Brendan does a good job of laying out the basic sentiment in his post In Which Harold Ford Has His Buttocks Handed to Him. Someone invited Ford to post at TPM Cafe and the comments are not pretty. It’s actually more like a carwreck, which is exactly what is going to happen to blogactivism if we are ever forced to swallow a DLC candidate as our presidential nominee. Most of us will just turn out the lights and go find more productive things to do.
Ford Jr. makes a call for common ground but then pulls out this gem:
It’s no secret that in some parts of the progressive blogosphere, the DLC has attained bogey-man status based on what I can only describe as a distorted view of the organization’s history, and its alleged present status as a pillar of the Washington political establishment.
Ford is here suggesting that the DLC does not enjoy the status of a pillar of the Washington political establishment. Let’s examine this for a moment. We first have to identify what the Washington political establishment is before we can determine whether the DLC is a pillar within it. The establishment is made up of people that are serving or have served in organizations like the National Security Council, the Defense Policy Board, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. It’s made up Congress’s chairmen and the powerful lobbyists that write their laws for them. It’s made up of the Bigfoot press at Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, New York Times, and elsewhere. It’s made up of talking heads like Pat Buchanan, Chris Matthews, Donna Brazille, Mary Matalin, and James Carville.
And it most definitely includes the former first lady and junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. There are other pillars at the Pentagon and in our intelligence agencies, and in the party mechanisms of both parties (Schrum, Rove, Bartlett, Axelrod, Emanuel etc.).
These people and institutions, collectively, have failed us during the Bush years. That is why we have a blogosphere and that is why the blogosphere holds most of these people and institutions in suspicion, if not outright contempt.
Nowhere is that contempt greater than it is for Joe Lieberman, The New Republic, elements of the Washington Post, and for the DLC which is so intimately connected with these people and organizations.
They have led us astray. They have given us journalmalism instead of reporting. They have refused to demand lawful behavior from our leaders. They have been complicit in a fraud on the American people (the case for war in Iraq). In every way, the blogosphere stands in opposition to these failed institutions…the DLC, primary above all, because it is ostensibly a left-wing organization.
Let’s look at the DLC’s leadership:
Harold Ford, Jr. is chairman of the DLC. U.S. Sen. Tom Carper is vice chair of the DLC; U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is chair of the DLC’s American Dream Initiative; Al From is founder and CEO of the DLC. Bruce Reed is DLC president; Pennsylvania State Representative Jennifer Mann is chair of the DLC’s State Legislative Advisory Board (SLAB); Columbus (OH) Mayor Michael Coleman is chair of the DLC’s Local Elected Officials Network(LEON).)
Harold Ford is an employee of FOX News. According to Progressive Punch, Tom Carper is the 47th most progressive member of the Senate (Lieberman is 46th). Al From is…well…Al From. And Hillary Clinton is their candidate.
Hillary is bobbing and weaving and trying to shore up some support on the left by sending out people like Harold Ford to offer olive branches. But, as Brendan notes, all this accomplishes is the passing off of petards. People will not stand for this.
As the good people of Nevada explained, you can not represent us and give legitimacy to Fox News (let alone accept a paycheck from them) at the same time. The DLC is dead to anyone that has payed even a remote amount of attention over the last six years. Forget policy. It’s not about policy. It’s about dishonesty and complicity in a stunningly failed foreign policy and it is about cowering wimpishness in the face of an executive power grab, lamely served to us as being tough on defense.
The war in Iraq will have consequences. One of those consequences will be a renewed vigor on the left, as it has devised tools to overcome the crap served up to us by the Washington political establishment. The only way the progressive backlash can be avoided is if it is stopped in its tracks by the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. If that happens, it won’t be possible to stop a massive splintering on the left and will not matter how many people write STFU diaries or invoke the ghost of Ralph Nader. People should be well advised to oppose her nomination NOW, so that we go forth with unity and take the White House AWAY from the establishment that got us into this mess.
None of our candidates are saviors and they each have their own taint with the establishment. But they are not all DLC/Harold Ford/Joe Lieberman warmongering Fox News Democrats.
