Time to admit it. The DLC was effectively a white supremacist organization.

[Ken Burch]

The main point of founding the "Democratic Leadership Council" (DLC) was to get the Democratic Party to distance itself from POC(or "throw them under the bus" as we would now say).

(Yes, the DLC did that to labor and progressive activists to, but it was mainly about those tacky POC).

That's why the DLC endorsed the white supremacist argument that blackness was synonymous with criminality, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and welfare fraud.

The DLC pushed this party to abandon the whole civil rights heritage and embrace the idea that wealthy white people and white suburbanites were superior to everyone else, entitled to pass moral judgment on everyone else, and entitled to leave everyone else to rot.

We never needed to embrace a toxic agenda like that to get the White House back in name...we just needed to make a strong case for change and nominate a candidate who would articulate that case with strength and without apology.

And that's all we need now.

Another "hard truth".

[WillyT]

1. Oh Man... Am I Gonna keep My Mouth Shut Here... LOL !!!

[Bobbie Jo]

2. Wut?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

3. Democratic Leadership Co-optation. n/t

[RBInMaine]

4. The DLC doesn't exist anymore, and this post brings hyperbole to new heights. Time to move on.

[sabrina 1]

34. They had to change their name which they did. They morphed into the Third Way.

Once the DLC title became toxic to candidates after people began to realize what they were about, pushing policies that were far more right than Democratic Party principles should even consider, they dropped DLC and came up with the Third Way. Still the same old garbage, same horrible right wing policies, and now they need to get our of our party because we do not need two Republican Parties even if one is 'lite'.

[DonCoquixote]

59. as a rule of thumb "move on"

is the equivalent to "Nothing to see here" or it's modern version "these are not the droids you are looking for." If there was nothing to see, you would not need to say that, would you?

[MADem]

5. Is that why the last head of the DLC, before they closed up shop, was a black guy?

What a crazy thesis.

[Recursion]

7. It was definitely aimed at shoring up working class white support

And unfortunately that always brings racial policies with it.

[MADem]

11. I always saw it as fucking over the GOP by co-opting (aka triangulating) issues that they were

going to win on, anyway.

Basically, they stole their lunch.

It worked for a time. It required compromise. Is compromise "ideal?" Well, to an ideologue, of course not. To someone who believes that half a loaf is better than none, it was "better than none."

It's ancient history, anyway.

[Ken Burch]

16. It can't be worth defeating the GOP

if you have to embrace GOP-like policies and pander to backlash politics to do it.

We never needed to go along with any part of white resentment against POC, especially when it was resentment based on lies(most people on welfare were and are white, most POC are employed, most POC aren't criminals and never will be).

[JonLeibowitz]

25. Hello Paul Krugman? :-)

Just kidding. I think we read similar columns and blogs, that's all. "half a loaf"

[Hassin Bin Sober]

29. Yeah. We stole their lunch by giving them our milk money.

[MADem]

30. No, we took the wind out of their sails, and took the White House, too.

We didn't give them anything they wouldn't have gotten anyway. We denied them the Presidency.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

32. No, we put lead in their pencil....

.... Ah never mind. I got nothin'


We put a banana in their tail pipe?

[MADem]

33. Heh heh...I hear a potato works, too!!! nt

[Ken Burch]

13. It does if you pander to racism instead of talking about class.

A class-based Democratic politics in the Nineties could have taken those votes without pandering to backlash politics.

[Ken Burch]

9. The RNC had a black guy as its chair a few years ago.

The presence of a token proves nothing.

[MADem]

12. The last head of the DLC was no token. nt

[Ken Burch]

19. Harold Ford Jr. was a token.

He never defended the black community against crime-bashing and false accusations of welfare fraud.

And now he is totally forgotten.

[MADem]

31. He went further in a racist state than any other politician of color.

He was only taken down with a cheesy "Playboy Bunny" ad.

Now that was some racist bullshit, there--and it was the GOP running that ad.

[Recursion]

6. Roughly, yeah

It was an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of poor whites from the party who were fine with social spending as long as it didn't go to nonwhites (and probably not urban whites either).

And, to that extent, it worked as advertised: Democrats went from losing five of six elections between 1968 and 1988 to winning five of six elections between 1992 and 2012. We gained back some traction with white working class voters, who even Sanders recently identified as the largest voting bloc in the country.

For that matter, this is one of the main worries about "populism" as such: in a country where aggrieved LMC whites are the largest group, populist campaigns tend to favor what they want, for better or for worse.

[Ken Burch]

10. We could have got those voters back without embracing the demonization of POC.

You get poor whites back by talking about class...NOT by pandering to hate and resentment of "the other".

Bernie's campaign shows that you can win working-class whites without doing embracing anything punitive towards POC.

[Recursion]

14. That hasn't worked yet. Maybe it will this time.

Every single populist leader in the past has started out being for racial equality and dropped it once white voters made their disapproval clear.

[Ken Burch]

17. We already know Bernie is never going to pander to white racism. n/t.

[Recursion]

18. Well, then unless the electorate has changed, he's in trouble

Because working class white voters love government social spending as long as it stays in white hands, and go absolutely apeshit when black people get any of it.

Now, maybe they've changed. Sanders had better hope so, since those voters are the key to his electoral strategy.

[Ken Burch]

21. The people are changing everywhere in this country. The scales are falling from everyone's eyes.

If they weren't. Bernie would be at Kucinich levels of support in the polls.

[Recursion]

23. Was it Mao who said "too soon to tell" when asked about the French Revolution?

My only response to your claim is, "we'll see".

[Ken Burch]

43. That anology might make sense

if Bernie had set up a guillotine in his Senate office.

Otherwise...

