Democratic Party now except for a number of social issues is in total alignment with the other big money party.

I believe the term used was "F#%*ng Retards".

Sickening.

Haven't read the book yet, but hope Tommy included the STUNNER about Pres. CLINTON mentioning his plan to PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY at the State of the Union address in Jan. 1998, but the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke right after and interrupted that, thank God. CLINTON had worked on it in 1997 with NEWT GINGRICH at White House meetings according to Tommy.
-The Clinton Global Initiative University with Bill Clinton and speaker, billionaire financier PETE PETERSON who's been lobbying to get the $2.3 Trillion SOCIAL SECURITY Trust Fund for ages.



The successful, popular SOCIAL SECURITY program for elderly and those unable to work, was created in the 1930s Depression by FDR's NEW DEAL, the landmark, historic legislation of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

It is definitely NOT what it used to be. How fucking awful is that.

Now both are fighting for the money, that's it, that's all, money and power.

Disgusting.

... Nixon, the Pepsico corporate lawyer got that for us, you know, the PAC law(s). The GOP went for it first, as I recall, and put the Democratic party at such a fundraising disadvantage, that the Third Way evolved to get some of that PAC money.

What is sad is that so many long time Democrats have no problem with it and support the Queen of the anti-New Deal, corporate "New Democrats".

We've got two republican parties now, one at the wacko right end of the extreme and the other right of center. The old Democratic party has gone the way of the Whigs and Federalists.

GUESTS for Bill Maher Show, Fri. April 29: Wayne Pacelle, Thomas Frank, Rob Reiner, Mark Leibovich, Kellyanne Conway.
>More Show Info: http://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/





In his sharp appraisal of the current political scene, Thomas Frank, founding editor of The Baffler and former columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Harper’s, notes that though Democrats have held the White House for the majority of the last twenty-four years, there’s been little commensurate achievement on many social justice issues. With the same common sense and mastery of argument and evidence he wielded in books including Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Frank takes Democrats to task and warns the party to shake its complacency or prepare to be voted out.
In 'Listen Liberal, Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?' (2016) Frank's newest book, the political writer outlines the transformation of the Democratic Party of the New Deal and the Big Tent, to a party of the professional class. Recently Frank has appeared on TV and radio shows of Thom Hartmann and Sam Seder to discuss 'Listen Liberal' and held book talks in Kansas City, Seattle and other places. -Kansas City, MO Library Book Talk, http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017358989; -Elliott Bay Bookstore, Seattle Talk, http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017360353; -The Big Picture, Thom Hartmann Show, http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=340617; -Majority Report with Sam Seder, http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017361838

In These Times, April 26, 2016, "Thomas Frank on How Democrats Went From Being 'The Party of the People' to the Party of Rich Elites", Democrats have gone from the party of the New Deal to a party that is defending mass inequality.
Read: http://inthesetimes.com/article/19084/listen-liberal-thomas-frank-democratic-party-elites-inequality

[font size="3"][center]New Democrats, The DLC and the Third Way[/font]


[font size ="1"]President Bill Clinton with Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, at a conference in 2000.[/font size][/center]

New Democrats, in the politics of the United States, are an ideologically centrist faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. They are identified with centrist social/cultural/pluralist positions and neoliberal fiscal values. They are represented by organizations such as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the New Democrat Network, and the Senate and House New Democrat Coalitions

After the landslide electoral losses to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, a group of prominent Democrats began to believe their party was in need of a radical shift in economic policy and ideas of governance. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was founded in 1985 by Al From and a group of like-minded politicians and strategists. They advocated a political "Third Way" as a method to achieve the electoral successes of Reaganism by adopting similar economic policies (Reagan Democrats and Moderate Republicans would provide burgeoning new constituencies after adding these new economic policies and politicians to our tent they contended) While hoping to retain, woman, minorities and other social issues allies with long ties to the party. Such would be their new Democratic coalition forged between fiscal right and social left under the "New" Democratic banner. The DLC disbanded in 2011 during an apparent re-branding of the New Democrat movement when money ties to the Koch bros. and Koch representatives placed on the DLC's board embarrassingly became common knowledge among the Democratic left. The DLC is survived by the Third Way, The New Democrat Coalition, and Al From's Progressive Policy Institute among other corporate funded groups that continue to sell their Economic-Right/Social-Left brand of "Centrism" to America.



