Now I get it. Hoyer is DLC; Murtha is non-DLC; That is what this fight is all about

The push in the media about Murtha is not swiftboating from the GOP, it is swiftboating from the DLC. The same kind of swiftboating Dean receives and that Kerry received.

Its all about a power grab.

I'm not a supporter of anyone from the DLC. But Murtha's positions on a woman's right to control her own body are completely outside the party mainstream.

we can do better than either choice. Murtha is right on the war but his other conservative positions like choice could come back and bite us in the ass down the road. But I don't like Hoyer being so DLC either.

Does anybody want to bring that up?

I want a third choice, too.

so some of his conservative positions bother me.

But the ethics questions are a problem for me, too.

1. It was 26 years ago and there's been nothing SINCE then, but

2, nothing happened back then to start with. He was propositioned; he declined.

What's the beef?

I'm sure some of this is DLC/anti-DLC fighting, but for at least a chunk of us, "none of the above" applies.

When are these antchoice MEN ever going to learn?

even if its just once, in passing, while slandering Dems at the same.

Its really killing our chances to get anything meaningful done in the way of progressive policy

Both men have their advantages, and their liabilities. I am confortable with either Murtha or Hoyer as M.L. Both men have made magnanimous statements about each other and about Speaker Pelosi. Frankly, I do not see much difference between the two, but you can probably chalk that up to my ignorance.

Mark my words, the DLC now wants to hi-jack our victory from us---the victory that they couldn't win themselves.

:eyes:

Murtha belongs to neither of the two.

I figured that the poster may not be aware of Murtha's actual standing on the issues as I have encoutered with quite a few other DUers.

(and some progressives) on economic issues (rural southwest PA is very big on bread and butter issues) and to the left of most Dems on the war (oddly enough), to the right on social issues and foreign policy.

So it all comes down to priorities. Social issues only? You want the DLC.

Progressive caucus is struggling to mend fences with populist Dems. If you don't like that, well, DLC dems are forging an alliance with conservative Blue Dogs.

mentor?

"Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson (May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1983) was a U.S. Congressman and Senator for Washington State from 1941 until his death. Jackson was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 and 1976.

As a Cold War anti-Communist Democrat, Jackson's political philosophies and positions have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neoconservatism, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle <1>."


That's hardly to the "left" of the DLC.

That's how far to the right this country has come. Dems who are blinded by two issues (abortion and the war, which Murtha happens to oppose -- gee, his neocon card must've been revoked) fail to see how leftism has completely been swept off the table on every other issue as the party has concentrated on appealing to the upper middle class.

has "stepped in it." She should have known CREW had a report out about Murtha as one of the five congresspersons to "watch" and realized if she backed him she would open herself up to attacks. She needs to get herself out of this right away. :-( (I thought it was all DLC, too , until I started to read all the stuff....and even if there's exaggeration even sites like TPM are reporting it)

Murtha is NOT one of the top-20. He is a "dishonorable mention" as one of "five to watch."

http://www.beyonddelay.org/

That should appease and clear it all up for those nasty ethicists.

I don't think she stepped into anything. This turf battle will all be over very soon.

What is revealing is how Clinton's operatives and old friends are attacking ffellow Democrats from every angle only days after the election.

Just consider the following relatively recent events:

Hillary Clinton goes out of her way to attack John Murtha when he courageously called for redeploying from Iraq.

Hillary Clinton goes out of her way to attack John Kerry (a potential opponent in 2008) for a botched joke. She did not have to even comment, but she did.

Harold Ford, Jr. going out of his way to make sure that the voters in Tennessee knew that he had challenged Nancy Pelosi for the House minority leadership.

The ultimate loser, DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, who is a Clintonite, now re-appearing everywhere giving credit for the Dems win to everyone but Howard Dean.

James Carville, sowing dissent, now suggesting that Harold Ford replace Howard Dean.

James Carville, today attacking Dean again comparing him to Rumsfeld.

It's the Clinton Ambition Inc. in full operating gear. It's orchestrated and it is no accident.

