Kerry and the DLC

[jillan]

The DLC came out with an article (op-ed)
about how it wants to distance itself from the far left.

I don't know how any of you feel about this, but I for one, think this is a bunch of shit. The democratic party needs to include everybody, from the far left all the way to the center. Just as the repug party can have members as extreme as Santorum all the way to Hagel, who is speaking out against this administration in a way that I wish more dems were.

Well, wouldn't you know it, Kerry is a member of the DLC.
I personally don't think Kerry would approve of a statement from them such as this. I have seen Kerry move more to the left since the elections. Do any of you see that as well, or is it just me and my undying support for him that makes me wear blinders??

Anyway, I was thinking of emailing him asking for him to either come out with a statement about the DLC's position on the grassroots movement; or to distance himself from them - which could hurt him politically with some and help him with others.

Thoughts??

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4414517

[blm]

1. DLC and New Democrats don't speak for all their members.

I have been glad to have Kerry maintain a leftward pull in the DLC over the years when most others have been pulling rightward.

Just ask yourself if you would want ALL the influence in the DLC to be centrist Dem voices. I am thankful for those who maintain a more leftward stance and influence there.

Who knows what their policies would be like without those pulling to the left.

[kerrygoddess]

7. This is interesting...

Now I'm curious and browsing around the DLC, which I never do... but found this...

"In short, voters don't know what Democrats stand for. Why should they? For the most part, congressional Democrats, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, and the party's new Internet activists have delivered a largely negative and pessimistic message -- talking more about what's going wrong than how to make it right." - http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=127&subid=171&contentid=253471

Gosh I hate to agree here but many of us have said this, we need to start talking about how to make things right instead of what is wrong.

[globalvillage]

2. Yes, Kerry's a member of the DLC.

But, as he said just Friday, the Dem party doesn't need to move either to the left or to the right. We don't need an "extreme makeover". I think he's content with Democrats being the party of inclusion.
I'm pretty sure the article that was posted is not necessarily the consensus of the entire membership of the DLC. More likely the opinion of the writer. Probably some others as well, but it doesn't sound at all like Kerry.
Kerry is a liberal, if labels are important. Just like so many of us. On issues where he is closer to the center, it's because of his beliefs on the issues, not because of any great allegiance to the DLC. Really, it sounds like S&B BS to lump him in with the DLC like they're all of one mind. I think he can be a member of the DLC and still be true to himself.
Hell, I belong to some professional organizations that I don't necessarily agree with much of the time. And the politics of politics is very like the politics of business. Sometimes membership is expected.

[beachmom]

3. The Democratic Party needs to be a big tent party

The DLC is acting as foolishly as some of the "lefty freepers" on DU. There has to be room enough for everyone, or we can count on permanent minority status. The truth of the matter is, that before the DLC came along (and Bill Clinton with it), the Democratic party, at the presidential level, was getting CREAMED. Really bad. Gore and Kerry did SO much better than Dukakis and Mondale, or even Carter in '80. I don't know what the solution is, as it seems to be a deal breaker when one side is extremely against the Iraq War and the other side is for it. But the Howard Dean crowd (not sure what other way to describe them) represents a tiny minority of the voting population. He couldn't even finish 2nd in the Democratic primaries. It wasn't just about him or the famous scream -- dove politics are a LOSER in Imperial America.

As far as Kerry goes, there are better Kerry experts on this forum than me, but from what I understand, Kerry was influenced by Clinton and the DLC (this was also after the Cold War ended, too), and did move a bit to the right in the '90s, when he supported NAFTA, welfare reform, the Kosovo War, and the air war in Iraq in '98. He also started moving against affirmative action, but decided against that. However, I think that he has had second thoughts about a lot of this, particularly NAFTA with his 'no' vote on CAFTA this year. Perhaps others here can explain his economic viewpoint and any evolution of that over his senate career. His foreign policy viewpoints have definitely gone from more doveish to more hawkish. On terrorism, he is a total hawk as he should be. When I say terrorism, I mean the REAL ones, not the ghosts that never existed in Iraq. He understands them better than the White House's current resident, and I would completely trust him in protecting this country from any further terrorist attacks. On geopolitical issues, I think he is more a pragmatist, and simply won't fall for the utopian idealism of the neo-conservatives. But he'll never be doveish enough to satisfy the anti-war Left.

