The DLC was started because we kept losing the White House

[Recursion]

And not just kind of losing, losing very very badly from '68 through '92 when the DLC finally took over.

Al From's theory had two related parts:

1. Voters, particularly white males, were skeptical of the welfare state and did not respond to redistributionist policies that were seen as benefitting minorities

2. Democrats needed to tap into Wall Street money to win nationally

It's arguable that the first condition has changed; I highly doubt the second one has.

And, in one sense, From was vindicated and the Democratic candidate won in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. W had to run as a centrist and govern as a triangulator (not to mention steal the 2000 election he lost).

However, the same policies that did not play nationally played very well in individual districts, with the result that our hold on Congress started slipping exactly when our hold on the White House started.

Anyways: I just wanted to remind people that the DLC was created to get Democrats back in the White House. It is possible that From's electoral calculus is obsolete, but it's something people should think hard about.

[madfloridian]

1. They wanted a powerful president...

It did little to help us get elected to Congress.

[SwampG8r]

2. The dlc has benefitted one group

Of politicians
All named Clinton

[Recursion]

5. Well, other than gays, women, minorities...

working people (wages rose more in the past 20 years than in the 20 years before that), immigrants, students, small business owners, people in lead-painted buildings, people in crime-wracked neighborhoods, inhabitants of food deserts, people who breathe air, people who drink water, and people who use the Internet, nobody benefitted from Clinton's tenure.

[SwampG8r]

7. What a load

Clintons have been on the wrong side of most of your list until politically expedient

[Recursion]

14. Bill Clinton did what it took to win and then did what he could to govern

If you want to scoff at that as "expediency" that's your prerogative. A nobly-losing Tsongas would not have passed FMLA or an AWB.

[SwampG8r]

17. Or doma or don't ask don't tell or welfare reform or more prison for.poc through

Regressive drug laws.

[Recursion]

18. DADT was a huge step forward

You know that.

DOMA and welfare reform are good examples: he knew the GOP had the votes to override vetos so he signed to avoid the political hit. You detest that; I get it. I'm glad he did what it took to stay in office.

[SwampG8r]

22. If the price of staying in office for bill Clinton was

Giving the GOP what it wanted how.am I better served?

[Recursion]

23. Since they would have overridden anyways how are you worse off?

[SwampG8r]

26. I guess you are saying vote.for.Clinton and let the GOP.screw.you?

I understand the history but if one group wants to screw.you and the group your aligned with holds you down for them
How do they get to claim they did anything to prevent it?
Did he veto......no
claims of what might have happened are as imaginary as political evolution

[Ken Burch]

76. It would have been a rallying point that the stands were made.

Because of the surrender on DADT, the LGBTQ movement was dead for the rest of the Nineties. It was impossible for gays to achieve anything for the entire decade(there were no gains for LGBTQ people anywhere in the country until 2009 as a result...it all just died for a decade).

And Clinton didn't do anything that mattered in his second term, or even try to get Democrats back in control of the House in '96(which should have been an easy and automatic re-take after Newt's shutdown).

BTW, if you support O'Malley, why are you even bothering to defend the DLC? It's only HRC and the right wing of her crowd that has any reason to even try to rehab that particular travesty.

[Ken Burch]

75. Signing DOMA and the welfare bill was not better than being overridden.

Once he did those, he was less than 20% different than Jesse Helms.

The election of a Democratic president is supposed to mean a guarantee of no lost ground, period...less lost ground isn't anything.

And there was no meaningful difference for gays in the military between DADT and the pre-DADT state of things. if the still had to obsess about keeping their sexual orientation hidden, there was no gain. Just as many gays were forced out under DADT as had been before.

And DADT didn't make it any easier to lift the ban...which Clinton COULD still have done with an executive order on his last day inn office, at no risk at all.

[Armstead]

49. He (and DLC) enthusiastically embraced GOP crap

Okay, with a hostole Cingress one does have to be pragmatic and compromise.

