a cry in the wilderness from Liberal Street Fighter
Word is coming from the tough boys of the DLC from the conclave in Ohio that, in order to win, the Democrats must become more, well, Republican:
Centrist Dems Urge Military Enlargement
Centrists who contend Democrats cannot retake the White House until voters trust the party to protect them said Sunday the Army should expand by 100,000 soldiers and that colleges should open their campuses to military recruiters.
“A Democrat has to show the toughness to govern,” said Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council. “People don’t doubt that Republicans will be tough.”
From argued that national security and safety are threshold issues for swing voters who increasingly are trending Republican.
A smart Democratic Party couldn’t win over Americans by talking about how to use our military WELL. It takes toughness to be honest about our national security. Toughness to face how terribly vulnerable our current militaristic government has made us with their unnecessary war. Not that kind of toughness will work, according to Mr. Frum and the rest of the chest thumpers in Ohio.
Only by building a bigger military, more weapons — becoming MORE REPUBLICAN — can the Democratic Party hope to regain the reins of government.
Hundreds of centrist Democrats gathered in Ohio for the annual meeting of the DLC. From and DLC President Bruce Reed argued that Democrats should be more aggressive in pushing values issues and take an unrelenting, hard-line stance against terrorism.
“No political party deserves to win unless it lays out a plan for Americans to win,” said From.
Once again, the DLC proclaims from on high that there is only ONE solution to the party’s problems. Once again they make clear that voices on the left are not welcome in the party. Toughness means more soldiers, it means more cops, it means a thriving prison/industrial complex and paramilitary police forces.
There is no voice for the principled left in the political conversation of this country. There is only the far-right Republican party, and the center-right Democrats. Those of us who feel otherwise are not welcome in the conversation:
From said Democrats should also push hard for a reduction in dependence on foreign oil.
“We ought not to pay for both sides in the war on terror,” said From, who also called for “new ideas that value families.”
“We can help parents raise kids by adopting a uniform media rating system and banning marketing of violence to children,” said From.
There were few who quibbled with the argument that the party needs to move toward the middle.
“I think this country is becoming more and more moderate and more and more conservative,” said Leroy Comrie, a councilman in the New York City borough of Queens.
We’ll ban marketing of violence, but we’ll celebrate violence in our news media. Our most ostensibly “liberal” city, New York City, entertains heavily armed National Guard and police in it’s transportation system as it institutes random bag searches for subway riders. In a hot and precarious summer, the police in another large city shoot first and ask questions later in multiple incidents.
Instead of offering a true alternative to voters, not to mention all of the non-voters, the push continues apace to move more and more to the right. There will be, of course, nothing gained from this course. Why bother switching parties, or joining this one, if they are so much the same? The argument that the Democrats will just be smarter about it isn’t very convincing. When this leads inevitably to continued losses, or at best modest gains as a reaction against the corrupt Bush administration, From and his cronies will blame the left for the disappointing results, just as they always do.
From said the simple math of elections means Democrats must do better among moderates.
“We have to win about 60 percent of the moderates to break even,” he said. “There has never been a time when there were more liberals than conservatives in the electorate.”
We all know that weak children will try to emulate stronger children by aping their aggressive behavior. Sadly, it seems that we don’t outgrow that tendency as we get older. Violence and anger lie just under the surface of our increasingly militaristic society, and it is dangerous that BOTH the major political outlets in this country feed the militarism.
I fear to think where this is leading us.
toy soldiers via International Toy Soldiers Gallery
dove cartoon via Badger Herald
Centrists who contend Democrats cannot retake the White House until voters trust the party to protect them said Sunday the Army should expand by 100,000 soldiers and that colleges should open their campuses to military recruiters.
Call me stupid, but how do you just make a political decision to “expand by 100,000 soldiers”?
Where are you going to get those soldiers? Is there a Soldiers-R-Us somewhere full of bodies for the taking?
Seriously, can someone explain to me what politicians mean when they say stuff like this? (especially in a time when the Army has trouble meeting its recruitment goals?) How can they talk about this so easily?
It’s our son’s and daughters of course!
I had to pick “who cares”. At this point, I think I am headed back to my disillusioned voter status….I’m going to do what I can to get Kinky on the ballot here in Texas, I’ll vote in 2006, but the 2002 elections were such a gut punch, I think I need to get back to preparing to take care of me and mine in the event of the eventual catastrophe that this nation will become.
I would love for someone somewhere to talk me out of it, to give me hope that I can do something in the midst of this broken system to change it, for my kids, for my ageing mother, hell, even for myself….I really don’t think the change is going to come in my lifetime, regardless.
