Ask the questions NOW of the DLC and Clinton. Corporate funding.

Because if you let love of one person get in the way of realism, then the average person no longer will matter. The DLC was founded to be corporately friendly...thus NAFTA, thus outsourcing. Thus the fact that Dean and perhaps Kerry were told not to criticize NAFTA and outsourcing. Howard Dean was told that by former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin...to back off or no money for campaign. Dean did not back off.

I posted an article from another source yesterday or the day before, from 2002. This is from 2001. Their funding is corporate, their goals are corporate. I am not passing judgement on Clinton, who helped found DLC and the Third Way. I am saying that they deliberately formed by their own words so that they would not need the traditional interest groupsof the Democratic party. Now to be fair, ask yourselves who these people are, the traditional ones.

Why would a party deliberately seek to be funded by corporations? There are other articles. I have presented only two. Go to their website and read. Think for yourself.

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V12/7/dreyfuss-r.html

SNIP..."The DLC's effort to win Meeks's vote was part of a vigorous campaign by New Democrats to assure legislators that business groups would replace campaign contributions from labor lost by a pro-business China vote. In The New Democrat, the DLC's monthly magazine, Washington's most powerful business lobbyist, Thomas J. Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote that even though some members of Congress risked losing the AFL-CIO's support, "business will stick by Democrats on the China trade vote."

SNIP..."Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."
(Rosenberg may be the new DNC chair)

SNIP..."Privately funded and operating as an extraparty organization without official Democratic sanction, calling themselves "New Democrats," the DLC sought nothing less than the miraculous: the transubstantiation of America's oldest political party. Though the DLC painted itself using the palette of the liberal left--as "an effort to revive the Democratic Party's progressive tradition," with New Democrats being the "trustees of the real tradition of the Democratic Party"--its mission was far more confrontational. With few resources, and taking heavy flak from the big guns of the Democratic left, the DLC proclaimed its intention, Mighty Mouse–style, to rescue the Democratic Party from the influence of 1960s-era activists and the AFL-CIO, to ease its identification with hot-button social issues, and, perhaps most centrally, to reinvent the party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a probusiness, pro–free market outlook.

It's hard to argue that they haven't succeeded...."

Here is the website
www.ndol.com

....do your own search and your own thinking. Also one of their newest "leaders" now is a former lobbyist with the Christian Coalition.He has good ideas, but I wonder about his motives. Also ask yourself why the DLC has been so dismissive and insulting to those of us who are anti-war? Could it be this corporate war is to their benefit?

Most of us are not lefty fringe lunatics. What we want is a party who is looking out for US and not being pledged to the bidding of corporations.

Ask the hard questions.

Keep that in mind when reading this - the Mighty Mouse thing is not a quote from a DLC leader, but is interpretive.

It is way past time.

Clinton told us to fall out of love and fall in line. Remember.

Let's find out why.

The reason he said that was to keep us from shooting ourselves in the foot with a secession of people disappointed by their candidate not winning the primary against their own interest.

He also said that the country moved too far to the right under Bush*.

If you think that is my motive, the primaries, then you are sadly mistaken.

They are already pushing the DNC to conform, filling them up with those loyal only to big business and them.

You may say whatever you wish to me. I knew I was risking insult by posting this. I have so many other articles about their founding and the reasons thereof...back to 88 in fact.

I just am tired of being a corporate nation. Why aren't you?

Oh, to make you happy, I UNhighlighted the Mouse stuff.

You, on the other hand, approve of extra-terrestrials taking over the Democratic Party through Dean's sinister galactic front, the DFA. Soon the lizard people (the same ones from the V miniseries) will have their flying saucers over every major city, and will be eating people, all the while us not knowing what's going on.

I believe that we need to start at the local levels, put in GOOD candidates who think, are intelligent, and believe in what is best for people instead of business.

I do believe the people need to be thought of first.

Thanks for your confidence in our level of intelligence. Wonder how many little lizard people I turned out in my over 30 years of teaching? Hmmm...mm.