Can anyone add to this?

[TayTay]

4. Kerry is a liberal or a Progressive, as the case may be

He has always been a liberal or Progressive. He was, in fact, the most liberal candidate to head the Democratic ticket since at least McGovern, and some argue since Stevenson. (Or earlier.)

Sen. Kerry's foreign policy is best described as internationalist. He believes that America functions best when it functions with it's allies and when it seeks to garner world opinion to it's side as a moral force for action in the world. The morality is not a throw-away term. This is a person who lived in Europe during the reconstruction after WWII and who understands the power of what the US did to rebuild Europe and Japan after the War. Sen. Kerry's dad was a pragmatist in foreign policy and didn't hold any illusions about idealism in foreign affairs after Eisenhower came in and the Red Scare prompted the US to begin a more aggressive and interventionist foreign policy. (He was again it.)

Kerry's other prominent issue on foreign policy has been to ask the American government to stop lying to it's people and to stop cowboying across the world into misadventures that eventually cause damage to the US in a process called blowback. I believe (and it's just MHO) that the Senator learned in Vietnam that sometimes grand schemes that try and remake diverse areas of the world into 'little Americas' don't work. Vietnam was a mistake, the war was wrong and the American government and people paid a horrible price for that blunder.

Iraq was a country suffering severe repression under a dictatorship. This dictator had the money and wherewithal to acquire weapons and made belligerent moves against it's neighbors. Kerry opposed the first Gulf War in '91 because he didn't believe the US had gone the diplomacy route enough and hadn't fully explored other options, short of war, to get Saddam Hussein to quit Kuwait. After the successful first Gulf War, he relented a little and admitted that this war had been focused, brief and had an exit strategy and so wasn't 'another Vietnam.' (This is consistency.)

Senator Kerry is not a pacifist. HE believes in a strong defense and a strong military. He believes that a sane PResident deserves some latitude in being able to use the US military without submitting all actions to the Congress. However, the current occupant of the White House is boob who has mismanaged his power and has committed the US to a war that was ill-planned, ill-advised and badly carried out. I find that a consistent position from top to bottom. (And Bush lied to get us into this war. He fixed the facts around the policy and he restricted what info went to the Senate before the vote. He is responsible for this horrible screw-up in Iraq, not the people he lied to to get us into it.)

Kerry has always been a little bit more conservative on fiscal matters. (There is mention in the literature for the '72 Congressional race about balancing the books and what amounts to paying for programs as you go (PAYGO.) There is also mention in the '72 lit about welfare reform. He was not a hawk on spending, exactly, but he was more conservative than other MA Dems at the time. (It's relative. In today's terms, it's called sanity.)

Kerry accepted the 'New Democrat' label in the '90's, but his positions on labor, the environment, civil rights, gay rights, reproductive rights, health care and education are, by any measure, among the most progressive in the Dem Party. The whole New Democrat thing was based on voting for the idea of responsible spending and the 95 Welfare Reform bill. Ahm, he is no centrist. (And he really isn't much of hawk on military affairs either. He believes that there are better ways to fight fundamentalist terrorism than the way that the Rethugs have chosen. And he was and is right on this.)

[kerrygoddess]

5. Look at the date for this OP/ED from the DLC - January 2000

DLC | The New Democrat | January 1, 2000
Life After Clinton
By Kenneth S. Baer

http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=127&subid=171&contentid=955

They are quoting something that is over 5 years old.

[globalvillage]

9. Amazing

All that bitching and moaning about a five year old article by one person who happened to be DLC, and little support for what JK said just two days ago regarding the direction of the party.
Can DU not focus on what's important?

[jillan]

6. So do you think i t would benefit Kerry if he made a statement about

what they said, how they don't want to include the extreme left?

I personally used to think of myself as a moderate, but now I find myself moving more to the left.

Like beachmom, I want to see a big tent. One with room for all of us.

I don't like that a political org is alienating party of the dem party.

[Mass]

8. No, because Kerry has distanced himself from the DLC on much more

important issues, such as what the relevant issues where.

He is not and has never been part of the DLC leadership.

[TayTay]

10. True dat!. DLC is not a big deal in MA

Kerry did stress some more conservative votes (relatively speaking; Conservative votes in MA might mean something different from conservative votes in Oklahoma) on fiscal matters in the mid '90s.

