The DLC responds to the NYT about their article.

Noam Scheiber wrote an article for the NYT called The Centrists Didn't Hold

The article pointed out mistakes and their increasing irrelevancy.



The DLC responds on the new Ideas Primary forum. They are not happy with the reporter.

Political Spin: As Predictable as the Seasons

Yes, they do know spin when they see it. Here is some of the response.



The author makes it clear they will still be in charge of the issues and that the new nominee will most definitely be at their convention next year.



And from my experience in Florida, they really do have a strong network of folks here. Nearly the whole party in our area.

I thought for a minute there they might have decided to say something about the "noisy activists", but they didn't.

Ideologically inflexible and noisy party activists

Howard Dean beat them to the state and local activists they ignored and treated as irrelevant for years.

A base is being built that will not be dependent on them...if there is time to finish it..and money.

The candidates and the congressional committees are getting loads of money, big and small. Everyone is hyped for 08. The lobbyists are flocking to those two groups above because they can be helpful.

Building the party throughout the states does not interest the big financiers.

.

I personally like.."dinos' Loser Club".

It's all about the MONEY and the greed for Power(and not to the People).

All you have to do is read or listen to what they have spewed and it doesn't take a seasoned political veteran to figure out what they're about.

do they really know what Center or Where the Center is?

Since many were happy to vote with the Republicans affirming
the Center Right Government< I truly questionm yjrot sbility
for find Center.

Oh, have they changed their tune since 2003. Bruce Reed also disses Kerry a little, rather subtly, unnecessarily.

Yeh, who's spinning.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/27/usnews/whispers/main3105392.shtml



What a difference from 2003 when they were dissing a candidate for not being electable. In front of the media.

I knew of Dean memos in 2003, but I did not know they had a meeting.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/336

i was wondering who they were really working for..now i have no doubt..it sure wasn't my dem values!! or real dem candidates..since one in my area supported by the DLC changed registration 6 weeks before the primary ..for the other party..yes ..you heard that right!!

oh Rahm and Our FDP chair didn't help the party one iota!!

oh and our FDP chairlady gets $30,000+ from a republican lobbyist to supplement her income..gives you the warm fuzzies doesn't it..oh and we are not supposed to criticize that..mum is the word...

can you spell ..not our party anymore??

fly

Remember when all those "reagan democrats" switched parties? Well, some of them didn't switch, and they just started voting with the republicans. THOSE are the DLCers...they ARE republicans. And the republican party supports them financially and in mentoring for their candidacies.

I KNOW PERSONALLY one of Bill/Hillary Clinton's main benefactors, and he IS a republican who HATES a populist message. He's carries a "D" (for Democrat) after his name, but he hates all things the Dem party has ever stood for. The original plan for the DLC was partly this guy's contribution.

WE DO NOT WANT HILLARY CLINTON AS PRESIDENT.

:kick::kick::kick:

Why wouldn't they infiltrate and put a "d" after their names..they're not going to win coming from a straight forward position.

All full of Greed, Obfuscation, and Prevarication.

Why would anyone think that a super wealthy liberal from Massachusetts who spoke like a professor, and coming across as condescending to boot, was especially "electable". On top of that, Kerry was a worse campaigner than Gore, whom I like.

I remember reading a post in 2004 by a Democrat who had a grandmother who lived down South and who was a Republican. She disliked Bush and told this grandchild that she was not going to vote for him. The poster asked her if she was going to vote for Kerry. She said, "No!". When asked why not, she replied "Because he never came here to ask for my vote." Kerry wrote off the "Red" states, and lost the election. My conjecture is that the DLC types figured that "anyone" could beat Bush, so just hand the election to one of their own.

In pushing Hillary to be the nominee, if they get their way, they are going to put another Republican in the White House. Of the 2004 candidates, only Dean, whom I supported, had the right idea for winning the presidency. It was Dean's pushing a Democratic candidate in every contest that got us a majority in the House.

DLC lackies in state governments undermined progressive candidates in state races and prevented us from gaining more House and Senate seats. Doesn't anyone remember the Senate race in Connecticut? The DLC comes across as a group that is looking out only for its own interests, the public be damned.

