Digby nails Will Marshall and the DLC here!

[StefanX]

Will Marshall of the DLC repeats the old Republican lie that liberal Dems were so traumatized by Vietnam that they don't know how to deal with national security.

Digby's response nails the DLC on this one:

I would submit that if anyone's been traumatized by the Vietnam experience it's the tired Democratic national security hawks who are always rushing to support military action, no matter how insanely counterproductive, because some Republican somewhere might call him a pussy.

-- Digby at Hullabaloo, 25 January 2005

If you want to see how screwed up the DLC is, read Digby's entire post.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. Hmmmm. How many terrorist events took place under Clinton's....

...Presidency as opposed to Herr Busch's dictatorship?

[Sparkly]

2. I confess I only skimmed it, but...

It looks to me like Marshall errs in making it sound like it's an issue for individual Democrats, and Digby correctly points out that we come from different times and places...

However, it's important to consider Marshall's point if taken as a view of the Democratic party as portrayed by the GOP. The collective "We" (including the peaceniks during Vietnam) never lost patriotism -- Republicans SAID we did. We were never weak -- Republicans SAID we were. We were never more immoral as a group than others -- Republicans SAID we were.

It does go back to Vietnam in that sense -- that's when Republicans started their campaign against our party and sowed the seeds that they reaped in the last election. It took them three decades and TONS of money, but they became bitterly successful in propagating their lies and stereotypes and memes and hate-filled personal smears.

So as individuals, Marshall's wrong. As a party in a broad sense, he has a point -- except that it's not about the Democrats, it's about Republicans lying about Democrats, imho.

[charlie]

3. The most effective, time-tested way

to get Democrats to bugger themselves is to just use the phrase "soft on ___"

Soft on crime, communism, values... whatever, it's provided big returns for the Republicans since McCarthy's day. Still does, because we never fucking learn...

[cosmicdot]

4. I enjoyed the comments to Digby's response

they're great, too .... Democrats 'get' the DLC ... the DLC should dissolve ...