Heads Up: Beware of any "Democrat" still supporting a corporate candidate
They are attempting to stop the people's movement to take big money out of politics so that our leaders are not beholden to corporations such as Goldman-Sachs. They are in the way of the people's movement for equality for all, for economic fairness/justice and for the right to have a decent life in this country. They are in the way of single-payer health care because they are backing a candidate who is beholden to the health industry.
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was co-founded in 1985 by Will Marshall, who served as its first Policy Director and who is the founder and President of DLC's think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute. DLC counts among its past chairs former President Bill Clinton, Congressman Richard Gephardt, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. [1] Current chairman is Senator Harold Ford.
Funding
An August, 2000 Newsweek story on Joe Liebermn, The Soul And The Steel[1] reveals that some of the early funding came from ARCO, Chevron, Merck, Du Pont, Microsoft, Philip Morris and Koch Industries:
His selection may also complicate Gore's efforts to depict Bush as a patsy for big business. Since 1995 Lieberman has chaired the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the centrist think tank that eschews liberal dogma and promotes market-oriented approaches to policy. Like many similar groups, the DLC (of which Gore is a founding member) has never disclosed its funding sources. But last week, in response to requests from NEWSWEEK, it turned over a list of top donors. If Gore still hopes to score populist points by bashing Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies that oppose his plan to add a prescription-drug entitlement to Medicare, he may have some explaining to do. Among the DLC's biggest benefactors last year (contributions of between $50,000 and $100,000) were ARCO, Chevron and the drug giant Merck. Other big underwriters include Du Pont, Microsoft and Philip Morris (which has kicked in $500,000 since Lieberman became DLC chairman). There is no evidence that the DLC has trimmed policies to accommodate its patrons, but some contributors say the money has helped ensure an open door to Lieberman. "We've been able to have a dialogue with the senator and his staff," said Jay Rosser, spokesman for another DLC benefactor, Koch Industries, an oil-pipeline firm that is also a big GOP donor.
http://www.newsweek.com/soul-and-steel-158731?piano_d=1
Hillary Clinton's Ghosts: A Legacy of Pushing the Democratic Party to the Right
But the party's latest generation of "New Democrats" - self-described "moderates" who are funded by Wall Street and are aggressively trying to steer the party to the right - have noticed this trend and are now fighting back. Third Way, a "centrist" think tank that serves as the hub for contemporary New Democrats, has recently published a sizable policy paper, "Ready for the New Economy," urging the Democratic Party to avoid focusing on economic inequality. Former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, a Third Way trustee, recently argued that Sanders' influence on the primary "is a recipe for disaster" for Democrats.
This "ideological gulf" inside the party, as The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus describes it, is not a new phenomenon. Before there was Third Way, there was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). And before there was Bill Daley, there was Hillary Clinton - a key member of the DLC's leadership team during her entire tenure in the US Senate (2000-2008). As Clinton seeks progressive support, it is important to consider her role in the influential movement to, as The American Prospect describes it, "reinvent the [Democratic] party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a pro-business, pro-free market outlook." This fairly recent history is an important part of Clinton's record, and she owes it to primary voters to answer for it.
...
When Bill Clinton left the White House, Hillary Clinton entered the Senate. She quickly became a major player for the DLC, serving as a prominent member of the New Democratic Caucus in the Senate, speaking at conferences on multiple occasions and serving as chair of a key initiative for the 2006 and 2008 elections.
She was even promoted as the DLC's "New Dem of the Week" on its website. (It would be remiss not to note that Martin O'Malley also served as a "New Dem of the Week," and even co-wrote an op-ed on behalf of the DLC with its then-chair, Harold Ford Jr.)
New Democrats were never really about popular support; they were about bringing together big business and the Democrats.
More importantly, Clinton adopted the DLC strategy in the way she governed. She tried to portray herself as a crusader for family values when she introduced legislation to ban violent video games and flag burning in 2005. She also adopted the DLC's hawkish military stance. The DLC was feverishly in favor of Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. Will Marshall, one of the group's founders, was a signatory of many of the now infamous documents from the Project for the New American Century, which urged the United States to radically increase its use of force in Iraq and beyond.
