DLC to Progressives: Four legs good, two legs better

[arendt]

DLC to Progressives: Four legs good, two legs better
by arendt

"After thirty years of American imperial information warfare, everybody in the goddamn world understands counterinsurgency and political subversion. We all know how to do it now, we all know how to wreck the dominant paradigm. We're geniuses at screwing with ourselves and deconstructing all our institutions. We don't have a single institution left that works."

- Bruce Sterling, "Distraction" (1998)

Hey, all you progressives! Its official. You have been officially declared to be an "enabler of the enemy"."What?", you say. "The occupation of Iraq is still a corrupt, unstoppable hell-hole and financial sink hole. The HMOs are still screwing me and my doctors to the wall. But, I'm a bad guy for not signing off on more lies about Iraq from a crony general, disrespected by his own troops?"

In a word, "yes". Your movement, the history of your party for the last seventy years, has been deconstructed - trashed by the DLC. We have moved on to the "demonize" phase of the "Differentiate, Demonize, Destroy" politics that was so effective in bringing dictatorial power to the far right in America.

American politics has been a "winner take all" game from day one. So, no one should be surprised that the DLC has taken the game inside the Democratic Party. Just as the GOP majority in Congress took no input at all from the Democrats, the DLC, with its stranglehold on the party leadership, wants no input at all from the anti-war wing of the party. We just had three more examples of DLC Dems more willing to vote with the GOP than with the American people, as represented by 75% majorities in the opinion polls.

The "Truth" to the DLC is that the DLC is a "centrist" movement, and the Democratic Party will win in 2008 by putting forward a "centrist" (read corporatist) candidate, who will attract the mythical "swing voter". This is "false narrative-lite" from the GOP-lite gang inside the Democratic Party. After seven years of the deconstruction of America, there are no swing voters left. You either want Bush and his entire gang of mobsters impeached, tried, and imprisoned; or you worship Bush and want anyone who speaks against him disappeared, tortured, and fed to the fish.

The false narrative from the DLC and the media is all about getting people to focus on the cult of personality instead of the issues. To focus on who can win, instead of what we want from government - when just about anyone with a "D" after their name could win by saying they would bring the troops home now. The false narrative is about loyalty oaths for followers, but not for party leaders.

Why would anyone who can remember the last fifteen years want anything to do with the policies we would get from a DLC candidate. The only one of them who ever won an important election was that charming rascal, Bill Clinton. And other than slow down the slide to theocracy a bit, what did the Democratic base get from his time in office? We got a few years of trickle down income growth and budget balancing from the insane dot.com bubble; but that was a one-time, cash-out- your-pension payment (which the toothless Dems promptly gave back, pre-911, without a fight, the minute W demanded tax cuts). Other than that, he spent a lot of time leaving liberal allies twisting in the wind and triangulating away long-held progressive ideas for tactical political gains. The major changes he pushed through, over the opposition of the traditional labor wing of the Democratic Party, were devastating.

His DLC policies single-handedly made NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO job-destroying realities. These treaties marked the beginning of the official corporate extra-territoriality that has rapidly mutated into the disaster capitalism of today. His Wall Street advisor, Robert Rubin, had no problem with the repeal of the New Deal Glass-Stegall banking act, which opened the floodgates for all the financial scandals we have seen and will continue to see as long as finance is effectively deregulated. And, he passed the Telecommunications Act of 1997, which allowed a handful of corporations, such as Clear Channel, to monopolize the media.

Basically, the man took the party base out for a nice dinner, while burglars ransacked our home, and con-artists drained our bank accounts. But we still love him. He is a Gentleman Jimmy Walker for our time.

And Clinton was the only DLCer with an ounce of charisma or competence. The rest were just business lobbyists sucking at the corporate teat, like Terry McCauliff. Or worse, like Joe Lie-berman, who ACTIVELY undermined Al Gore in the Florida 2000 debacle.

So, without naming a single candidate for 2008: I ask you, do you really want the policies that the media are telling us are "realistic", "centrist", and "responsible"? Do you want us to stay in Iraq for two to six more years? Do you want us to threaten and probably bomb Iran? Is government-mandated corporate health insurance going to change the corrupt 30% rakeoff and service denial that we are experiencing today? Do you really want all progressive dissent censured by Congress?

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If not, the only chance you have is to fight the DLC by voting against their candidates (and any local politicos who support them) in the primaries. The vote is the one thing they can't spin or buy. They are trying to declare a winner long before a single vote has been cast. And, with their usual deep-pockets redundancy, they have front-loaded the primaries and have subverted the DNC control of the primary process with bogus challenges to primary scheduling, all in order to give more power to the media and less to the voters.

The way out of the DLC trap is very difficult. As the saying goes, "you can't beat a horse with no horse." The progressives have "no horse". They respect Kucinich, but the man has liabilities in today's toxic media environment. He is exactly the kind of personality that they can tear to shreds with one hand tied behind their backs. (In fact, they already have.) Also, IMHO they shouldn't run someone pushing his military background. First, Kerry tried that and lost. Second, it only reinforces the authoritarianism meme that is growing larger all the time - the meme that only people with military experience are allowed to speak truth to power. The only tactic I have heard that can't be spun by the media is Lou Dobb's idea of registering as Independent, but still voting Democratic. It sends an unmistakable message.

I would love to hear some ideas. Like, maybe, targeting all the local politico DLC supporters. That would be copying the strategy by which the far right took over the GOP.

But, I will not engage in any discussion of candidates, only of policies. Please don't waste your time trying to drag this thread into yet another juvenille "my candidate is better than yours" school yard fight.