Kerry wasn't picked by the "people" because they independently thought he was "electable". That was a propaganda pitch foisted on America by a DLC that used the "fear factor" to push their own candidate on us who then lost.

They are moderate Democrats that have as much right to participate in the party and its platform as anybody else. I say this as a liberal Democrat who believes in inclusiveness.

Just because moderate Democrats are hunted like Republicans here by people whose sole purpose seems to be destroying them does not mean they are anywhere in the ballpark of Republicans. It is rude and disrespectful to dismiss people that don't think exactly the way you do.

There is so much extraneous BS flying around these boards. As soon as people get used to the idea that democracy includes everyone, the sooner the Democratic Party can get its collective shit together and win the next presidential election and increased presence in Congress.

you might want try to convince the DLC that It is rude and disrespectful to dismiss people that don't think exactly the way you do

The DLC's notion of a centrist is Lieberman, whose re-election they cheered, and who has recently been gushing in ecstasy about certain gotta-jumpstart-the-apocalypse-to-trigger-the-rapture Christians.

I have heard the same caustic rhetoric and worse aimed at the DLC, and I'm not interested in refereeing this lame war of words.

and I appreciate you demonstrating the difference

:hi:

to where the DLC has been calling everybody else extremists.

but I've seen it written that they call us lefties unstable or whatever.

Ya might try google.

Fuck the dlc.

You made the accusation it is up to you to prove it. All you're doing is play the same game as FAUX News. You put words in the other sides mouth misrepresenting their position to justify your attacks on them. Your intolerance for people with different ideas is as bad as any right-wingers.

Fringe.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/62

First, the question show where anyone from the DLC called those on the left extremists.

Second, you change the word in question to fringe and you don't even prove that. The articles in the link show people playing the FAUX News game of mischaracterizing what was really said to villify the other side. If you bothered to read the original memos from the DLC; you'd have seen that the word fringe is not used in reference to extremists on the left.

Hell yes, I read them. I wrote the journal post. Next time you call me dishonest I will alert on you.

"Incumbents are always difficult to beat, but this President -- like his father -- will be more vulnerable than we can imagine today. A year from now, the Presidential race will look a lot different. The President's numbers, inflated by his success in Iraq, will return to pre-war levels. The Democrats will look stronger. Fringe candidates who devalue the Democratic Party's currency will be long gone. The cacophony of candidate voices will be reduced to one. When the nominee goes head to head with the President, Democrats will have the clarity of message for which we now long."

There's more.

Look up Good Night Vietnam at the DLC site. I believe they use the words activists and fringe and anti-war interchangeably.

You can believe that the sky is purple. That doesn't make it so.

And they didn't use the term 'fringe' in relation to activists or anti-war people either. The quote that you cherry-picked was from a section disputing the myth that Dems couldn't win the '04 election. The term fringe was in relation to candidates who said the party's nomination wasn't worth anything.

And I remind you the original challenge was to find example of the DLC labeling everyone on the left as extremists. You couldn't find any examples of that so you switch gears to the word fringe.

You did not read my link at all. Then you call me dishonest.

"Dean Statement in Response to DLC's Charge that Public Servants are
"Fringe Activists"

“Once again, the DLC has chosen to put their own political agenda
ahead of the progress needed to unite the Democratic Party. This election
has barely begun, and the DLC has repeatedly dismissed people who attend
caucuses, who get out the vote, and now the 1.3 million members of AFSCME as
‘fringe activists’ who do not reflect ‘the mainstream values, national pride
and the economic aspirations of middle-class and working people.’

And more later.

That's not someone from the DLC calling activists fringe, thats a critic of the DLC putting words in their mouth.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

There seems to be a lot of closed ones here.

that a primary objective of the DLC is bashing liberals, using the same tired rhetoric and ugly stereotypes that dittoheads have parroted since the Nixon era. As a matter of principle, I won't link to this tripe; anyone who knows how to search can find it themselves.