I never bought Kerry as a DLC guy. I just never did. I could never reconcile the guy who fought to expose Iran-Contra, the drug-running by rogue elements in the Admin and the guy who exposed the BCCI scandal as one of the 'go along to get along' guys. It never added up. I could see the PR value of the 'New Democrat' thing as an election talk, but I never bought it. The guy who ran just wasn't the accomodationist that the DLC wants it's people to be. It's just not Kerry.

[beachmom]

11. "Republican Leadership Council" and Compassionate Conservatism

They had an interesting point in the article where they worried that the Republicans were going to steal the center. It just blows my mind how much Bush fooled everyone, campaigning in 2000 like he was a moderate when, in fact, "compassionate conservatism" was just an empty phrase. Or maybe not. Think about it -- Bush created two giant new government programs -- No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Drug Bill. Although we don't like things in it, these are the kinds of things that liberals tend to want -- more government, not less. So whereas the DLC is quite liberal to moderate on social issues like abortion, they tended to go more with the conservative "limited government" mantra that Reagan created. Foreign policy was less important during the 90s and wasn't so much a blueprint of their philosophy. So it's almost like the Republicans saw an opening on the economic side in 2000 -- to create government programs that it seemed the New Democrats were not willing to do because of their fiscal conservatism. And then Bush combined that with tax cuts for the rich which made his crony contributors happy, as well as traditional conservatives. So if you think about it, he threw in enough for traditional Democrats, who are culturally conservative, to feel comfortable to vote Republican. When you throw terrorism into the mix and the fear that the Bush campaign continued to stir up, it was a winning coalition. Obviously, the religious right are foot soldiers to always be counted on. The Republican Party's problem now is not with the old time Democratic voters who now vote Republican; it's with their libertarian base who are disgusted with bulging government, and with disillusioned hawks who are highly demoralized with the lack of progress in Iraq. I don't know -- 2008 is going to be tougher than many think. The areas where the Republicans are vulnerable (fiscal conservatism and incompetent Iraq War) won't necessarily translate into votes for the Democrats, because of all the candy Bush has handed out and the fact that Democrats are split on the Iraq War. We may need a Forth Way.

[TayTay]

12. Maybe. But the Rethugs are not following through

Sen. Kerry's recent speeches about 'felt needs' are correct. The Rethugs are not proposing solutions to problems that are affecting actual Americans. They are selling the sizzle and keeping the steak for themselves.

The Rethugs are talking the talk on Iraq. They have been the ones, since Reagan, who have championed a 'tough national defense.' However, consider the cost. The US has been purchasing weapon systems that don't work. We have contracts with equipment makers for equipment that falls apart and doesn't do what it is supposed to do. We are currently paying almost as much for private contractors to work in Iraq, on everything from security to cooking, as we are paying for the activities of our own military. This is a severely dysfunctional system.

The Bush Admin was blinded by their own ideology and their own hubris. They really believed that this war would be a six month affair and that their threadbare budget and planning would be a big triumph. It is not. The cost is enormous, both in terms of human life and in terms of damage to the fiscal well-being of the US.

These chickens are coming home to roost. It is not so much a case of are you in favor of a strong national defense but are you in favor of a sane national defense. Should the US continue to fund weapons systems that don't work? (Strategic Defense Initiative or Star Wars missile defense, the helicopter contracts for faulty equipment that endangers lives, etc.) Should the US continue to be best friends with countries like Pakistan that have horrendous records in terms of funding and harboring terrorism and leading the world in shady bank dealings that hide all kids of money acquired through death, drugs and deception? This is the ground we need to move to. The American people will fund a sane national defense. They do not wish to fund a national defense that enriches a few, endangers a whole lot of people and that just plain doesn't work.

Again: "You Can Fool Some of the people All of the Time, and All of the People Some of the Time, but You Cannot Fool All of the People All of the Time" - Abraham Lincoln

[TayTay]

13. DLC presentation: What the Dems got right

The DNC, at one of their recent quarterly get-togethers, presented a slide show about issues raised in the 2004 national election. Polling reveals that the American people believed that the Democrats were perceived by overwhelming margins to be better at:

Health Care
The Economy
Education
Job Creation
The Environment
Civil Rights

In several of these areas the polling consultants recorded such high numbers of approval that they did not forsee a way in which the Democrats would be able to poll any higher.