The term Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.

Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various center-right progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for neo liberalism and the New Right. In a sense, 80s Moderate Republicans are almost identical to "Third Way" Democrats.

I strongly believe it's time for a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various center-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the neoliberal corporate policies previously popularized by Reagan and Thatcher! For thirty years we have all but abandoned liberal solutions to economic problems, chasing instead the snake oil of supply side economics, austerity and neoliberal trade policy. These right wing policies have failed miserably, and rather than learn from the New Democrats failed experiments, the center-right faction of the democratic party has chosen instead to double down on failure with more free trade and austerity measures (to include cuts to Social Security).

In the face of a new gilded age of extreme wealth contrasted by an exponentially growing rate of poverty,  a rapidly shrinking middle class and the emergence of an elite class of  bankers, politicians and other predatory behemoths that are held firmly above the law and enabled to steal the remaining crumbs of wealth held by the masses without repercussion, it is not only time to return to Democratic principles of old that created the strongest most prosperous middle class in our history, it is time to reverse the damage done by the right thinking "New" Democrats and their failed policies with a new populism based on the needs of the people over the elite.

We do not need a "Fourth Way" to accomplish this, all we need is a return to the fundamentals of Keynesianism, a strong commitment to labor, increased spending on social programs (rather than cuts), progressive taxation, and an end to the cancer of privatization that would reduce the commons and the basic needs of the populace (such as health care and drinking water etc.) into the cash cows of profiteers of human suffering

Time to dump the "Third Way" for the unquestionably effective "Democratic way" made successful by the New Deal, The Great Society, and civil liberties. Our party can not serve two masters, the choice is clear, they must serve the financial elite, or the economically struggling populace

My choice has already been made.

the country, or the the perception of it was pushed 20 points right merely because the left ignored the right's best weapon

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 1200 stations, rw talk radio is worth 4.68 BIL$/ year or 390MIL$ /month FREE for coordinated pro republican wall st think tank propaganda, hate, and swiftboating

it enables and intimidates pols and media and create alternate realities and made to order constituencies and the left wastes it's donations and activism, yelled over by a few hundred think tank coordinated republican jerks with big microphones hiding behind call screeners and never challenged.

liberals have to stop blaming the symptoms and go on the offensive

Because it doesn't fit our historical narrative we grew up with. There were two super powers when the middle class was the strongest, and in one of them (not the USA) with their sphere of influence, capitalism didn't exist. It was very much in the Western benefit to provide benefits in order to stave off revolutionary thought. Well, now that is gone and from America to France, the social net is being destroyed no matter what party is in charge, because of the system that really pulls the strings. Time to wake up.

Thanks

and never complained!

and then guys like frank blame the symptoms and the politicans that result while ignoring the root of the problem. while the left yells about money in politics heres some simple math:

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 1200 stations, rw talk radio is worth 4.68 BIL$/ year or 390MIL$ /month FREE for coordinated pro republican wall st think tank propaganda, hate, and swiftboating and that's been going, and almost completely ignored, for almost 30 years

...and whether right wing or left. I don't mean political journalism, although I don't know whether that format even exists any longer.

I mean blowhards in front of microphones flapping their partisan gums, pundits or otherwise. I have equal disdain for Rush Limbaugh and Mike Malloy, although in fairness my antipathy for that format is so strong that I don't think I've listened to more than 30 minutes or so of either, in total. People seem to eat that shit up. I hate it.

Bill Clinton and the DLC dems...that's what.

more reasons to keep demanding real change.

Excellent story at the link...Frank has found most of the problems with the "democratic" party...