That last phrase is a good example of the sort of game being played. For generations, unreconstructed meant a Southerner who was unwilling to abandon Confederate nostalgia. The liberal Democrats, who do not pine for the glories of ante-bellum Dixie, cannot in this sense be unreconstructed. Prior to the Johnson era and its Civil Rights legislation, there were unreconstructed Democrats, who supported segregation, but almost uniformly they began Republicans as after Nixon began to court them as voters. Calling liberal Democrats "unreconstructed" was intended to shock them into a stunned silence, just as calling them "slow learners" or accusing them of being so hate-filled that they cannot think was intended to stun them into silence. :puke:

Anything quoted out of context can be misunderstood or twisted. I don't deny that centerists or moderates disagree with those on the left. But if you want to talk about bashing there are statements on this site, in this thread, that are ten times as bad.

Allow me to interject. Its all on the DLCs website and nothing is taken out of context. You appear to be prone to defend the DLC, and if that shall be your position, you should do yourself a favor and read their publication.

example:

The reality is that left-liberal activists tend to be slow learners who, still reflexively clinging to a Vietnamera framework, are trapped in mindless negativism. Ironically, like Saddam himself, they also view any opposition to America as an updated version of the Vietcong. That's in part why the killers in Iraq are called "insurgents" instead of more accurately describing them as members of "death squads."

Link: http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253221&kaid=127&subid=170

Do a search for the other phrases quoted and you will find the rest.

The DLC is anti-liberal. This is not a debatable issue. They freely admit it. Heres a quote:
"One of the major reasons for the DLC's founding in 1985 was to resist what we called "liberal fundamentalism,"

Happy reading.

The question was where they labeled everyone on the left extremists. And no one has yet to provide one quote that does.

And as far as "left-liberal activists tend ... are trapped in mindless negativism", I think anyone who reads these threads about the DLC would agree with that statement.

I responded to you statement re: context. Which is why my response was re: context. Simple.

On the theory it was just by some inexplicable fluke that the DLC took up a former "Christian" Coalition shill and spokesperson for vicious wingnut Chavez and rightist McCain, let's spin the wheel again.

clicky clicky clicky joe klein

Yes, I'm afraid it's that Joe Klein, the rightwing hack at Time Mag. The DLC has posted a number of his pieces on their site. And what views does Joe Klein represent? Well, let's look at him:



Ya know, I'm beginnin to think I've looked the DLC over enuf to know what's goin on over there ...

+

Just because someone once worked for a Republican they can never work for a Dem? David Brooks who runs Media Matters (a source you seem to trust) use to be a right wing hit man.

As far as Klein, I don't care for him either but instead of quoting him for things he wrote elsewhere why don't you quote from the articles posted on the DLC site? Maybe because they don't prove your point!

general tactics. I noted that the DLC gave a prominent position to a strategist with a long history of working for the rightwing. I then noted that another regular source of DLC columns is yet another rightwinger who has a habit of demonizing liberals.

Despite your repeated demand I supply evidence, you yourself provide almost none. I say almost none because you have established one interesting fact: you can't tell the difference between David Brock and David Brooks.

Good day! :hi:

In the American I grew up in the burdon of proof is on the accuser.

The DLC is right of center: they are the corporate wing of the party. "Moderate" is a meaningless term used to avoid actual discussion about where a group or individual stands politically.

because its accuracy dispels the myth you are trying to push to perpetuate the boogie-man meme.

:)
Moderate is a fookin' lie to describe the dinos' loser club.

Fascist d is more accurate.

think they're moderate.

This obsession with the now irrelevant DLC is a shiny object for people with too much time on their hands.

over just 35 short years.

Moderate now would have been a Plutocrat then...

Yesterday's mainstream is called the "loony left" today...

The center today would have been termed the "crazy right-wing nut jobs" back then...

It's depressing.

I don't hold ANY hope any more for this country.

It's impossible for the belly of the beast to be any better than it is...and that's pretty fucking bad...

And we got plenty of life in us! And we are NEVER NEVER EVER GIVING UP!~:)

I HAVE given up on the macrocosm though.

I still try but I expect nothing good to come out of the Cosmos' experiment with "higher form" mammalian life on Earth.

Soon, both the Lizards and the Mammals will pass and it will be the time of the exoskeletons or the fungi...

