Learning the wrong lessons from 1984. DLC's “false cause fallacy” has harmed our party.
However the primary turns out..no matter who wins it...I have learned a lot more about our party's attitude toward those of us who question too much. There are many here who are in effect saying the primary's over, Hillary won. They feel there's really no need to continue, it's over.
At least the party leaders aren't holding press conferences saying that Bernie will never be president. It's getting close to that though.
Just as in 2004 those of us who question present Democratic policy are considered questionable members of that party.
That's a sad situation. It does not bode well for the party in the future. Where's the desire for new ideas, new people with fresh thinking?
The rhetoric from party leaders and from the Democratic think tanks has gotten old and stale. It all boils down to liberals can't win....that the only way we can win is to be more like the other party.
That is baloney.
From Salon earlier this year:
America’s anti-liberal myth. Why Dems learned the wrong lesson from 1984
Your calendar says it’s 2015, but it’s always 1984 in mind of the New Dems. These are the economically conservative Democrats that include centrists like the old Democratic Leadership Council, Third Way and financial sector-centric elected Democrats (plus Robert Rubin, the Rubin-launched Hamilton Project and associated advisers on the policy side). As always, they are again invoking 1984 to conjure images of a grave danger to Democrats’ ability to win elections in the form of ascendant progressive populism.
The New Dems’ scare story goes something like this: In 1984 Walter Mondale lost 49 states because he ran as a Super Liberal. Democrats would have kept losing if the New Dems had not formed to take control of and steer the party. In 1992 Bill Clinton ran as Centrist Man and Democrats started winning elections again. Now, economic progressives who prioritize other things before Wall Street’s approval are causing trouble. If these progressives Democrats represent the party it will again be banished to the political wilderness and forced to relearn the lesson of the ’80s and ’90s.
This premise is not only wrongheaded, in important ways it’s backwards. The temptation not to relitigate something that is, after all, over 30 years in the past is obviated by 1984’s continued role as the go-to cudgel against progressive Democrats. The New Dems’ reliance on the ’84 cautionary tale is illustrative of an under-appreciated dynamic in the struggle between the progressive/populist coalition and the Wall Street wing: there never really was a big, public “fight for the soul of the party” in the 80’s and 90’s.
This part sounds so familiar and true:
Forever 1984
As Democratic losses demoralized the party faithful, the New Dems’ shifted from trying to sell their agenda on the merits to claiming that their self-proclaimed “centrism” was the only way a Democrat could hope to win. (They were fond of stating the obvious truth that a candidate can’t do too much to advance anything good or help stop anything awful, unless they can first get elected — as if it was some kind of discussion-ender that proved their claim that only New Dems could win.) Unfortunately, their assertions were all too rarely challenged and quickly gained traction, prominence and, finally, conventional wisdom status. Challenging them now may be late but better late than never.
The False Cause Fallacy:
The “false cause fallacy” is From’s stock-in-trade. A bad thing happened and Al From was sad. His friends in the White House lost their jobs (which couldn’t have been a pleasant experience, but was not in and of itself proof of anything). When a good thing eventually happened it had to be due to what Al From had done in the interim. And what From was doing before the bad thing happened is irrelevant. That’s just science right there.
A fairly small group of men took over the party's platform in the late eighties. They had the wealth of corporations behind them so they would not need the ordinary folks in the party. They did not have to stand for anything that might keep them from winning.
Because of that policy most of us lost big time. They are still saying the same things that didn't work, still calling for us to be more "bi-partisan" and even more scarily..."post-partisan."
The latter means being just like the other party, beyond partisanship.
The primary is not over, no one should be pretending it should be over. There should be no inevitability factor for any candidate.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It ain't over til it's over
...because she is one of Paulson's main co-conspirators in the biggest heist in the History of the World.
[font size=3]Paulson with Co-Conspirators after delivering the Extortion Note.[/font]
They all pranced in front of the TV cameras, patting each other on the back, and congratulating each other on "ignoring Special Interests", and claiming to have "Saved the Economy".
The "Saving of the Economy" sounds heroic, but it was entirely unnecessary.
What they "saved" were the jobs of some CEOs, AND the Quarterly Profits from their "portfolios".
People who were not "invested" in the Wall Street Banks got NOTHING,
but Nancy & her friends heavily invested in the Wall Street Investment Banks did GREAT.
You & I paid her Gambling Debts, so, of course, Nancy and Harry are grinning from war to ear. They just made a BUNCH of money.
"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1365
They got power over the party, but we keep losing elections.
an angel gets its wings. 
Wouldn't that be nice? It's a good thought. 
Last edited Tue Dec 1, 2015, 02:25 PM - Edit history (1)
This is from the wiki of Al From:
In 1998, with First Lady Hillary Clinton, From began a dialogue with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders, and the DLC brand – known as The Third Way – became a model for resurgent liberal governments around the globe.
In April 1999, he hosted an historic Third Way forum in Washington with President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prime Ministers Wim Kok of the Netherlands and Massimo D'Alema of Italy.[18]
In November 1999, joining President Clinton, From moderated the first-ever live Presidential town hall meeting on the Internet.[19]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_From
She was First Lady then, requiring Secret Service protection. So, I guess taxpayers contributed to the spreading of the DLC/Third Way gospel to "world leaders" and poodles like Blair.
And we wonder what happened to the Democratic Party?
