Obama and the DLC

I recently managed to get on-air with the indomitable Mike Malloy on his NovaM Radio show (linked on left) - I think it was on 2/27/07, if you're able to access archives. Being the opinionated person I am, I had to interject my thoughts on the seemingly unwavering support out there for dear old Hillary Clinton, and the subtle but still-detectable derision that greets Barack Obama's candidacy.

My major point then and still is that I cannot support a DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) candidate for President. I couldn't "pull the lever" for Clinton's reelection, based on the tremendous disapointments of his first term and my increasing knowledge of the DLC (and, being on the West Coast, my vote doesn't count in any but the closest races, thus I'm free to vote for a further-left candidate to make a point - some consolation!). I'll work to help Obama if he doesn't sucuumb to the machinations of the Militarist Zionists (Christian, Jewish, and End of Days Believers in Islam as well) simply because he is NOT a DLC-Democrat. Read http://www.blackcommentator.com/46/46_cover.html for some insight into my conviction. From what I understand, Obama will be addressing the most powerful American-Israeli lobby in the U.S., AIPAC, very soon. I'll review that and report back, and if Obama repeats John Edwards' reassurances to Israel, I will promptly defect. I read that John Edwards, also a DLC member, has already gone to Israel to promise he won't deal with Hamas if elected President (see http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/10435.htm).

In a nutshell, you can tell where the DLC wants to lead the Democratic Party [still] by looking at the records of Joseph Lieberman, the officially-uncrowned King of the DLC, and Hillary Clinton, the obvious Queen of the DLC, and examining the fundraising and policy-making sides of the DLC. Amother great article I found is the 4/4/05 "Centrist Democrats Warn Liberals" by Donald Lambro in the Washington Times (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8472.htm), quoted here, where he outlines what the DLC [again losing] strategy was for the 2006 election - note they wanted to downplay the war on Iraq:

Centrist Democrats warn liberals

By Donald Lambro

04/04/05 "Washington Times" - - The Democrats' postelection war about what they should stand for is heating up again, with centrists challenging liberals to "real fights" within the party about staking out a tougher position against terrorism.

In an attack on the party's dominant left wing, anti-war base, and a warning for new Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean "to do no harm," the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council said it is "a delusion to think that if we just turned out our voters, we could win national elections."

Instead, the DLC called on the party to dramatically change its message to "recapture the muscular progressive internationalism of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy and convince voters that national security is our first priority."

"To win back the White House in 2008, our party must change. We must be willing to discard political strategies that may make us feel good but that keep falling short. We must finally reject the false choice between exciting our base and expanding our appeal, because unless we both motivate and persuade, we'll lose every time," said DLC founder Al From and President Bruce Reed in a new manifesto for their party.

Their criticism has been heard many times during the past two decades in their continuing battle against the party's liberal establishment. But this time, they say, it will take a divisive, all-out political civil war to scrub the anti-war orthodoxy out of the party's agenda.

"Shoring up our weakness will not come without real debate -- even real fights -- over national security and domestic priorities," they said in the DLC's Blueprint magazine.

The sooner these fights take place, the better, they said.

"We should not shy away from them. It's far less important that Democrats come together now than on Election Day. And we are far more likely to be together on Election Day if we battle out our differences now."

In an "open letter" to their party last month, 17 DLC members led by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana said Democrats had "to make clear to the American people that winning the war on jihadist extremism will be the Democratic Party's first priority this year and every year until the danger recedes."

Although they acknowledged that for many anti-war Democrats "Iraq remains a difficult issue," they said, "It is essential that partisan enmity not obscure America's vital interest in helping the newly elected Iraqi government succeed."

But party liberals last week dismissed the DLC's advice as warmed-over Republicanism.

"I can't tell the difference between the positions the DLC puts forward and Republican policy," said Jack Blum, counsel for the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

"I've read this before and I am not carried away by it. Nobody in the Democratic Party, and that most especially includes the liberals in the Americans for Democratic Action, opposes fighting the terrorists."

Copyright © 2005 News World Communications, Inc..

So now you know why, even with their slim majority, Democrats can't get a single progressive policy on the agenda in the Senate.

You'll note that in all this there is not a word about economic equality, social justice, civil rights, human rights, or even the recovery of our Constitutional rights, though the DLC platform was updated in 2005. Markets, globalisation, social conservatism, pandering to the fears of the middle class, continuing the failed policy of global racial/ethnic/religious profiling, feeding the military industrial complex and the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and dealing with environmental catastrophe through the market are their primary focus. Continuing the War on Terrorism, as ethereal and useless as the War on Drugs, is on the DLC agenda. Protecting the Homeland (Gestapo language if ever there was any), is on the DLC agenda.

Peace is nowhere on the DLC agenda. Confronting and resolving the re-segregation of America, the growing rift between rich and poor and the unsustainable and loan/credit-dependent living standards of the American middle class, never mind their vulnerability, or the worsening health and education available to most Americans (have they/we been deemed superfluous and dispensible?) - those issues are nowhere on the DLC agenda. National healthcare and fixing all the public schools so that everyone can have a quality education is not on the DLC agenda, but charter schools are.

The DLC is simply rooted in Dixiecrat foundations, and though there's nothing new about it, its reactionary head has risen again in the defeatist mentality of the Democratic so-called Leadership. We have at least two DLC members running for President of the United States [again]: Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Clinton's oh-so-radical election theme is "Saving the American Dream".

Barack Obama said, years before running for President was a thought (see http://www.blackcommentator.com/48/48_cover.html), that he would not join the DLC. Let's hope he holds to it.

Al Gore was DLC; if he decides to run again, will it be with the DLC's blessing or will they "talk him out of it" before he's forced to deal with their opposition publicly? Will John Edwards ever clearly and openly demand that the U.S. Poverty Guidelines be revamped just as the Minimum Wage had to be, so that a family of four in New York or California or any other high-priced area is not expected to survive without government assistance if they earn a pathetic $13,000 in an entire year? Or is his message of closing the gap between America's richest and poorest pure jury-manipulating-verbiage? I'll look into all the Democratic candidates closely as time goes on, and we'll see just where they stand, Truthseekers.

P.S. No shocker that Democratic Senator of Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, who has failed to get any help to her Black and poor and middle-class constituents in 18 months after Hurricane Katrina, is an illustrious founding member of the DLC.