The DLC led efforts to take down Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq as an example of his weakness. Two years later, the organization played a similar role against Ned Lamont's antiwar challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman, which the DLC decried as "The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33869-hillary-clinton-s-ghosts-a-legacy-of-pushing-the-democratic-party-to-the-right
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-speeches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/
Hillary Clinton’s sudden attack on Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan is a dramatic break with Democratic Party doctrine that the problem with single-payer is that it is politically implausible — not that it is a bad idea.
...
That was certainly Clinton’s position back in the early 1990s, when she was developing her doomed universal coverage proposal for her husband, Bill.
But in the ensuing years, both Clintons have taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from the health care industry. According to public disclosures, Hillary Clinton alone, from 2013 to 2015, made $2,847,000 from 13 paid speeches to the industry.
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/hillary-clinton-single-payer/
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= new reply since forum marked as read
They know not what they do.
Let us pray.
(posting as a reply to you, kgnu, to keep it up high)
Are you not following the conversation, or do you simply lack an answer other that (forget what we're talking, about bad bad man!!!)
You were also off topic and rather than answer the question that as I recall was something like "You'd expect a politician who helped take the party right, to bring it back to the left again?" I have to paraphrase because I would have to close the response window and go back to get the exact wording of the question, but I am certain, I remember the content of the question even if I can't quote it word for word from memory.
You Did not answer the question, but rather changed the subject to someone not even in the party, a rather loathsome person at that, a redirect from the topic and question if you will, to a "boogieman" evasion of sorts, as such my reply makes perfect sense.
Your questions to me do not answer my question in my subject line either, and is also off topic, employing a poor conversation trait by answering a question with a question. (bad form, you should work on that), I think I see a pattern emerging in your method of "discussion" but I will answer anyway, just because you appear confused and I would like to help you get back on track.
Who is the OP advocating that people not support? (your other question)
"Democrats" that are still supporting a corporate candidate.
In other words Democrats that would prefer a President that was one that only cared about corporations and not the actual people that live in the country, (your post makes no sense at all since the poster was not talking about any candidate, just about what I hope is a rarity among our party, voters, ones that would actually prefer a candidate which would favor corporations over their constituency (IOW the people of the nation).
I think a President should care more about the voters than a CEO or a conglomeration of them. Do you disagree? I assumed you thought that Hillary was a person that cared about people rather than Corporations. Perhaps you are projecting something, or perhaps you really do favor Corporate favoritism over the good of the people and I had been mistaken about you previously, by thinking you thought your preferred candidate was one with the people's interests as their motivation for running rather than the Corporations.
For what it's worth I hope my initial impression was correct and you think she is in it for the people and not the Corporations.
It is an important distinction and here is why:
― Benito Mussolini
We already have one of those that might also be running for the Presidency, I would simply assume that "Democrats" that are supporting a corporate candidate would be a crossover vote to this one:
Hillary Clinton is very heavily favored among Democratic politicians by Corporations as can be seen by the overwhelming financial support she receives from them, it remains to be seen if she will favor them for it, and thus actually be a corporate candidate.
That is the reason I hope that those supporting her are not supporting a corporate candidate. That would mean the party has gone in a very bad direction. The fact you assumed she was such actually concerns me very much, perhaps, the smoke does lead to a bit of fire that should scare the living daylights out of every American.
Corporate Candidates are not part of a Democracy, they are only part of two types of Government I know of, one being a Mussolini Fascism, the other being an Oligarchy - neither is good for the people and neither should be supported by the people they would inflict those forms of governance on, those governed by either one should revolt in favor of a democracy.
The close Corporate financial ties to Hillary make me very wary of her as they would any Democrat, as I am sure you must agree proclaiming to be one.
I will be watching her like a hawk should she win the nomination for signs of reciprocation because of that fact, and also because (as I have already explained) what such would mean regarding what sort of Government we would be living under.
And, it's "hear".