Anyone got any words o’ wisdom?
Short version: “decline to state”.
I have the feeling I should understand this, but I don’t….braindeath has set in. have time for the longer version? 😉
Sorry. I just changed my voter registration to “decline to state”, and I feel ever so much better now.
Ah, I knew it soudned familiar! I’m pretty sure I’m not a registrered anything, but I suppose I should check — I registred to vote here in Texas many a year ago when Ann Richards was still gov., so I may have been feeling better about the dems. than I have been for the past 8 years…
I still think the best idea is one of MitM’s own… forming a sort of bloc, on the left, of people willing to stand together, and stand up for each other, and to use the power of their votes and finances to hold politicians accountable. Or something like that.. I may have added or subtracted a few things.
We need a voice, and we need to be heard, and we need to be taken seriously… the only way (I believe) for progressives to win, and win big, is to not just ‘stand for something’. But to stand up for everyone. It’s just bad thinking to believe that Democrats can throw over any part of their constituencies, without the ones that are left wondering if they are going to be next.
Also, someone wrote somewhere about the ‘preaching to the choir’ thing… and the importance of that, in firing up the choir to go and preach to others. Which, ultimately, is what we’ll all need to do if we want to change things.
(Sorry if this is a tad disconnected… it’s about 110 degrees here, and I have ice cream).
we’re all in the disillusioned boat. Understanding that the political animal, like any other animal, puts self preservation first.
I decided to put my energy and my money outside the political party system. Find a group that shares your values and work with them to bring political and social change. The ACLU, NOW, Sierra Club, The League of Conservation Voters…
Whatever you do, stay active in democracy. There really is no opting out.
Thanks, I appreciate the words! Knowing that many of us are in this same boat is what makes it hard for me to completely say “the hell with it”. I just cannot go on supporting democrats (as a party anyway, there will always be individuals I support). No more, not in good conscience.
This just makes me want to scream. If some democrats want to act like republicans they should leave the fucken party and be republicans.
As for republicans being tougher..that’s bullshit-a public perception maybe but bullshit none the less…more truthful might be that chickenhawks like to talk tough and make other people die for them.
We all know where georgie’s macho ‘bring it on’ has gotten us.
And how did so called family values get into this tough talk anyway. We can help parents raise kids by having livable wages, affordable housing, health care for all children, making education funding a priority-for smaller class room size and so on. Violence in the media is not the fucken root cause of kids problems.
No being tough is standing up and doing the right thing for the country-like spending money on actually trying to make us safer by have port security(not as glamorous sounding I guess as saying we’ll put a boot up your ass), guarding nuclear sites, etc etc.
If you can’t be a progressive democrat get outa the kitchen or some such stupid analogy….and now I’m back to screaming.
thanks..I was almost afraid to hit post..I thought I may have just been ranting without saying much of anything constructive because I was so pissed off.
that’s what this place is for, and I don’t beleive I’ve ever seen you go off for no reason.
I agree with you 100%, it’s just a damned shame that enough Americans don’t feel, or say what they feel enough, that’s our biggest problem.
So whenever you feel like let’n it out…just let it GO ; )
Society isn’t militaristic – don’t confuse another idiot savant (love that term) with anyone who has common sense. To a person, everyone I know along the entire political spectrum is beginning to, or has, understood the “war on terrorism” to be an action against a global criminal enterprise. Kerry’s analysis was correct.
Think back to those halcyon days of 9/12/01 when the world was on our side. We knew then – all of us – that we had been attacked by stateless, loosely-affiliated groups with cells all over the world. The “end game” was, and is, to destroy those terror networks, and we don’t need 100,000 more troops for that operation. We do need more staff in intelligence, special ops, and analysis. [Think “RICO” – not Iraq].
Fighting this type of organization is indeed a long and arduous process. Investigation, analysis, protection, and prevention are the means to that end game – not extensions of force with troops on the ground. Even my somewhere-to-the-right-of-Attila-the-hun cousin finally admitted that had we spent our resources actually fighting terrorism, instead of the Iraqi straw-man, the world would now be a safer place.
Read the “other article” in this week’s New Yorker about how Police Commissioner Kelly is protecting his citizens. That’s how it’s done. And he doesn’t have fully equipped divisions of troops and massive air and sea power.
The DLC is irrelevant to the conversation. They just haven’t figured that part out yet.
“The DLC is irrelevant to the conversation.”
Right answer. I was in a meeting with Howard Dean when someone asked him about the DLC. He said, “just ignore them; they don’t actually control any votes.”
They’re just good at getting attention.