But Bill Clinton enthusiastically pushed a lot of crap -- and promoted it positively -- that was bad medicine. And, worse, he went against many in hos own partyt to force through right-wing, neo-liberal, free-market Alan Greenspan CONservatism.

Power for its own sake is empty. Did it remotely bother you, for example, that he got into bed with that horrible Dick Morris to help him keep his WH job?

[Ken Burch]

74. The point is, we didn't have to accept every GOP slur on the poor(as Clinton always did)

just to get power-in-name.

We'd have won in '92 WITHOUT leaving the attacks on "welfare mothers&quot and the implications that the poor were refusing to work, as well as the "all criminals and poor people are black/all black people are criminals or poor" double-slur) unchallenged. You never have to bathe in shit to win.

None of the good under Clinton could possibly make up for the great surrender to the forces of ugliness that his era embodied and that the candidate currently married to him has never condemned or renounced.

[MrTriumph]

3. Bunk

H. Humprey barely lost in 1968. Look it up.

J. Carter was elected in 1976. Look it up.

W governed by triangulation? Nonsense. He was noted for being far more like Reagan than his dad.

Your reminder is not accurate.

[Recursion]

4. You're right; the blowouts started in 72. You're wrong about W

W was a bigger triangulator than Clinton. His only domestic policy achievements were expanding Medicare and expanding the Federal role in education. This is why conservative activists called him a Quisling RINO.

Carter won off of a collapsed GOP Presidency, governed as a centrist, and got blown out of the water four years later.

[reddread]

6. W LOST

thats why they had to steal it.
reality doesnt quite square with your product.

[Recursion]

8. I said that

It was an essence of my point. Gore won in 2000. It's arguable Kerry won in 2004.

[reddread]

10. in for a penny in for a pound

was anyone really fooled twice?

[Recursion]

12. Did you even read my OP?

Doesn't seem like it

[reddread]

13. you want to justify wall street money because elections get stolen?

ok

[Recursion]

15. Would you rather just give up? Surrender?

Nominate ideal warrior after ideal warrior and watch the GOP keep the White House forever?

I'll even concede that we would do better in Congress with that approach, but it's not one I can advocate.

[artislife]

58. No we don't want to surrender and by your avatar, neither do you

They gave up too much. When someone or group gains power, what tends to happen is that the focus turns on keeping power. The party is scared of it's own shadow, but that has hurt it. Look at congress and the make up of the members. Our side is doing all the compromising, crossing the aisle, down playing what made this party the party of the people.

So we don't want 3rd way anymore. It may have helped in some areas, but look at the 99%. Look at the what has been lost. We cannot be so timid in our approach, hoping that things turn out for the best. We all have to push for it.

Mandates, remember them? We elect someone who stand for something squarely and the country takes note.

[reddread]

73. perhaps the problem is your estimation of other Americans?

what we will learn in the next year and a month will be worth the wait.

[Bluenorthwest]

33. But Jimmy Carter won 1976. So the 'blowouts' were Reagan, Reagan and Bush.

This is not the long string of massive losses you describe.

[Recursion]

37. And '72

With the exception of '76 after a huge scandal, '72 through '88 were blowouts, and '68 was also a loss. That's 20 years when the only time we won was after the President falls through the biggest scandal since Teapot Dome.

Seriously, just look at what people like From and Clinton were saying in the 80s; I'm not making this up.

[wyldwolf]

59. Bunk

H. Humprey barely lost in 1968. Look it up.

Bunk! Humphrey lost by over 100 electoral votes. It would have been worse for him if George Wallace hadn't been in the race. Polls confirmed that four out of five Wallace votes would have gone to Nixon if Wallace had not run.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/peopleevents/pande07.html

J. Carter was elected in 1976. Look it up.

Talk about someone who barely won. Carter won by just 57 electoral votes and about 1% of the popular vote - this after the Watergate scandal where a Republican president resigned in disgrace. Carter then had his ass handed to him in 1980.