I'm a member of DFA. But I see what the DLC does as being less sinister than what people make it out to be, and is less "anti-people" than what you might think. If the Democrats took money solely from activist groups, which might have more extreme positions than most people, and they kept threatening to withdraw their cash if specific demands weren't met, then you're in a bind even trying to negotiate getting 50% of what you want rather than 0%.

A lot of these statements you bring up were from an era where lots of small individual contributions weren't a common thing like it is today, and Dean deserves a lot of credit for bringing that in as a possibility.

They appear to be for the Iraq invasion, for vouchers those they use different words, for NCLB which will destroy public schools, for privatization of Medicare and Social Security, pro corporations to the point where they don't want to regulate, pro media deregulation.

I could go on. They just use slightly different words than the GOP does.

He was against a lot of those things in ways that a lot of people don't (want to admit they) have a grasp on.

I was not against him, but the war vote and his standing by it did seem odd. It did not sound like the Vietnam era Kerry, and I think it was influence from the DLC.

This "populist" tip some have been proposing would be even worse,
sniping at the corporations a little but caving in to the Talibornagains
on all the social issues.

Better not to sell out at all, but considering how Dennis Kucinich
did in the polls, that isn't going to happen.

The Republicans sold out to both, of course, since there is nothing
like a theocracy to ensure a compliant workforce.

I'd rather not sell out to anyone BUT the people. This country was founded on the idea of "government of, for, and by the People"... unbeholden to the mercantile class or any specific religion. If we abandon that, we have NO FOUNDATION.

Getting the corporations to support our party is probably a huge mistake. Look at the "WalMart model"... you think they treat people well? Anti-union, discriminatory towards women, low wages, their corporate buying practices have been partially the cause of US manufacturing jobs moving overseas : example - WalMart tells Huffy bicycles to make a bike for under $100 and if they can't, WalMart will get those bikes from China. WalMart is NOT a small contract for Huffy, it's a HUGE part of it's business. What's Huffy supposed to do to compete with China? You either cut the costs of production (staff, wages, benefits, etc.) or you go out of business. WalMart does this across the board to ALL U.S. manufacturers who supply them (or who formerly supplied them, many have gone bankrupt and out of business).

As for Kucinich... he did poorly for the same reasons Kerry didn't win: smear tactics, lack of media coverage, etc. People say he ruined Cleveland's budget. People say he's a weirdo. People spread all kinds of stories about him instead of getting off their butts and finding out more about the candidate themselves. Most people won't bother to dig for info unless they're either: 1. already a supporter, or 2. looking for dirt to smear around.

The national store. Scary.

This goes right into my DLC file, straightaway. You know, the set of links I post anywhere and everywhere their foul name comes up:

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. -- Lenin

LINKS - What every DUer and every Dem needs to know about the DLC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=4443&forum=DCForumID22&archive=

Let's be REALLY honest about the DLC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=23262&forum=DCForumID60&archive=


Outing the "New Democrats" -- Pukes in Progressive Clothing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=1435&forum=DCForumID34

Everyone who is a fan of the DLC, needs to read this post,
(Devils Advocate NZ's post is included)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=11323&forum=DCForumID60#114

Kerry, the New Democrats, and American Military Hegemony
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=326015#326061

New Dems formed to get corporate donors, be free from party base ideology
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1346735&mesg_id=1346735&page=

and lost it, too.
:hi:

NT!

at the democratic table. I object to the DLC letting them BUY the table.

Two very different things

That means being:

Environmentally-friendly
Labor-friendly
Willing to pay their *dues* to do business (taxes)

and so on.

We don't go begging for their crumbs because sure as shit, they will turn on us like wild dogs.

Easy to archive and check out at any time plus threads wont need to be started up endlessly.


Though we should keep endlessly sounding this alarm and starting threads.

Its urgent.

But the conservatives are 1 step ahead of us. Look at all the weblogs promoting DLCish candidates but passing them off as progressive (Im not talking about Dean either , he is somewhat progressive and certainly a reformer).