And it's also about pre-empting an Al Gore run for the nomination. It's obvious.

:grr:

With Feingold out, that's the three best choices for me.

boating, just put the DLC in charge. They are a cancer on the party.

the concerns about Murtha's ethics are real and do not come from the DLC. Don't buy into this "everything is a conspiracy because DU says it is" nonsense.

DUers support Murtha even though he is perhaps more conservative than Lieberman on most things (except the war of course) because they reflexively hate the DLC.

Most DUers disliked both choices but were willing to support Pelosi.

and always talked about him being so great when he called bullshit on the war. I don't remember all this coming up then. Why now do you suppose?

Why would someone bring up Murtha's voting record and ethics issues when he was issuing his statements about withdraw?

What relevance would it have?

While I have no doubts that some Duers broguht up his more conservative credentials when other Duers were ready to give him god status, he would hardly be criticized or attacked.

However, this is an "election" for the majority leader so all of his stuff should be taken into consideration. That includes his anti-abortion votes, his ethics ocncerns.

Same with Hoyer, his war votes, his ethics issues should also be examined.

I think you and I have very little to disagree about. I just have problems with all these DUers posting about frickin' ABSCAM. Abortion rights, war votes, earmarking concerns: those are things that should be considered. An FBI sting started in 1978 isn't.

And I apologize if at anytime I was curt.

I'm not blindly saying Murtha should be voted in and agree with you on a lot. I just wanted to make sure it was clear to you that was what I was thinking. :toast:

:toast:

(But to be fair, and for the sake of the party,
I believe we should all allow Hoyer a chance)

If this was just a Hoyer/Murtha choice, you are right the Murtha backstory would not have been a factor.

But this is a DLC/non-DLC choice, and whenever the DLC makes a power play the batshit hits the fan.

I don't like either candidate. Ideologically I'm probably closer to Hoyer on a lot of things. But here's what it boils down to:

Murtha and Pelosi get along.

Hoyer and Pelosi do not.

Given that Pelosi is going to be Speaker of the House, don't you think we should have a Majority Leader that tries to work with them, as opposed to working against them?

he's a go-along big-business Maryland Dem machine politician. His votes on social issues are merely necessary for him to get elected. Maryland Dem pols are famous for hypocritically milking a "progressive" image - largely on social issues that don't impact his lobbyist friends - purely to get elected, just like bush and rove cynically milk evangelicals.

I'm socially liberal - something Hoyer is and Murtha is not.

Economically, I'd probably be pegged somewhere between Hoyer and Murtha. Not quite big business, but not quite super-populist either.

However, I support Murtha. At this point I could give a nutty shit what Hoyer's ideology is, we need someone non-DLC who recognizes HAVA and the Iraq War are huge mistakes, and who can get along with Pelosi. Now, I'm not crazy about Murtha, either, but it seems the Democrats couldn't get a third choice, so of the two, I support Murtha.

In fact, Murtha being more conservative than me might be better - it'll be hard for the right wing to paint him as "soft on terror" or "not concerned with national security".

And won't do anything about the lobbyist corporate corruption. Pelosi and Murtha have already outlined changes in earmarking, which is the bitch against Murtha in the first place.

There has to be someone.

Nah, he's not allowed anywhere near power. :mad:

he might do something useful with it

Heads would explode. Stop making sense is the American theme song.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_%28politician%29

That would be awesome, I think he might be the first African America House Majority Leader!

Of course he did endorse Lieberman, but now that Lieberman's in the Senate, it might be an olive branch.

What does that mean when the speaker of the house supports him?

So Progressives get to pick the DLCer or Murtha.

Hoyer has a 95% rating from Americans for Democratic Action. Don't throw around bullshit.

Being a DLCer means MONEY, the kind that corporate lobbyists throw around.

A Corporate lobbyist lover who is liberal is a DLCer. A corporate lobbyist lover who is conservative is a GOPer.

Lobbyist pork or military pork. Seems they've chosen their pork over cleaning up Congress or leadership against the war. Or maybe they're just playing their Hillary for Pres card early. Who knows.