Having been involved as a worker in elections the past few years, I have had the opportunity to see some of the internal party politics up close. The DLC and their state Democratic Party supporters have been less than helpful, if not downright antagonistic, to progressive candidates.

I agree that there is a lot of BS on these boards, and I am ready and willing to point it out. However, in the case of the DLC, the critics here are realistic and spot on in their criticisms. If the DLC shoves another one of their own down our throats in the form of Clinton, you will see another four years with a Republican in the White House. The DLC is the group that pushed the "Kerry is electable" down our throats in 2004 and kept Bush in the White House.

Lou Dobbs and Barry Goldwater would be quite at home with most of their policies. Bottom line is that they are the Democratic wing of the Corporate Party.

While these knuckleheads toss around grenades within the party (let's be honest, some of the worst here aren't even Democrats), the GOP is having its way with America.

Talk about not being able to see the forest for the tress.

Oy vey.

The day after the election it started. And it was not just the Republicans. It was the Lieberman types, the Al From types, the media talking heads.

""Bipartisanship" is only operative when the Democrats are in power. I don't recall hearing the commentariat scolding the Republicans for not being more accommodating to Democrats during their 12 year reign of terror, do you? I certainly don't recall a lot of garment rending over how the Republicans were isolating their moderates. My recollection was that everyone was cheering the GOP's responsiveness to its "traditional values, low tax, patriotic" base. You remember --- the Real Americans? Karl Rove was widely considered to be a genius."

With HRC it comes in the familiar guise of triangulation. With Obama it is repackaged as "unity", which requires consensus. How do you achieve consensus on the big, controversial issues? By splitting the difference between progressives and conservatives... I am afraid the "let's hold hands and sing kumbaya with the right-wing" mentality is still alive and well in our party, even outside the fading DLC. :scared:

the entire time the Bildeberg attendee was in the senate.

:sarcasm:

repukes when they were in power..expecting the Dems to cower.

Screw bi-partisianship when the other party is freakin' Fascist.

It's interesting to see how the DLC sees the candidates. It shows very clearly what they believe should be occupying the candidates:

"unlike those focused on fundraising figures, endorsement announcements, and polling data"

ummmmm, maybe they should have included the many problems facing the country?????? i mean, isn't that why we elect people? or is it "just to win?????"

the DLC just provided a very clear view of their answer to that question ...

Problems? :(

}(

Florida Dems have been rude and snippy. He made a great telling statement in an interview in SC this week...best I not post it. The meeting is in August, and I bet the full committee will say no to Florida.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2007/07/dean-to-florida.html

"Might the Democratic National Committee foist on America's biggest battleground state some kind of unwanted delegate selection plan for the presidential nominating process? The party rules allow that scenario, which sounds possible from Howard Dean's comments the other day to a South Carolina TV reporter."

"Remember that the DNC carved out Jan. 29 for South Carolina to hold the first southern Democratic primary, only to have Florida leaders schedule the Sunshine state for the same day. Fl Democrats are trying to keep a straight face as they blame it all on Florida Republicans." (Actually some Democrats helped start the push)

"Here's what Dean told News Channel 15 in Myrtle Beach: "Well, the Florida drama is not over yet. So I think South Carolina will be well represented. ... My understanding is that South Carolina is not likely to move and that Florida is going to have a different electoral procedure than they think they’re going to have."

hitting the nail on the head!!

fly

oh and they don't like the word that starts with "P"

as in ppppppppprrrrogressive!!

by John Nichols
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_10_64/ai_65952690

An old classic ...

Oh that's right, the DLC types were first to slam Dean's 50 state initiative...

of making the DLC irrelevant. :toast:

The DLC is neither.

Where is "The Center"?
Here is what the MAJORITY of Americans (Democrats AND Republicans) want from OUR government!


Where do YOU stand on the above issues?
How does it feel to be a "Centrist"?



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.

But then again, I don't pay much attention to them.

Thanks for the GREAT info BVAR22.

Note that their first priority was to serve up a hearty echo of Bush's paired "surpluses" and "tax-cuts," all slathered in "tell the rubes what they want to hear" sauce.

I really don't have the stomach to link to this rightwing tripe

The DLC would agree with nearly all the items on that list, and I'm not even sure that shouldn't be all the items on that list.