Us grassroots folks can just keep on with taking over the Party and moving it forward.
so hard to ignore, and they cause confusion and reinforce Republican talking points. That’s a problem.
Hard to ignore, but not impossible. Then again, I don’t hang anywhere but here and news pages. Maybe they’re louder on other blogs?
the problem is that they’re louder through AP, WaPo and NY Times, Time Magazine etc etc etc …
It makes it all but impossible to change the image of the party w/ these idiots constantly reinforcing Republican talking points.
and the big dog he rode in on.
I want one — just ONE — national politician to stand up and say that Bush’s War on Terrorism is the wrong approach to the entire issue. It’s not, and never was, a war that could be fought and won with superior firepower, bombs and thousands of soldiers.
It’s a war with two fronts, neither of which were originally located anywhere near Iraq. One is a front against, as noted above, a non-governmental, international criminal conspiracy — who specialize in acts of terrorism against unarmed civilians, so they can provoke exactly the kind of over-reaction they’ve succeeded in getting from this Administration. An over-reaction that harms even more unarmed civilians, and thus recruits more willing suicide terrorists to their cause. They use religous rhetoric because it advances their cause, and because faith is a strong uniting force that crosses national and ethnic boundaries.
The second front is even more nebulous: it’s a war of political opinion, of trust and belief, of ideals versus reality. It’s a battle for the hearts and minds of millions of people in the Middle East and throughout the world who feel some sympathy for their situation. This is the front of the war that keeps groups like Al Qaeda in the “criminal conspiracy” category rather than “holy revolutionaries” or “freedom fighters” in the perceptions of people in the Middle East. It’s the front that is most crucial — lose here, and you cannot win the other. Win here, and the chances of winning the other just improved remarkably. But the Bush Administration is losing this one, badly. How a policy-making machine that has so expertly manipulated the hearts and minds of so many Americans can not only fuck up on what is basically a public relations issue, but doesn’t even seem to realize this front exists…
Maybe they can’t handle a public relations issue when they can’t control the media, or when lies won’t do the job…They can’t control Al-Jazeera, and popular opinion in the Middle East is a far, far tougher audience to bamboozle than the patriotic faithful in the red states. And God knows, they can’t afford to tell the truth.
Either they are genuinely stymied at the culture gap, and really don’t GET IT that they’re doing exactly what most benefits the very people they presumably wanted to destroy…. or they never cared about winning the war on terrorism in the first place. Their goal was to have a war… not win it.
And all I want is for one fucking politician in ANY party to stand the hell up and say so. And mean it. And keep saying it, as long as it takes….
::Takes deep breath:: Okay, I feel better now. Carry on, Madman. I hear ya.
well said.
I think Kucinich(someone please tell me how to spell his name) did that and on the floor of the House(fairly recently) if I remember correctly but no one-the press ever covers anything he says..so we’re left actually I think in a way to blaming the press..if they don’t report or cover the politicians then how is the general public to know some are speaking out?
I may be mad at some politicians but I am almost to the point of violence against the dam media. And I’m not kidding.
What I have never understood about the DLC is why its members don’t just run as Republicans. Everything they say boils down to urging Democrats to be more like Republicans. Why bother? I’m sure the Republicans would love to see a chunk of the Democratic Party defect to their side — god knows they loved it when the racist wing of the party left the Dems to join them.
Or maybe I’m not confused. Maybe it’s the corporate interests who run the DLC that are confused. Maybe someone should fax them the addresses of Republican legislators so they can send their contribution checks to an organization that already represents their interests.
Or maybe it’s that the DLC exists specifically to undermine the Democratic Party and to eliminate any possibility of the public voting for liberal candidates. That would be the obvious explanation if I were a visitor from another planet instead of a happy little earthling drone without the benefit of bullshit-piercing vision.
In the words of Deep Throat, follow the money. Look at who contributes to the DLC, and who else those folks contribute to. The Democratic Leadership Council is Democratic in exactly the same way that the People’s Republic of China is a people’s republic.
Marisacat offered this link in the thread at LSF:
DLC profile:
Thank you; that was a very useful starting point for more research. I thought this paragraph summed up my suspicions pretty well (emphasis added):
I’d like to dig deeper into the DLC and get a more detailed look at their financial backers and the records of their legislative members. I’d also like to see what can be done to support challengers to DLC politicians in the primaries. I’m sick of elections being a choice between the center-right and the scary-right.
oh, me too. The little bits and pieces I see are bad enough.
Don’t forget that people like Tim Roemer, also a “centrist,” are associated w/ Scaiffe-funded groups like Mercatus Center, a man that the Congressional Leadership wanted to head the frickin’ party!