Look it up!!

[MrTriumph]

67. Look at the popular vote.

Sheesh.

[wyldwolf]

69. I did. It was very close, like I said

And we don't elect by popular vote. Sheesh.

[One of the 99]

71. Still Dems have won the popular vote

in 5 out of the last 6 elections while the GOP won the popular vote in 5 out the 6 previous elections.

[wyldwolf]

77. That's true

Each time they were DLC/New Dems

[TM99]

9. For someone who repeatedly claims they are NOT a New Dem

you sure carry a lot of water for them.

Yet another Recursion DLC apologetics piece.

Yes, the most important thing is always winning. Fuck principles. Fuck policies. Fuck positions. Fuck being consistent and congruent. Triangulate away. Split apart economic and social justice issues. Just get someone with a D after their name in the White House.

And while yes, 'they' won, we lost. From stagnant wages to bankrupt cities to disappearing industries to corporate bailouts to financial corruption to the loss of the Fairness Doctrine, winning the White House has cost the American people dearly for the last 40 years. The only ones who have benefited are those who have won (like the dirt broke Clintons!) and their cronies who move through the revolving door between Wall Street and DC.

And let me clarify once and for all that Wall Street is used in this context to mean the corporate world where the bottom line and excessive socially bankrupt greedy upper management and CEO's focus on wealth to the complete exclusion of public welfare. Yes, it includes banking but it also includes tech (Facebook privacy!), automotive (VW lying about emissions!), etc. As long as those in the top percentiles have robust stock portfolios, nothing else matters.

I watched the rise of the New Dems in my adult life, and I will work hard the remainder of my life to ensure their downfall. They succeed, and we lose. They fail, and we win.

[Recursion]

11. Yes, winning is what matters

People whose lives are at stake don't have time for your piety. We have to win, period, whatever it takes.

[TM99]

19. I know ethics, congruency, consideration, and other concepts are de passe

but only to those with no sense of self is what I described, 'piety'.

Winning at all costs is unhealthy. Didn't you learn that on the playground in elementary school?

You obviously didn't read what I wrote because what you have described with the DLC winning is NOT winning. Peoples lives are indeed at stake, and the fucking Third Way did not make it any better.

[Scootaloo]

64. Winning with the right candidates and positions matter

If the only way to win is to adopt Republican policy and positions, then that is actually called "losing."

[jwirr]

31. +1 any appearance that the groups listed actually gained

from the Clinton administration was temporary. All we have to do is look at the problems all of those groups have today to know that nothing really changed.

In the two point explanation of what From was doing I think that might actually been WHY it was started but if (1) those white males would bother to look around today they should be able to see it did not work to follow the greed (money). In fact right now many of those laid off white males are dependent on the social programs they wanted to get rid of.

And (2) we really did buy into the Wall Street contributors but what we did not understand was that they were buying us. Lock, stock and barrel.

[Recursion]

40. And your point about (1) is not going away

Not any time soon. White male voters have shown time and time again that they will vote to worsen their own economic conditions as long as the gap between them and non-white-males doesn't shrink.

Now, with every year white male voters become a smaller and smaller part of the electorate, but they're still a huge bloc and will be for a while.

This is a fact we need to acknowledge.

[haikugal]

53. BOOM!!!

[Doctor_J]

16. And now we've made huge losses in congress and the states, so our presidents have to enact

Republican policies anyway. Hekuva job, Frommie.

[Recursion]

20. And Nixon had to face a hugely D Congress

We haven't had undivided government for any significant period of time since LBJ.

[TM99]

21. Yes, but Nixon gave us such things as the EPA.

W with the help of Dem's gave us the Iraq War, and Obama with the help of the GOP is giving us TPA/TPP.

Shall we go back and see what Clinton gave us with the help of the GOP in the 1990's!?