But there's a clear fight to move a pro-Hillary contingent into power. Hoyer is as dirty as Murtha, yet there's nothing in the media about him. We've all watched too many of these smear campaigns unfold to believe they're not being orchestrated by somebody.

Frankly, I think it's STOOPID on their part to be airing all of this through the airwaves for the Cons to be taking reference notes. Seems like Hoyer's trying to kill two birds with one stone by trashing Murtha and taking a swipe at Pelosi.

relatives. CREW pointed out ethics problems with Murtha long ago and Pelosi should have been savvy enough to know it would be a problem since she promised the "cleanest" Congress ever.

Murtha needs to withdraw his name and she should pick someone else. There's too much that doesn't look good and Pelosi will be tainted with it. It could ruin her Speakership and make her vulnerable to overthrow by another House Member (probably Hoyer). :-( She's stepped in it and she needs to get out of it quickly.

Murtha isn't exactly who I would choose. But the leadership needs to be able to trust each other.
Pelosi doesn't trust Hoyer because he wants her job. Plain and simple.
He will cut her off at the knees every chance he gets.

Party

Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, Diana DeGette, and Barney Frank are just a few of the Congressmen whose public support of Hoyer blows your hypothesis out ot the water.

eom

A third person splits the proverbial "baby"...

There is no progressive in the race so they could freely choose Hoyer or Murtha depending on which benefited them more. I believe Hoyer started making his calls early, way before Pelosi came out with her letter of support for Murtha. If Pelosi had acted sooner, it is possible the votes of the progressives you mention may be different.

About all that can be made of this race is an inference about the the make up of the congressional Democrats. It's not like they poll their constituents about how to vote, or even listen to all the kibitzing thats going on. From where I stand neither candidate is a worthy representative of either the values I espouse or those of the Democratic Party as a whole. If this is the best they can do, I'd abstain. What a disappointment.

God, I'm so sick of the "DLC" being thrown around here as the big evil boogeyman. And FYI left/right leaning isn't a criteria for DLC membership. Kerry was a member for awhile. So are a lot of other people. For that matter, I'm not even sure that Hoyer is one of them. Perhaps, if folks around here bothered to look at the facts, they'd realize how overblown the Big Bad Scary DLC myth is around here.

I grew up in the DC area. Dems like Hoyer are NOT considered liberal for their district. They vote straight ticket on social issues PURELY to get elected. Hoyer is a big business Dem. He is not to the left of Murtha on most issues. Unless abortion is your only litmus test (in which case you should have opposed Reid, but the DLC isn't busy leading you by the nose to advocate against Reid based on "everything you've read" because there's never been any DLC-generated "chatter" against Reid.)

Is there some mystic divide where only so-called "DLC" Democrats take money from corporate contributors? No?

And thank you for being insulting enough to suggest that I'm regurgitating propaganda. God forbid that one post go by where I'm not accused of being a DLC paid disinformation artist or something. Surely it couldn't be the fact that I really don't have a horse in this race, ad consider the whole "EEEvil DLC" argument to be a sad whipping horse for people with no better facts in their corner.

eom

Murtha just co-authored the paper with Larsen.

that is the way I read it

This is a fight we'd better win.

I'm a Murtha Supporter but I'd like to see some proof all the same.

Link: http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=86&subid=84&contentid=254108

:shrug:

It makes sense now why I'm seeing all these anti Murtha threads.

what's the big whoop? Majority leader is the Speaker's personal assistant, basically, from my understanding. Fetches her coffee and stuff. Given that we have a very liberal Speaker, having a Leader with some conservative stances doesn't seem like a big deal.

Am I missing the point of all the hubbub? To me it seems like the Queen of Hearts beats the Jack of Clubs AND the Jack of Spades.

Murtha represents the last remnants of the pre-1986 Democratic caucus. Hoyer represents the 1986-1994 caucus. The fight here is for the hearts and minds of the post-1994 caucus.

Personally I think one of the newer members should be majority leader. Hoyer and Murtha are both damaged goods, in my mind.

