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman from the Democratic Party has been so harmful. In the tradition of John Kennedy, Lieberman believes in a strong national defense, that a growing private economy is crucial to increasing opportunity, that you can't be pro-jobs and anti-business, and that citizens have an obligation to give something back to their country. Those are views most Democrats and most Americans share. You don't have to agree with Lieberman on the Iraq War to understand that if he is purged from the Democratic Party, the party will pay a huge price in national elections for decades to come.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253988&kaid=86&subid=84Proven Formula
Democrats have a winning governing philosophy they can offer the country. It's called Clintonism.By Al From and Bruce Reed
Table of Contents
As the 2006 and 2008 elections loom ever closer, our fellow Democrats are scratching their heads and racking their brains in search of a political philosophy that can return the party to the White House. Everywhere, we hear the same lament: If only Democrats had a proven formula for how to win elections and govern the country.
Fortunately, the Democratic Party doesn't have to look far for a robust political and governing philosophy. It's called Clintonism, the party's most successful formula for winning the White House in more than half a century.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253991&kaid=127&subid=173 Fast forward to 2004. For the first time in 12 years, we have a wide-open primary race with 10 candidates to challenge George W. Bush (sorry, I like Bill Bradley, but the 2000 race doesn't count). One of the candidates was Joe Lieberman, our 2000 VP Candidate, and for all intents and purposes, the DLC candidate for 2004 (he was a former chair of the DLC).
Now, I know a lot of folks around here don't like Lieberman, and the reasons have merit (though I must admit, I probably don't feel as some do on this topic), but I liked Joe in 2000, and thought he would run a strong campaign in 2004. Boy was I wrong! He ran a Republican-lite campaign, to say the least. At the various dinners shown on C-SPAN during the pre-primary season, you could hear a pin drop when he spoke. Needless to say, he generated no excitement. And his primary performance showed, as he was resoundingly defeated everywhere he went.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/4/9/2308/02844With Dean now owning the angry part of the base, and Lieberman surviving so far as the DLC, Anybody-But-Dean anti-base candidate, maybe the best play Kerry can make is to grab the middle and appeal to both ends of the party while being comfortable and focused in doing so.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/000506.phpHere is the description of a
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Think_tanks">think tank that explains how many of these (especially on the right) have been co-opted by special interest groups.
A Think Tank is an organization that claims to serve as a center for research and/or analysis of important public issues. In reality, many think tanks are little more than public relations fronts, usually headquartered in state or national seats of government and generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors; in the words of Yellow Times.org (
http://www.yellowtimes.org/) columnist John Chuckman, "phony institutes where ideologue~propagandists pose as academics ...
money gushes like blood from opened arteries to support meaningless advertising's suffocation of genuine debate". <1>Sounds a lot like From!
At the link, there is a list of these organization. The DLC is missing. Why? It's not even a very good think tank by the "ideologue propagandists" standpoint! Why? Probably because the Democratic Party isn't built that way and people like From (and Clinton and Gore) who tried to usher in this type of organization ran into a lot of stumbling blocks and From and his supporters keep trying to push the DLC using people whenever it's convenient, such as trying to pawn Barack Obama who asked them to remove his name from their site.
Trying to pimp Senator Obama:
In May 2003 the centrist Democratic Leadership Council published its yearly list of "100 New Democrats to Watch." The DLC frequently puts out these lists as a way to publicly solidify its identification with the New Democratic movement within the Democratic Party. The 2003 list, however, contained a number of questionable additions, including then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. As a state senator, Obama had continually passed progressive legislation--a record that he vowed to add to when he began his run for the US Senate on a platform of clear opposition to the Patriot Act, the Iraq War and NAFTA, all positions anathema to the DLC. The puzzling addition caused The Black Commentator magazine to wonder, a month after the DLC list came out, whether Obama had been "corrupted" by the centrist group. Obama's reply to the Commentator was indicative of how the DLC plays the "New Democrat" card.
"Neither my staff nor I have had any direct contact with anybody at the DLC since I began this campaign a year ago," Obama wrote. "I don't know who nominated me for the DLC list of 100 rising stars, nor did I expend any effort to be included on the list.... I certainly did not view such inclusion as an endorsement on my part of the DLC platform." After realizing that his name appeared in the DLC's database, Obama asked to have it removed. The message was clear: The DLC needed Obama a lot more than Obama needed the DLC.
Snip...
