The DLC is "in control?": Power, politics, and Democrats.

(This was a response in another thread, but I thought the topic was a different enough angle to make it into a new thread.)

I am baffled by this notion of a DLC "in control." It's a claim esconsed in so much magical realism that I simply don't understand its origins.

Also there is this bizarre battle against "corporatism" (a term that, itself, I believe is inane). America is a capitalist nation, therefore, corporations will exist. The problem is not corporations, the problem is the conglomeration of corporations, or of unregulated corporations. We do not need to be anti-business to be anti-conglomeration.

Shall I pen a new term: "conglomeration-ism?" It seems more appropriate. Because, you know, the English language can't have enough -ism's.

I believe this stems from a widespread sensation of powerlessness from liberals/Democrats. The liberal/Democrat world view is getting raped by another world view that in no way resembles it, and Democrats feel (I emphasize FEEL) they have no recourse. So the impulse is to attack vociferously that power that suppresses them.

For some reason, many perceive the DLC as a power that suppresses when it's simply another means to achieve the same ends that liberals pursue. Many don't agree with what the DLC stands for, and they are entitled to that opinion. Yet the paranoia I read from many liberals seems self-defeating. Every brick in the wall that comprises the liberal world view is under attack in their opinion, and they fear that losing even one brick in this wall will make the entire structure crumble. Therefore, every single brick is so precious and cannot be refuted - even if all the other bricks remain without provocation.

I don't see a solution here until we continue to wiggle out of this disease and ethically-deficient era in which we currently live and start winning a few elections. Liberals will win some and DLC-types will win others. Instead of battling apparent suppressors, we will be celebrating with champagne.

I rest easy in light of the internecine warfare. I, for one, am not afraid of the DLC or of liberal "grassroots" organizations. I am so grateful for both. I just wish they'd both shut up from time to time and let the rest of us figure out a way to whip the Culture of Malignant Narcissism currently gripping this nation.

...is a little honesty and integrity from the other side.

Make a claim? Prove it.

Want to discuss or debate certain DLC policies and whether they jive with traditional Democratic policies? Bring it on.

But the constant fabrications and exaggerations from so-called "progressives" has become comical to the point of tragic.

but you aren't going to get that from anyone discussing politics. Voltaire warned: "When people undertake to reason, all is lost."

The Enlightenment has erred because we are not inherently rational beings. We aim for belief, even if evidence doesn't comport with that belief.

I just want to go to sleep and wake up when this this diseased era is over. :boring:

drawing up enemies lists and smearing critics to show how "progressive" they are.

The DLC is planning to cut Howard Dean's throat and sprinkle his blood in a Satanic ritual. What do you mean that isn't true? Why don't you go to Iraq since you love the war so much!

Why oh why do you hate the Democratic Party? ;) ;) ;)

Frankly, I think the outrright contempt and hatred for Americans and America from "leftists" is a helluva lot more corrosive to the Democratic party's fortunes than anything the DLC does or doesn't do...

unregulated corporations

When Walmart is acting within the law, whose fault is it that a large portion of its workforce has to depend on state aid to survive?

The problem is our lack of regulation of labor, and unwillingness in Washington to pass a living minimum wage for starters.

But watch this thread sink like a stone in the East River. (Be reasonable? What's THAT???)

It's Dooberstyle to focus on having control, being Under Control etc. - proven by Mr. Brown's wail from NOLA that "I can't establish a chain of command" - as if giving orders were FEMA's first priority there (and borne out by his agency's reported behavior, impeding the efforts of the local agencies they were supposed to facilitate and coordinate). Control and authority and structure are only tools which serve to facilitate results. When they start to justify their own continued existence, we become Republicans, or better, conservatives, at least of the current American mold. (And moldy they are.) So in case the DLC thinks that it's Al Haig and "I'm in control here" of the Democratic Party, well, then if they crow it loudly enough, they're presumably accepting responsibility for the Party's recent successes and failures. Hmmm.

As far as being anti-business vs. being anti-corporate glomming, oh, I mean anticonglomeratist, I make the following observations: America's response under the Poppy administration to the end of the Cold War was to shift the economy to a cyclical consumer model focused on heavy consumer spending of earnings on cheap low-utility goods, i.e. a search for economies of scale. Work harder, little rodents, and spend spend spend to keep the old tub afloat. An aspect of this was that the social/political/economic leadership urged a refocus on the notion, as one imbecile CEO once put it, that "the purpose of a corporation is to provide a return on investment to its shareholders". I.e. optimize the bottom line so the stock price goes up and the rich get richer (and please let's not blather about how investment has become ubiquitous; the rich are still so much richer than the masses that we cannot conceive of how rich they are). This in turn drove corporate leaderships to focus on the simple formula, (profit = revenue - cost). Drive up revenue by telling everyone to buy buy buy and spend spend spend, and drive down cost by 1. cutting where it's easiest, human resources and their associated expenses, and 2. consolidating operations, as well as entire markets.

We can take the IT industry as a trenchant example. There has been a massive shaking out of participants, both by consolidations initiated by the largest players, and the demolition of the smaller ones by "competition" (read "doing whatever we can to drive their market to 0"). The envisioned end goal would seem to be the elimination in fact of competition. Here, as well as in other industries, for example telecomms, there has been so much merging and consolidating, particularly after deregulation, that the picture of the given market as a whole is difficult to distinguish from earlier monopolistic times when there was only one player sourcing everything and structuring the market according to their fancy. For example, AT&T prior to 1984 (and in fact one of the behemoths once known as a regional Bell operating company is now poised to assume the AT&T name again). OK, so now there isn't just one player, there are two. Or three, or five, or eight. Gee, that's a diverse supplier market providing choice to the consumer.