[font size ="1"]President Bill Clinton with Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, at a conference in 2000.[/font size]
New Democrats, in the politics of the United States, are an ideologically centrist faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. They are identified with centrist social/cultural/pluralist positions and neoliberal fiscal values. They are represented by organizations such as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the New Democrat Network, and the Senate and House New Democrat Coalitions
After the landslide electoral losses to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, a group of prominent Democrats began to believe their party was in need of a radical shift in economic policy and ideas of governance. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was founded in 1985 by Al From and a group of like-minded politicians and strategists. They advocated a political "Third Way" as a method to achieve the electoral successes of Reaganism by adopting similar economic policies (Reagan Democrats and Moderate Republicans would provide burgeoning new constituencies after adding these new economic policies and politicians to our tent they contended) While hoping to retain, woman, minorities and other social issues allies with long ties to the party. Such would be their new Democratic coalition forged between fiscal right and social left under the "New" Democratic banner. The DLC disbanded in 2011 during an apparent re-branding of the New Democrat movement when money ties to the Koch bros. and Koch representatives placed on the DLC's board embarrassingly became common knowledge among the Democratic left. The DLC is survived by the Third Way, The New Democrat Coalition, and Al From's Progressive Policy Institute among other corporate funded groups that continue to sell their Economic-Right/Social-Left brand of "Centrism" to America.
The term Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.
Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various center-right progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for neo liberalism and the New Right. In a sense, 80s Moderate Republicans are almost identical to "Third Way" Democrats.
I strongly believe it's time for a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various center-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the neoliberal corporate policies previously popularized by Reagan and Thatcher! For thirty years we have all but abandoned liberal solutions to economic problems, chasing instead the snake oil of supply side economics, austerity and neoliberal trade policy. These right wing policies have failed miserably, and rather than learn from the New Democrats failed experiments, the center-right faction of the democratic party has chosen instead to double down on failure with more free trade and austerity measures (to include cuts to Social Security).
In the face of a new gilded age of extreme wealth contrasted by an exponentially growing rate of poverty, a rapidly shrinking middle class and the emergence of an elite class of bankers, politicians and other predatory behemoths that are held firmly above the law and enabled to steal the remaining crumbs of wealth held by the masses without repercussion, it is not only time to return to Democratic principles of old that created the strongest most prosperous middle class in our history, it is time to reverse the damage done by the right thinking "New" Democrats and their failed policies with a new populism based on the needs of the people over the elite.
We do not need a "Fourth Way" to accomplish this, all we need is a return to the fundamentals of Keynesianism, a strong commitment to labor, increased spending on social programs (rather than cuts), progressive taxation, and an end to the cancer of privatization that would reduce the commons and the basic needs of the populace (such as health care and drinking water etc.) into the cash cows of profiteers of human suffering
Time to dump the "Third Way" for the unquestionably effective "Democratic way" made successful by the New Deal, The Great Society, and civil liberties. Our party can not serve two masters, the choice is clear, they must serve the financial elite, or the economically struggling populace
My choice has already been made.
piss away can file a lawsuit. This New York attorney's $400 was just flushed down the proverbial toilet. "Class action lawsuit"
...all that Albert had to say about corrupting influences:
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism
If you listen to Hartmann you will have heard his say over and over again that you need to get involved. That you need to join your local Democratic party to get inside to change the party because that's what the Tea Baggers did on the right to the republicans.
It should be obvious that this is exactly what the disenfranchised republicans have done to the Democratic Party. Beginning with the DLC sale of the Party to Koch Bros (and others) in '85 by the Clinton's (and others) - a few months before Hillary was appointed to the board of Wall Mart.
Our tent has been too damn big. A life long republican can switch and say "well I'm a democrat now', the party says great and moves on. But no one questions: Did this republican all of a sudden renounce their previous life long held belief that a woman does not have the right to choose, had an Epiphany, and magically is just fine with choice now? That republican has supported privatizing Social Security and ending Medicare all their life (or career), but they're magically now a democrat... who STILL is working towards killing both, and did they renounce the neo-liberal ideology of Cheney, Bush, Rove, or did they brin that along with them also...and so on and so on.... This is how the Democratic Party of the Working Class and Middle Class has become a caricature of it's former self and morphed into the democrat party or Neo-Dems
I've been having the exact same arguments here, with Clinton Supporters that I have in my private life with my Republican friends and acquaintances. The same damned arguments with people claiming to be democrats. It's a step through the "looking glass".
And I really meeeeeen it!
