The DLC on Dean and their southern "strategy"

The DLC, that council of leadership that has lead us in our stunningly successful drive to elect Dems to powerful positions in all arms of govt....oh, wait...last decade

Well, they weigh in on Dean:

The Right Way to Go South

snip>
So far there's not a lot about the Dean campaign that shows any understanding of the need for values centrism as a way to make sure people are willing to listen to Democrats' arguments about everything else. That's unfortunate, because no candidate for president is likely to win the nomination, much less beat George W. Bush, if his support is limited to a golden ghetto of white, upscale, culturally liberal, antiwar voters.

There's a right way to "go South" and build the kind of biracial coalitions that have long been the key to Democratic success in the region, while broadening the base of the Democratic Party in other parts of the country as well. We urge all Democrats to remember that lesson if they hope for better luck next year.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252174

Isn't there a cliche about when "things go south"? And what the heck is "values centrism" :shrug:

Some of the reasoning in that article fits with the discussion at the recent Atlanta meeting covered in a piece here entitled:

Democrats urged to move to center

snip>
At a recent Democratic Leadership Council conference in Atlanta titled "God, Guns and Guts," DLC officials said their party had to stop avoiding the cultural issues that have helped Republicans make inroads among labor union households, married women, families with children, and religious people.

"It's time for Democrats to switch from a strategy of avoidance to a strategy of engagement" on cultural issues, said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, the DLC's think tank. "Voters are going to assume the worst unless we set them straight."
snip>

Amy Sullivan of Princeton University said Democrats need to connect with people of faith by "genuinely expressing their own religious faith," by "distancing themselves from militant 'secularists,' and speaking out about the moral health of the country."
Along with other participants at the DLC forum, Ms. Sullivan said that Democrats need to address "concerns about the moral condition of the country and the challenges of families trying to raise children," she said.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031029-105103-3000r.htm

discussed last week:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=191547

i won't be moving to the center, if i wanted to be in the center i'd be an independant

Why does someone in the DLC pretend that Dean is a liberal, when he gets highest ratings for Dems from the CATO Institute fer chrissakes?

This is a dog and pony show. Dean, who pushed deregulation while governor, is the most centrist candidate in the field. Just look at DU, Dean is bringing all his supporters to agree with his centrism, what more does the DLC want?

Dean '04...

I'll leave that to the lemmings. I never liked Kool-Aid.

I am sorry, but that comment is so out of touch with reality to be risable. I don't care if you dislike Dean - I am not sold on him either. But to suggest that a man who made universal health care for kids in VT his central goal is a libertarian is ridiculous. It does no one any good to pretend that any candidiate is the anti-Christ in Dems clothing.

Dean/BLM '04....

...whine to me about rich guys next time you're taking corporate donations

yes, the dlc, bringing you 'men of the people', like:

joe leiberman
zell miller
and
terry mcaulliffe

Remind me again how well this strategy worked in 1994, 1998, and 2002. How well did it work yesterday in the South, huh? Even 2000 was close enough for Bush* to steal it. The DLC only wins elections when Clinton is running.

Halloooooo, maybe the magic potion is Clinton, not "centrism." Maybe it's charisma and getting people excited, not moving toward the right.

Idjits!

Dean's centrism? Liberals don't WANT Dean's Libertarian leaning centrism. Hell, Dean brags about deregulation to the CATO INstitute, but, tells naive Democrats now that he's a populist.

Have fun with your move right. Some of us will vote for a real liberal.

GWB's best friends: you guys.

Dean's Libertarian centrism is a turnoff. He matches well with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The candidates you mention sans DK voted to give
Bush a blank check for an invasion of Iraq and then
filled it out with a whopping $164.5 billion for
military and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

None of those candidates signed a same sex union
civil rights bill or gave us an affordable health
plan. I don't know which of these named candidates
voted for the partial birth abortion bill but
at least Dean came out against it.

How exactly do you define liberal issues and
what would your ideal candidate promise you
(taking into consideration he or she would
have to work with an existing Congress)?

dissolve irrelevant UN.

Kerry and Gephardt negotiated to prevent that and it cost them their vote.

Kerry was the FIRST lawmaker to write antidiscrimination against gays legislation in 1985. He advocated for gays to serve openly in the military when noone would go near it. He crafted the Hate Crimes bill. It was KERRY who cleared that path for gay advocacy for all Dem lawmakers in the future.

They ALL came out against the PBA except Gephardt.

Dean is the ONLY candidate who ever pushed for deregulation of electricity and supported Bush on Yucca Mt. and the ONLY candidate with a highest Democrat rating from the CATO Institute for his deregulation policies.

you were pushing a while back, dosn't it. Dean's too libiral, then he is a conservitive, then back to being a libiral, last week he was a racist. You got to be spinnen man, cus its making me dizy trying to keep up with the retoric.

I have consistently warned that his populist rhetoric is covering his LIBERTARIAN leaning centrism.


Dean is MORE centrist than most of the DLC that so many of you loathe. YOU got suckered. I didn't.

than why is the DLC attacking him? Is name calling the only thing you have?

plus a big huge single-payer health insurance program.

He's never going to be up front about his libertarianism as governor. That's why he's sealed his records. He's definitely not running on favoring big business and not favoring progressive taxation. (How would he even run on that stuff? "Economically, I'm not so different from the party who got us into this mess except that I'll balance budgets while I'm cutting social programs"?)

he don't go far enough to the center.

We need to totally abandon fighting the issue of racial equality and we have go to a flat tax to win the presidency. I can hear it now.

Even a libertarian can move this crowd as long as he coopts the internet hate speech against REAL Democrats.

not going there. It is particularly sinful to do that in the South where their are so many poor people.

The 2nd article strategizes about exploiting people's faith for their political support, just as the repubs have done.

He is more conservative than MOST of the DLC that you don't like.

Say it ain't so!

(Feigned coronary. Much drama.)

While I keep reading these posts and shaking my head, the wonder of it all for me boils down to: does anyone do their homework anymore.

Please_do yourself a favor, if you already haven't, read "The 2% Solution." Miller gives a brilliant synopsis of the Old Dem and the New or DLC Democrats. Both sides...yes, both sides have boxed themselves in because they are more interested in politics and the next election than telling the truth. As for the repubs, Miller boils them down to living in a constant state of cognitive disconnect. It is the only explaination of for humans willing to abandon their own species.

As for Gov. Dean, he is not liberal...not even close, but that really doesn't matter, does it? What does matter is that repubs are pushing his nomination. They are picking our candidate so they can pick us off. Ping...ping...ping! Can you for one second face what's coming at you? How about the commercials where Dean says that America may not always need a first rate military? That's all the further they have to go.

Right now, freepers are posting words like "go Dean." They have gone so far as to call for donations to the very home of the campaign. Great.

Still don't care? I see all these silly posts calling for possible VP's. Over and over it has been shown that people vote for the top, not the bottom of the ticket. No war hero's gonna bail you out.

I wouldn't care what you are doing, except that you are taking my family down with you.

So don't listen to anyone, don't do your homework, keep forgetting about who's controlling the media, keep expecting the unexpecting, but don't expect me to grant you a pass for such foolishness. Will I vote for Dean...yes, but then I would vote for Lieberman if it came to that.