The DLC can't count on Murtha to do what they want (Remember how publically Murtha was against the neo-con/neo-liberal Iraq War.). Hoyer is willing to 'swiftboat' fellow Democrats to climb up the ladder of power.

I think this also ties in with DLC Carville's attack on Dean. Rahm Emmanuel's opportunistic jaunt across the TV stations to push a meme that he (without giving one bit of credit to Dean) is almost solely responsible for the Democratic win (only 6 of Rahm's top 15 candidate's won and some of those were not even his picks in the Democratic primaries. He consistently chose the most right-wing and non-loyal 'Democrats' that he could pick in every primary race. And, as one would expect, most of them lost. -imho, his picks were too closely tied to Bush and the Republicans to be able to ride the wave of anti-Republican discontent along with everyone else.). Also, the right-wing talk hosts have been pushing Hoyer's attacks on Murtha.

Remember that the DLC is a *non-partisan* organization.

Mr. Hoyer came in for criticism of his own Wednesday from an outside watchdog group, Public Citizen. It ranked him as a top Congressional recipient of contributions from lobbyists and political action committees, receiving more than $5.6 million in PAC money since 2000. Mr. Murtha collected about half that much.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/us/politics/16cong.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Hoyer's reaction to Murtha's Iraq announcement was telling. He ran to the Washington Post, not to praise Murtha for his courageous leadership in shifting the debate on the most important national security issue in a generation, but instead to say Murtha's announcement "could lead to disaster." Days later, he tried to publicly humiliate Pelosi for supporting Murtha's withdrawal idea, with the Post reporting that Hoyer "told colleagues that Pelosi's recent endorsement of a speedy withdrawal combined with her claim that more than half of House Democrats support her position, could backfire on the party."

On trade, it's the same thing. Murtha represents Johnstown, Pennsylvania--the type of hardscrabble, working-class district Democrats have too often lost since President Bill Clinton joined with Wall Street to push free-trade pacts in the mid-1990s. In representing this kind of district, Murtha has opposed many of the most destructive trade agreements that sell out American workers. In the most high-profile example, he went up against Clinton by voting against the China free trade deal in 2000.

Hoyer, by contrast, voted for the China pact, and a number of other "free" trade agreements opposed by Murtha and progressive Democrats. He has parroted much of the rhetoric of the Democratic Leadership Council--the corporate front group that has relentlessly pushed Democrats to provide the crucial congressional votes necessary to pass "free" trade pacts. As Lori Wallach of Global Trade Watch said when Hoyer ran against Pelosi in a previous leadership race: "Hoyer has repositioned himself--one can only assume for political purposes -- as the DLC, business candidate."

Neither candidate, of course, is perfect. But this is far more than merely a lesser-of-two-evils choice.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/sirota

Here's the video of the 1980 FBI Abscam sting
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2725397

I'll admit I was concerned about his involvement until I actually researched it and saw the video and read about his role in the contracts he gave his brother and so on.

The fact that he's a blue dog Dem is a good thing IMHO. Pelosi is a good liberal from San Francisco. It makes sense to balance the leadership with a working man's moderate Dem from southwestern PA. The fact that he is a distinguished Marine Corps combat veteran helps too.

and the old money hacks want the power

The DLC won this round, and I am sure they will sell out Nance Pelosi or stab her in the back the first chance they get.

"ad", as his Communications Director which was noted by KoKo01 earlier this week
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2717934

and Democrats have used perception management companies (like The Rendon Group) although not to the extent of the BFEE and it's propaganda network.

Yes-it's a power struggle between the DLC and other factions, as an independent aware of this fact I still voted straight Democratic last week and was active getting others to do the same despite the structural voting "irregularities".

All power to the people, like it says in our Constitution-not some version of the Weimar Republic or other capitulated BFEE enabling bs.

but what is the difference between the DLC and the DNC. I'm new here (well, i do lurk) and Canadian, so I'm not really sure if the DLC is connected to the DNC or if it is different. I suppose I could google this but I figured this was a good way to post and say hello. :)