1. 65 percent (of ALL Americans, Democrats AND Republicans) say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.

--- DLC wants "affordable" health INSURANCE and a mandate that everyone must buy it
-- NOT Universal Health Care... and they sure as hell wouldn't want to advocate raising taxes to provide Health Care...

2. 86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of selfdescribed "social conservatives").

--- Yeah, to the poverty line -- not anywhere near a living wage...

3. 60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.

--- Not really. Couldn't find this on their website...

4. 66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

--- Not the DLC

5. 77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.

--- Not the DLC if it "harms the market"

6. 87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.

--- Not the DLC

7. 69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."

--- At the DLC site - <Crickets>

Links please???

"And from my experience in Florida, they really do have a strong network of folks here. Nearly the whole party in our area."

Old guard Dems are the biggest problem. The DLC are not New Dems. They're old Guard Dems. We're getting sold out to the corporations, small business organizations and large landowners and developers and when they make big mistakes that costs members of the public each, thousands of dollars to fix, the old guard Dems and Republicans hang tight and act like goons, using their power and position to threaten and destroy anyone they victimized that dares to give them trouble and expose them for what they are.

Thanks DLC, for nothing.

Yes, that is a very good way to put it. The old guard. It is one reason we get so discouraged. We felt like we were making a difference, and it may yet prove we are in some areas. But it's been a down week here.

Florida...the rules are different here.

up close once. Academically, they're nothing out of this world. They may have been members of sororieties at Florida or State, or even made it as head cheerleader. Then they gravitated to the real estate business or worked for the chamber of commerce. And they have such swelled heads about being big fish in a little pond. I went on a cruise with a group of them and they broke every rule imaginable. Jumped the line, pulling their custom suitcases on rollers. And when everybody else was asked to leave their rooms, they didn't.

They acted with such arrogance and snobbery. In a hot tub, one toasted, "The masses are asses." She was the one with special parking at the new arena when we went down to see a game, and she couldn't wait to get out in the parking lot to show it off to as many people as she could mow down. And I do mean, mow down. Even though she was the first one out of the parking lot which was RIGHT next to the arena, she stepped on the gas whenever she saw open space, never even stopping to think that thick cords of people were just streaming out next to us.

I have no idea why they would consider themselves Democrats, unless it's because Democrats at one time, controlled everything in Florida.

thank god i live in two states..and i get sanity in my other state..but i vote and am a delegate in Fla...

but i have quit dem clubs in Fla because i swear many are run by infiltraitors ..and i refuse to sit and listen to so called dems say we are crooked!!

oh and that is no joke!!

fly

and you have an attorney with lots of time on their hands and willing to work pro bono, send him or her my way.

their meetings and let it be known what's up!

Whatever happened to Lawton Chiles People?

They backed a corrupt bill. End of story, except of course to ask why they backed this bill and what that means about their motives and agenda.

.

Beg your pardon, Mr. Schieber!
The DLC missed the opportunity to lead on the environment, fair trade, etc.

have to live on the street?" said little Susie Cratchett.

Her mother replied, "They never really explained it, sweetie. I guess they didn't understand that sometimes, when little children get leukemia, like you did, it costs mommies and daddies a lot of money to pay for treatment."

"But why did the bank take our house and car?" asked Susie.

"I really don't know, Susie. I think maybe the banks paid the DLC, and the republicans, to pass laws that help banks get more money. Now hop up in the shopping cart, baby, it's time to go for your treatment."

"OK. I love you mommy, even if we do have to live on the street."

"I love you too, Susie, and maybe someday, we'll be able to afford to have a car to live in, if the banks don't find our piggybank".

From what I know of Tennessee, after having served for many years with many men and women from Tennessee, they are just as politically diverse as any state could be, and the people there are smart enough to smell a skunk in a bag any day.

Al Gore was from Tennessee, mind you, so I have never, ever considered Tennessee as "enemy country".
Messed up for a few years here and there, but not altogether that bad.
I think Tennessee has a good chance of "waking up" and coming to their senses in the next few years.
Kentucky, too.
You watch and see.

Ford didn't want Dean as chair coming to TN. Dean's not religious enough.