"... the party left me."

frank can write 2 books about american politics and barely mention talk radio - and the left is blaming the symptoms and ignoring the root problem.

here's some simple math:

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 1200 stations, rw talk radio is worth 4.68 BIL$/ year or 390MIL$ /month FREE for coordinated pro republican wall st think tank propaganda, hate, and swiftboating - and that's been going for 30 years since reagan killed the fairness doctrine, coinciding withe the sudden rise of ALEC and a continuing period of record partisanship (and a whole lot of deregulation and other shit the rw has pulled)- starting 10 yrs before the tel com act.

whether enabled or intimidated or yelled over by that massive classic CIA/military propaganda PSYOPS, the democratic party got pushed to the right because the left committed the biggest political mistake in history - ignored that rw radio monopoly designed to attack and beat it - and it did

so everybody on the left crying about money in politics and the con dems - look in the mirror

more amazing is the fact that we let these 90 universities keep the whole thing going! without their endorsement 268 limbaugh stations would probably be out of the rw radio business

He really does a great job at making you stop and really think about things you may have taken for granted and common assumptions. I found myself really questioning what I had believed and how I had not even realized that my life as a Maryland white liberal was so deeply immersed on the techno/entrepreneur/meritocracy wheel that I didn't even see it. Like being a conscious cell that doesn't realize it's part of a larger organism. This piece really reveals the mental illusions/constructs we are building and imprisoning ourselves inside and the emotional glamours (like being the party of highest good) that we feed ourselves. He's right that these have to be broken before we become a real party of the people.

In simple terms, starting in the 1970s and finishing with Bill Clinton, The Democratic Party abandoned labor and the working class for the professional class. The Professional Class has always been the backbone of the Republican party. You can see this in the old joke from the 1920s. Will Rogers was asked if he belonged to a Organized Political Party, he said no, he was a Democrat.

The working class wants leaders who looks after their interests. During the Great Depression, that is what FDR and the Democratic Party did. They told Wall Street, we will NOT destroy you, but we will NOT permit you to destroy the working class. FDR once gave a speech where he said his opponents hated him AND HE WELCOMED THE HATRED, implying he was willing to fight them NOT work with the, Compared that to Bill Clinton and Obama, neither President actually tried to fight the GOP onslaught they faced, they both wanted to work with them. Yes, they took positions to work out a compromise, but they NEVER were willing to fight to the death to achieve something. Would Clinton or Obama tied up the Senate and thus the Government for 90 days to get something they wanted passed? That is what LBJ did to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Labor went for broke to get the Occupations Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) passed into law, over Nixon's veto. Labor fought for years to end Nixon's undermining of that agency (and that undermining only ended under Carter, but resumed under Reagan).

As one writer once wrote, how many lawyers can we support as a nation? Doctors, Scientists and other professional? The answer is hard but also simple, you can only support them IF THE WORKING CLASS IS MAKING ENOUGH MONEY TO SUPPORT THEM. Society needs ditch diggers as while as Doctors, Society needs waitresses and waiters as while as scientists. Society needs truck drivers as while as pilots (and given the drop in pay of many commercial pilots, some pilots are making less money then some truck drivers).

Society is built from the ground up and at the bottom is the working class (the poor do not count for they have never counted, but many members of the Professional Classes treat members of the working class as being poor, when in a healthy society they are not). Thus if you help the working class, you help the nation. The professional classes tend to have enough money to take care of themselves. The True poor tend to have to many things going bad for them (and most aid to the true poor is do to demands from the working class to help the poor, and the decline in support for welfare reflects the decline of the working class).

I am sorry, and I may be banned from DU for this, but we need a LABOR PARTY, even if it losses the next series of elections, for with a labor party both the Democratic and Republican Party will have to address the people who vote Labor and right now nether party has to for both are run by the Professional class for the Professional Class.

BTW, I read the book, Listen Liberal.

It doesn't seem to do any good to form a subset of the D party when it is so in the grip of these illusions that it thinks any other approach is 'less than' how it has come to perceive itself.

Thanks for the thread, elleng.