[cheapdate]

32. Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act and it passed on an override.

He objected to the EPA but passed it anyway knowing a veto would be overriden anyway.

He was not a progressive or an environmentalist.

[TM99]

34. Whoosh!

Not the point...re-read the entire sub-thread.

[cheapdate]

50. It was clearly recognized in the OP that the the strategy

(prioritize winning the White House above all else) might not be relevant in today's political reality. It was also recognized that it might have outlived its usefulness. Lastly, it was recognized that the strategy probably comes with the price of losing seats in congress.

On these points, there seems to be no disagreement.

So...."Whoosh!" (the sound of your point and mine passing in midair.)

[TM99]

52. We are talking past each other.

Not in disagreement about the OP.

It really isn't important in the subthread for us to agree. I was referring to the division between D and GOP presidents and congress and what could be accomplished.

That was all.

[cheapdate]

55. Agreed!

[Doctor_J]

24. If you think the party is in better condition now than it was before the dlc,

I'm pretty sure that trying to convince you is hopeless

[Teamster Jeff]

25. .

?w=630

[Bluenorthwest]

27. Many roads are paved with fine intentions.

What does that prove, exactly? Additionally even an evil path can be described as righteous by those who want to follow it. So how meaningful are the stated or even actual intentions of a political group from 30 years ago to us as we evaluate the usefulness of such thinking in this new century?

[Recursion]

28. Well, I'm suggesting the electoral argument still has some validity

I think a more progressive platform and campaign makes it harder for us to take the White House, even in 2016. Though I also think it helps us do better in Congress. If it is a choice then I'm not sure which one I want.

[Joe Turner]

29. DLC was created to get Democrats back in the White House.

What good is that when they act like republicans when they get the job. The DLC represents the corporate influence i.e. corruption of the democratic party. This era is being to come to a close. Bernie is the anti-DLC.

[Recursion]

30. Could be

Things change every few decades.

[mmonk]

35. They saw the money swing with Reagan. They wanted their own. We were sacrificed.

They thought they had found a way to split the difference through adopting privatization as did Labour in the UK because they wanted their Thatcher and gave the world Tony Blair.

[cheapdate]

36. Excellent post. Winning is hugely important.

Being a party out of power is no fun. Being out of power for year after year is worse.

[jwirr]

38. I have read this whole thread. Is this really what your OM

candidate believes?

[Recursion]

39. Why would you think that?

I haven't seen O'Malley talk about it at all so I have no idea. You can check his website but I doubt it's a subject they cover.

[jwirr]

41. You are very vocal on this issue and assumed that you would

be supporting someone who agreed with you.

[Recursion]

42. Why would you assume that?

A candidate is a whole lot more than a bunch of position papers. I probably agree on substance more with Sanders than anyone else, but Presidents make so few policy decisions that that is a very low priority on my list.

I'll also throw out there that O'Malley has articulated his policies better than either of the others so far (see his whitepapers). They're some very thoughtful and well-reasoned positions, not all of which I agree with.

[HereSince1628]

43. Super Tuesday and DLC were started to counter the NE Liberal poobahship

That controlled the Party through the mid part of the last century

If you remember, the 70's you ought to remember it as a time of redistribution of manufacturing and the rise of the southern economy

Northern cities were going bankrupt. The southern economy that was sucking up the jobs going south wanted more power, they got it with Super Tuesday. It countered Iowa and New Hampshire.

The Dukakis loss really sealed the fate of the NE Liberal contingent and created an opening to be exploited by the new southern and much more conservative good old boy club called the DLC

With respect to election balances, the Dems really lost 1 incumbency and the r's pulled off one of the very rare cases of a third term victory.

As we've seen the Clinton shift to Blairite neoliberalism hasn't been good for labor or people who need social safety nets.

The DLC created a Democratic party no one would have considered for 70 years.

