DLC issues a manifesto: What We Stand For

Don't know if this has been posted here yet. But the full article talks about how Democrats will never win if all we try to do is turn out the base. Etc. Etc.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=127&subid=171&contentid=253206


Closing the national security gap. The most important challenge for Democrats, and the country, is security. It cost Democrats the Senate in 2002. It cost us the White House in 2004. In the next decade, it will determine whether we can recapture the glory days of FDR, JFK, and Clinton, or whether we will go the way of the Whigs and the Know-Nothings. Fair or not, too many voters doubted our party's toughness and resolve in the face of new dangers. Until we recapture the muscular, progressive internationalism of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy -- and convince voters that national security is our first priority, not just something we talk about until we can change the subject to more comfortable domestic issues -- we'll have a hard time convincing them to return us to national power.

< snip >

Building an Opportunity Society. At our strongest, Democrats have been the party of the middle class and those who aspire to join its ranks. Opportunity is the value that unites our party like no other. Moreover, we are the party of opportunity in a decade that is likely to produce the greatest concentration of wealth since the 1920s and the greatest erosion of middle-class opportunity since the 1970s.

< snip >

Standing up for responsibility. We can't let the Republicans set the moral and cultural debate in election after election. If we do, they'll keep using wedge issues to help them, hurt us, and divide the country. It doesn't have to be that way, and we don't need to compromise our values to change it. We can win the cultural debate, but only if we offer a values and cultural agenda of our own.

< snip >

Reforming a broken system to bring democracy back. In order to restore these great values, Democrats need to remember our calling as the true party of reform. Last time we looked, the Republicans controlled the White House, both houses of Congress, a majority of governorships, and a plurality of state legislatures. Yet the Republicans are the party of fiscal profligacy, special interests, and K Street corruption. Congressional leaders rewrite their rules faster than the old Soviet Union. In a country built on a free press, the administration has admitted putting columnists on the take.

It's just a matter of reframing the language.

Oh please....sorry, I think if they actually talked about the issues directly to the people there would be no need to come up with couched language. The real problem is their cowardness in talking about the issues.

in a weird way, consilliatory to the gop as always.

who's not for being responsible?
the 70's are over -- dead and gone.
why are they beating their own party over the head with a phrase straight out of the gop talking points?

and that pretty much what i think of the dlc.
they are worse than useless -- and wimp always comes to mind when i think of them.

It's too bad that ANY Democrat would believe this hogwash.

Bush allows 9-11 to happen on HIS watch and it's Democrats that are weak on national security? There is no 'gap'. It's about Neodems using RWing talking points to rationalize an agenda of aggressive war and corporate rule...something that both parties seem to want.

Opportunity Society? More bullshit to disguise the fact that the Neodems have abandoned workers and fair trade.

Responsibility? Perhaps the Republicans are able to 'set the moral and cultural debate' because the Democratic leadership is too cowardly to actively oppose them and take a stand for the people?

Broken system? The Democrats helped break it with their support of illegal wars and silence as the Bush government circumvented the Constitution time after time.

the DLC must have hired Frank Luntz.

Opportunity Society? That is the biggest bunch of bushy bullshit I have ever heard.
We dont' need to respond to the pugs using their terms. Been there done that lost the election already rigged or not!

Didn't the contract with 'Merica" say something about a balanced budget amendment? HMMM? Thanks * and Jim Nussle

is at hand.

It is by and large a result of REJECTING the DLC.

They can work hard to try to recaste their image but the party base is onto them.

I'd rather bury that movement than rehabilitate right-wing, corporate sucking, professional politicians that will do anything it takes to get elected, as principled moderate pragmatists.

Last time we looked, the Republicans controlled the White House, both houses of Congress, a majority of governorships, and a plurality of state legislatures....

And all of that happenned under the "leadership" of the DLC.

In the next decade, it will determine whether we can recapture the glory days of FDR

Oh, so now FDR was the "glory days"?? Funny how Al From and Will "PNAC" Marshall wrote in Blueprint magazine that the 1994 Republican theft of Congress was a "liberation" from the legacy of FDR.

Crawl away and die, DLC. We don't need your help to fix a party that you worthless pieces of shit broke in the first place. :grr:

And they think anti-war folks should leave the party.

then let them. Let's get a consensus on whether or not progressives are welcome in the party, and if not, then let them do it all - the legwork, the fundraising, the (gasp!) activism - on behalf of the party by their damn selves.

We will be saddled with another DLC candidate in 2008.

There's one who is right now working with Newt Gingrich, the Hoover Institute, and the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS on 'reforming' the UN to better suit the US.

The CFR picks the candidates and their cabinets once elected.

You know who I mean.

"no one has opposed President Bush's corporate conservatism more sharply than we have."

:rofl:

the DLC I will give nothing. I will stick by that and give my mo ney and support to Moveon or the like.

... they're just getting played for suckers. As usual.

We need to focus on eligible voters who've dropped out of the process, and we accomplish that by speaking directly, forcefully and honestly about issues that matter.

Safe, legal and rare abortion.

Equal rights for all Americans.

Fiscal responsibility.

Free, quality public education for all.

Affordable access to quality health care for all.

Economic justice.

The right of workers to organize and collectively bargain with management.

A living wage for all working Americans.

How am I doing so far? Okay, I've got to go look now.

On edit: Yes, this is sarcasm.