The problem is that business, partly because many of the people who lead it are gluttonous pigs in their own right, and partly because of mass phenomena involving public and industry trends, i.e. everyone rushing to the cliff edge to leap off and jump for the shimmering hologram of a dollar sign hanging over it, has tended to head in this monopolistic direction, both in this current market epoch (shall we call it the post-cold-war-proto-information-economy), and of course in prior historical periods. The underlying motivator is greed viewed positively, and survival viewed negatively. And if it oinks or squeals and the slop trough gets licked clean every day, chances are there's a pig around.

So you'll have to forgive those of us who conclude that Enron, Tyco, executive compensation in the tens of millions, and decreasing quality and choice in a variety of markets, all while industries eat their own future, do nothing to contribute the advancing the state of the art in their chosen market, and disrupt labor equilibria (and workers' lives) by pinching every last cent out of production costs, all ultimately to the advantage of those who are already loaded, are all signs that American business could use a little Control, "for it's own good".

You believe corporations, post-Cold War, shifted their focus solely to earning money and generating dividends for "fat cats."

My question is: How is that different than before? And are you proposing we cast aside the corporation completely, or that we regulate them back into submission?

- like fighting the cold war, national missions like space exploration, fighting disease, ending poverty, providing everyman with a crack at the American dream. Profit was subordinated to the conclusions made by public discourse of the people about what they wanted. Now profit is the public discourse of the people, the beneficiaries of profit tell the people what they are to want, and we have been recast in our role as economic entities, namely consumers and units of productivity. Demolish culture, education, and individual and collective sovereignty, and replace them with ignorance, greed, and subsistence self-interest, which provide a docile and pliable workforce. The usual suspects would surely have always welcomed such a state, but they didn't achieve it until Bush I.

And no, the solution is to just re-subordinate greed to the people's, and the national, interest. There's nothing wrong with corporations, they're useful servants of the public interest. It's very simple really: social structures, government and trade all only exist to serve the people and their interests. Not the other way around.

We no longer are treated as citizens, but as consumers. That's a large problem. It cuts across many public service issues such as the news media, health care, quality of education, and other areas. The concept of "the public" has been negated.

Either we stick with our current capitalist system, create a mixed capitalist/socialist system as exists in Europe, or there might be a system that we haven't yet fathomed. In a nutshell: We're a young nation still finding its way. Its our choice on how it goes.

>The concept of "public" has been negated.

Spot on! Success is not complete however, wait for further thrusts along any available salient.

revoking the "Telecommunications Act" that brought us Faux news and ownership of every media outlet by 3-4 corporations, re-regulate the power industry, and institute federally subsidized single-payer universal healthcare? How would any of that be bad?

The issue is not that NAFTA, et al has sucked jobs out of the US and increased the exploitation of poor labor... the real issues, imho, are the poor labor laws here and in those countries that enable for that to be.

I can't see us cutting off trade agreements - it feels like throwing out the baby with the bath water, but fair wage systems? Humane working standards? That sounds reasonable to me.

Please oblige me for a minute, because I study this stuff: the 1996 Telecom Act did not "bring us Fox News." The Act opened up the communications sector to permit the expansion of digitization. That was the PRIMARY focus of the Act. You might be thinking about the increase in the ownership cap for BROADCAST stations (from 25 to 35% of US TVHH) that permitted companies like News Corp. to own more local TV stations, but that has NOTHING to do with cable. Fox News was an act of its own, formed by Republicans with the intention to combat the allegedly "liberal" media. There has never been a rule that has stood in the way of content in CABLE news.

But the politicization of American news media is a great concern. What you have mentioned is but one approach to this problem.

:kick:

Huh?

That's why corporatism. Not capitalism. Corporatism. Unregulated, run-amok, corporatism. People know exactly what that means.

Otherwise, yeah. I agree. Particularly with the wishing they'd both shut up from time to time part. In case anybody hadn't noticed, we just got sidelined on the war again.

Influence proportional to their economic power, not proportional to their numbers. That's akin to the ancient form of (roman/greek) democracy (where only the rich got to vote) - not in accordance the contemporary notion of what democracy is, which originates from the Renaissance.

What are the progressive Democrats offering? Progressives have an organization just like the DLC, except that it also seeks grass roots support (unlike the DLC) as well. When was the last time a thread here on DU promoted one of its policy initiatives?

Many DLC members are up for re-election and many of those are clobbering their Republican opponents. Hillary Clinton has a 63% approval rating with ALL of her state's voters, and her GOP opponent is a national joke; Joe Lieberman is almost at 70% approval with ALL of his state's voters, and his GOP opponent would be lucky to rise to the level of national joke. (Bet you can't name him without google; I couldn't and I've looked him a couple times in the past month).

I'm being told constantly that I ought to chuck those two overboard because they don't rise to a certian level of purity, and I see no reason to do so, just to please folks who want to burn a flag and play video games unhampered by regulations.

"not proportional to their numbers"
By definition, the DLC is not a grass roots organization....they're a resource and forum for elected officials and those wishing to become elected officials...and they put forth policy proposals for public discussion. They also promote some of the measures DLC members have proposed.