From's Last Stand (DLC)

From's Last Stand

By Garance Franke-Ruta
Issue Date: 9.1.03


Al From is quivering with rage. It's the end of a long day in late July at the Wyndham Philadelphia, and with a sheen of sweat coating his face, he gleams with emotion as he launches into the closing speech of the day at the DLC's annual conference. It's a grim speech, delivered in rousing, impassioned tones more vehement than any other speech that day. "We cannot allow our party to be hijacked!" thunders From, railing against the leftists who have been his bête noire since he founded the DLC in 1985. "The future of our party and more importantly the future of our country is at stake."

Surrounded by supportive state senators and fresh-faced New Democratic governors, From, CEO of the DLC, is in his element. His anger has been foreshadowed by other discouraging conference speakers, whom The New York Times found "glum," "combative" and tending toward "pessimism" and The Washington Post dubbed "defensive" and "gloomy." "What we're fighting for is the definition of the party," From later told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "And this is probably the most bitter fighting -- or maybe intense is a better word -- in nearly 20 years. But it's because the left wants to go back to the way things used to be."

Whether the left is truly trying to drag the party back in time is a matter of heated dispute in Washington. What's clear is that after two decades at the pinnacle of the Washington power hierarchy, From's ideas have triumphed beyond his wildest dreams, and the central role he's played as a policy entrepreneur in the 1990s is unquestioned. But by publicly involving the DLC in an increasingly nasty battle with Howard Dean, From is causing some of his erstwhile allies to wonder if he's finally lost his touch.

Chatter among presidential campaign staffers in the weeks since the DLC conference suggests that From's grip on the younger generation of his ideological compatriots is weakening. "I don't think anyone thinks of From as a leader," says one senior aide to a presidential candidate regularly praised by DLC heavyweights. "People don't like Al From," remarks a campaign operative with a different DLC-backed presidential candidate. "People like Bruce ." Adds an aide to a third DLC-supported candidate, "I think they've gone out of their way to pick a fight with Dean to satisfy their need to stay relevant."


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http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/8/franke-ruta-g.html

Dean is more moderate than most of the other candidates. He didn't support the war because it lacked UN support. I agree.

Very sorry to discompfort a pig at the trough,
but sorry, we are not "going back" to anywhere.

Thank you for your good works, now please step aside Mr From.
This nonsense has gone on long enough.

It's time to take back America from these corporate looters,
nothing personal but this is no longer funny.

To put it mildly, America deserves much MUCH better.

Mobilize, Organise, Scream, Yell, whatever it takes.

There is a tidal wave of anger so great in America that the word landslide will not even come close to describing the sea change that will come with a Dean win.

God bless America, now go out there and kick some republican ass.

... as a stripper in a cake at a ministers' picnic. Any guy who takes money from the right wing has my everlasting enmity. He's a joke and a fool. He's absolutely clueless. Every grassroots movement in the country should have, as its second objective, the desire to drive this guy's face into the dirt of corporate contributions.

'This is like '68, like '72' -- all of that is irrelevant. We are in a different era. We are in a post-9-11 era, a post-Reagan era. ... We're in an unsettled time, which is good, because I think it's a time of regeneration. What's not going to happen is a restoration of the old order."

"Al From is somebody who has done a huge amount of good and changed the face of American politics as much as anybody outside of elected office over the course of the last 25 years," says another longtime DLCer. "You can't walk away from his accomplishments." But "at this point, he and the DLC are more trying to re-create the past in terms of battles and achievements rather than look at the landscape as it is now."

Watch me... at a high rate of speed. This guy is a whore to money and corporate influence, just like the people grassroots Demos have been fighting for years.

The landscape now is simpler than the commentator describes--if the grassroots Dems don't wrest the party from the likes of From and McAuliffe, the party will be, for a long time to come, a servant of power rather than speaking truth to power. These people have forgotten the preamble of the Constitution (more likely, they've sought to ignore it). These guys don't know shit from Shinola about their country, their party, their purpose, about true democracy. They are suck-ups to all that is obscene in this country.

Remember who's commentating here--another DLC'er. They're all wrong. They're all whores to corporate wealth. That is what motivates them, and always will. They despise ordinary people, but only a little less than the Republicans. That's why they're destined to lose.

Al From and Terry McAuliffe are losers. They're participants in the Republican plan for one-party rule in this country, and they're just stupid and greedy enough not to be able to figure that out.

Cheers.

Actually, I love the DLC's attack on Dean. Done nothing but speed their long-overdue trip to irrelevance.

maybe Al should step down and put someone in who's
looking towards the future and not the past.