The media coverage of its attacks, plus Dean's own implosion, breathed temporary life into the DLC, as it assumed a large role in John Kerry's policy shop. As the Anybody But Bush movement mobilized, the DLC quietly pushed Kerry rightward, dubbing him "a pragmatic centrist in the Clinton mode."
After Kerry's defeat, the DLC promised to "avoid the circular firing squad" mentality but then quickly broke the promise, reverting to its favorite target: the Democratic base. Instead of labor unions and feminists, the DLC fixated on MoveOn.org and Michael Moore. "We need to be the party of Harry Truman and John Kennedy, not Michael Moore," the DLC wrote on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, of all places. "What leftist elites smugly imagine is a sophisticated view of their country's flaws strikes much of America as a false and malicious cartoon," the DLC's Will Marshall wrote in Blueprint, the group's magazine, in a rant worthy of The Weekly Standard. "Democrats should have no truck with the rancid anti-Americanism of the conspiracy-mongering left." The DLC continued this vitriol into March.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050321/bermanLatching on to the Kerry campaign via the media:
CAMPAIGN 2004
New Democrat group working with Kerry campaign to woo swing voters
DLC think tank helped spearhead Clinton campaigns
By Lauren Shepherd
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been coordinating with Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) presidential campaign in recent months to help the presumptive nominee shape a message that will appeal to swing voters.
Snip...
Kenneth Baer, author of the book Reinventing Democrats, which chronicles the rise of the DLC, agreed that the organization still has relevance for the party, particularly with Kerry as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“Kerry is neither a card-carrying New Democrat nor is he a card-carrying non-New Democrat,” Baer said. “He represents a synthesis.”
Snip...
From noted last month’s speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in which Kerry outlined a Contract with America’s Middle Class — a position pushed by From and the DLC.
From said the Kerry campaign borrowed the DLC’s position favoring cutting taxes for the middle class and “made it a cornerstone of his campaign.”
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), the chairman of the DLC, said he has noticed Kerry taking the middle ground more frequently.
“I think it’s encouraging to see Senator Kerry stake out centrist positions,” said Bayh.
A Kerry campaign spokesman said Kerry has been taking centrist positions throughout his career, including voting for welfare reform in the 1990s, and has advocated tax cuts for the middle class throughout the primary season.
more...
http://www.thehill.com/campaign/050604_democrat.aspxBorrowed middle-class tax cuts from the DLC?
Here is Al From's "ideology" during the campaign:
In his speech to the country last weekend, President Bush urged patience and determination in the reconstruction of Iraq, and also asked Congress for $87 billion to get the job done, ending months of refusal by the administration to come up with a price tag.
We agree that we must stay the course in Iraq, because the creation of a stable and democratic country is a mission we cannot afford to fail. But we continue to wonder if this administration will ever take notice of the growing contradiction between its resolute Iraq policy and its grossly irresponsible fiscal policies. With budget deficits now approaching the astonishing level of a half trillion dollars a year, the latest "emergency" funding request for Iraq represents yet another effort to borrow from the productive capacity of the U.S. economy, from vital domestic needs, and from future generations, to cover the operating expenses of the federal government. But the administration persists in its know-nothing posture of claiming all this red ink is irrelevant, and that the tax cuts that have contributed so much to the fiscal mess will somehow, and against all the evidence, magically create an era of hyper-growth that will balance the budget bye and bye.
Aside from the economic nonsense underlying the administration's position, there's also an equally important moral point that should be made.
No matter what you think about the connections between the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and the ongoing war on terror, there's no question Iraq is now a primary theater of the war on terror, as the president made clear in his address. And as we have argued since 9/11, wartime is no time for the country to indulge the Republican Party's ideological drive to shift the cost of self-government from the most comfortable Americans to the hard-pressed middle class, and from income derived from investment and inheritance to income earned by work, with massive public borrowing as a byproduct.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252034&kaid=131&subid=192None of these positions remotely resemble Kerry's position.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2780812&mesg_id=2780812http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2780470&mesg_id=2781104The fascination with trying to prove this person or that person belongs to the DLC by making the group out to be the Heritage Foundation of the left is appealing to the Clinton contingency and the anti-DLC contingency, but it makes no sense because many of the Democrats who have ever aligned themselves with the organization, for whatever reason, are stretched along the ideological spectrum left to center (or right of center who knows). Al From is at the right extreme of this group.
The DLC is not the Democratic equivalent of the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute. Al From may be promoting group think, but the Democratic Party will never become a left version of the GOP.
I don't think the DLC is going anywhere (going to vanish), but it can never claim to speak for the Democratic Party.
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