[Recursion]

44. wasn't super tuesday specifically so Carter would beat Udall? (nt)

[HereSince1628]

45. The first super tuesday was in 1988

Here's a link that tells the story sort of how I remember it...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18677436

[Recursion]

46. I've heard it used about '76

That's the year I was born so I obviously don't know if it was used at the time...

[HereSince1628]

70. Surely dreamed of sometime earlier, the first super tuesday was in '88

The whole history of the rise of neoliberalism as a conservative southern strategy within the democratic party is what it is because history gets written by the winners. And it seems that they have mostly wanted to play down its conservative identity.

[Armstead]

47. MY short response: They Threw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

[HereSince1628]

48. AND they simlutaneously adopted DAMIEN!

[Armstead]

51. LOL

[pansypoo53219]

54. the DLC kept the democrats alivE DURING THE REAGAN REVOLUTION. ZOMBIE reagan is DYING.

democrats can embrace fDR + GOVERNMENT again + KILL WALL STREETS BUTT AGAIN. CUT THE $$$ CORD!

[moondust]

56. Why didn't they legislate money out

after they did win, back when they had a chance to preempt Citizens United with a more favorable SCOTUS? I can understand the need to adapt to changing circumstances post Reagan, but I don't remember them making much of an effort to turn back the tide when it might have been possible. I suppose the money was too good to resist.

[99Forever]

57. Just finished my Official DLC survey.

I answerd only 1 question, Additional comments, I said:

If you want my opinions, fire Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, then get back to me. For their donations slot, I entered 0. I signed it Not One Penny.

Fuck the DLC.

Oooops...


Should have been DNC. Same difference.

Same to them.

[jfern]

60. Umm

1968: Democrat barely lost
1972: Watergate helped Nixon run up the margin. Plus that running mate problem.
1976: A win
1980: Iran hostage release delayed until after election to ensure Reagan win
1984: Reagan too popular
1988: Dukakis doesn't respond to attacks, squanders initial leads
1992: Bush had a very low approval rating on election day. A liberal like Harkin or Cuomo would have easily won.

[highprincipleswork]

61. Did anybody even try anything different? More Debates!!!

The point is, let the debates begin, now and often. The best and most popular candidate will clearly emerge.

It is insanity that the DNC so far will not allow that to happen. It is so obvious that they are trying to actually discourage people knowing about the candidates and their positions.

Debate, early and often. The clearly most influential and powerful candidate will emerge. And that should be our champion and our strategy. Not some tired old philosophy that might have been mistaken from the get-go.

[Warren DeMontague]

62. And isolationism was bad, because Hitler.

Point being, it's not 1984, or 88, or 92 anymore.

The people who are reaching voting age next year were born in 1998. Think about that. To them the 2008 election of Barack Obama was not a recent watershed development but ancient history, a fuzzy childhood memory.

Another way to look at is is to consider all the folks on DU who trot out 72 as an example- look what happened when we nominated George McGovern!

Well, there are as many years between 1972 and 2016 as there were between 1928 and 1972. Using McGovern logic in 2016 is like using Hoover logic in 1972.

So yes, From's arguments may have been valid at the time, but they are obsolete.

[PowerToThePeople]

63. That is the history

But it is history.

[m-lekktor]

65. it was a DEM version "southern strategy" because of the Jesse Jackson candidacy.

and that is all I will say about that. Smart people can figure that one out.

[NYCButterfinger]

66. I don't know, probably. I personally am not a fan of welfare. Not at all. However,

the DLC was needed because Tsongas and Harkin could not beat Bush/Quayle '92. Not at all. Clinton/Gore could have. And they did. Period. You need a moderate balance and a progressive balance. Period.

[Recursion]

68. There were problems with AFDC but it was a better program than TANF

Like so many things in politics, it's less important to ask "is X bad?" (it probably is) than to ask "is X worse than the realistic alternative?"

[Fearless]

72. Sell your soul to stay in power

No thanks.