The Democrats did not poll very high and probably lost the election (pending fraud, of course) on the issue of who could better protect the US from attack and on the issue of a strong national defense. The REthugs out polled the Dems by about a 10 - 30% margin.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are things that are right with the Democratic message. We need to work on certain things. But we don't need to reinvent the wheel. Senator Kerry was correct last week when he said that we don't need to move left or right, we need to stand on principle and defend our beliefs. We need to articulate those beliefs in such a way that they continue to resonate with the public. (Again, these 'felt needs' are piling up. No amount of Rethug spin can convince a family without health insurance that they do in fact have health insurance. No amount of Rethug spin can convince a family that doesn't have enough money to send a kid to college that they do have the money. These needs have not gone away. They are getting more and more pronounced every day.)

Again: "You Can Fool Some of the people All of the Time, and All of the People Some of the Time, but You Cannot Fool All of the People All of the Time" - Abraham Lincoln

[TayTay]

14. Corruption, a defining issue for the GOP

The War in Iraq is indeed a double-edged sword for Democrats. The more we talk about the War simply in terms of whether or not we should get out and whether or not Democrats are pure and united in taking a stand against it, the more we run on Rethug ground.

This Bush Rethug government is one of the most wasteful, corrupt and incompetent regimes in American history. The War is a direct result of this corruption. The Bush Administration has used the war to enrich it's friends and punish it's enemies. It has squandered vast sums of money and insists that it cannot be held responsible and accountable for those actions. The Bush Admin and it's allies in the Rethug Congress have subverted the government of the USA so that no hearings are ever held that might detail that corruption.

The corruption doesn't end with the War. Look at the scandals in Ohio. This is a Rethug Party that is out-of-control and believes that it is all-powerful and able to do anything it wants. People like Paul Hackett are coming forth to speak truth to that corrupting power and to tell the people that this band of thieves, liars and blowhards are using the American people in order to enrich themselves.

The Rethug PArty is not fiscally conservative. The government has grown faster under That Friggin Idiot than under any President since FDR (who was fighting a depression, after all.) Bush the Deceiver is in it to bleed the American government of money and to set up a permanent over-class in America that has an ever-lasting grip on the levers of power. He must be stopped.

I don't support John Kerry because I think he's a nice guy. I support John Kerry because he fights for what I think is right. I don't support the Democratic Party because I think they hold the best cocktail gatherings. I support them because of their issues and because I believe they fight for a better, stronger, safer and fairer America. And I will fight the Rethugs based on what they have done and what they have said and because they are a corrupt, vacuous bunch of thieves and liars who have only their own self-interests at heart and not that of the average American. And in this regard there is 'No Retreat, No Surrender." At all. Ever.

Again: "You Can Fool Some of the people All of the Time, and All of the People Some of the Time, but You Cannot Fool All of the People All of the Time" - Abraham Lincoln

[beachmom]

15. The Democrats need to define the Republicans for who they REALLY are

Not what they talk about what they are:

Corrupt
Wasteful
Incompetent
Fiscally Irresponsible
Anti-families (when it comes to the pocketbook)
They are not pro-business, they are not pro-big business, they are pro-only their friends' big businesses
They LIED about this war
The are CONTINUING to LIE about this war
Anti-environment
Anti-the whole world

All that religious right talk is a distraction to the real story of the things you were talking about going on in the military. And I admit I have fallen victim more times than not to getting worked up about the religious right, and sometimes legitimately so, like how they're trying to censor everything. But seriously, these "cultural debates" are so small compared to something as basic as government corruption.

One could argue that the Democrats did stumble in the late 90s and haven't recovered yet. But what's happened to the Republican Party seems to have come out of nowhere. I mean, half the time, Gore and Bush were agreeing in the debates!!!! As a former independent, I not only lament the Democrats' divisions, I also mourn the loss of the old Republican party, that oftentimes was the party who told the liberals to "be reasonable, guys". Now those reasonable men and women are mostly gone, and these mean spirited crazies have taken over. And, if I have to be completely honest, the mean spirited crazies on the Left (who, to be fair have no power) are trying to take down the reasonable voices on our side. A complete polarization of both parties will mean one thing and one thing only: the country will lose.