[merrily]

26. Except for Hillary and Lieberman, the founding member politicians were white males from Southern

states, most of whom seemed to have Presidential ambitions at that time.

The first ticket the DLC backed were two Southerners who fit that description.

Your analysis of elections does not include Congress, kind of an important issue. Democrats dominated Congress almost continuously after the New Deal until 1

[Recursion]

27. I have said before that I think we traded the WH for Congress

by doing that, and that it probably wasn't worth it. That was the explicit logic behind it, though.

[merrily]

28. When ambitious politicians explicitly state their reasons for doing something,

we can, or course, rely on exactly what they say. We all know that, right?

BTW, "we" did not trade Congress for the White House. Maybe one or more of them did, but "we" did not.

Your attempt to conflate the very unpopulist DLC with populism so as to smear populisim with the DLC agenda is a twist, to say the least.

[ProgressiveCentrist]

37. where do you get that?

From my remembering the DLC was a group who looked to replace dwindling union influence with corporate/wealthy donor cash.
You are right about rich social liberals but you lose me when you add the racial wedge. What policies do you have to back that?

You may claim singularly that welfare reform was a sop to that demo, but what policies did they design, or promote that benefited them at the expense of black people?

DLC were free traders. How does that square with your shoring up working class whites?

This seem like a lame attempt to paint the Clinton's as racist.

noble cause i guess.

[Cheese Sandwich]

8. It's true

They went right along with this.

[Arazi]

15. oh kicked and recced

With a big side order of popcorn ...

[Raine1967]

20. Offensive eom

[Ken Burch]

22. Truth often is. n/t.

[JI7]

39. yup, comparing Clinton who is popular among minorities to People who truly do hate and have hurt

minorities.

i wonder if the poster will explain why so many black people and other minorities love that white supremicist.

[UglyGreed]

24. Is this connected to the

super predator speech?

[Purveyor]

35. Tell it, it needs to be told... nt

[Hekate]

36. Hey, is this a Limbo Party?

Because I have to say, this is a helluva new low.

[JI7]

38. How does that explain the Popularity of White Supremicist Bill Clinton among Minorities ?

[Ken Burch]

41. They accepted the propaganda that he was the only Dem who could possibly win.

And he was great at schmoozing with the AA leadership.

And he gave a few folks some prominent appointments, which mattered in terms of symbolism.

[JI7]

42. but he is still popular , even after a black man became president, and the first time by beating

Hillary in the Primary.

[Ken Burch]

44. I have no explanation.

As we all know, not everything in politics makes sense.

[firebrand80]

49. Then stop trying to explain things

when you obviously and admittedly have no clue what you're talking about.

[FSogol]

48. In otherwords, you feel POC are too stupid to see the obvious "truth" you are selling.

I really feel sorry for you.

[Ken Burch]

58. No. I don't think anyone is stupid.

It's just that I can't understand why they have(so far) made this choice.

People who post things like you posted there want Bernie supporters to say "POC backing HRC proves Bernie is bad and should get out of the race, that he had no business ever running".

I don't have to say that to prove I respect POC.

They didn't back your candidate either, and he deserved their backing more than HRC does, too.

The only thing Bill 'n Hill have ever been good at on POC issues is schmoozing. They have no claim to POC support on the merits of anything either ever did while in office.

[Dem2]

40. What is this shit?

I guess it's always a good time to bring up the "DLC" canard - you know that defunct organization that was shuttered 5 years ago. Nobody here gives a flying f*** about the DLC except those looking to tar, oh yes, we know.How droll.

[kath]

46. Pay attention. the DLC still exists. They just changed the name to The Third Way.

[Dem2]

50. Lol @ 3rd way canard

All one does when they play these "3rd way" games is teach people to ignore said name-callers.

[jeff47]

51. You're acting as if Third Way doesn't exist.

Here they are: http://www.thirdway.org/

You'll find their agenda matches the DLC's perfectly...since they were formed by the same people.

You'll also find their agenda matches Clinton's perfectly....until she started running for president.

[Dem2]

55. It doesn't exist in any meaningful way

It's a figment in the imagination of those who are prone to exaggeration and name calling.

[jeff47]

57. This is a little like you insisting the sun rising in the East is a "figment in the imagination".

Enjoy looking Westward every morning. I'm sure it'll work the way you want one of these days.

[Dem2]

62. Thanks for the insult

Enjoy your lame canards; if you realized how they just divide people, maybe you'd try making actual arguments.

[kath]

45. Kick!

because more people need to know the DLC/ThirdWay's history, and WHY it was founded.

[brooklynite]

47. I'm not sure what word to use to describe this comment: Obnoxious, ugly or idiotic...

[Blue_Adept]

52. 24 recs and counting

And here I had forgotten why I trashed GDP for most of January. Thanks for reminding me why.

[apnu]

53. The DLC is many things, few of them good, but white supremacist? Nope.

You forget that a founding member and major player is Rahm Emanuel, the current Mayor of Chicago. So are you suggesting a Jewish man is a white supremacist?

[Ken Burch]

61. These days, most of black Chicago would have no problem with saying that about Rahm.

It's basically how you'd describe Ed Koch, back in the day(what else would you call a guy who bases his entire career in municipal politics, as Koch did, on pushing the idea that "white ethnics" in NYC were RIGHT to distrust and fear POC?)

Both of those people totally betrayed the progressive, humane values of the Jewish tradition in building a coalition of scared whites against POC, so I guess I'd call them...oh, I dunno..."self-loathing".

[Nuclear Unicorn]

54. This whole "white liberal supremacist" attack was vile when it was lobbed at against Sen. Sanders

I don't see it as improving just because it's lobbed against the DLC.

[m-lekktor]

56. I read long ago the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign was what spurred their formation!

I forget where I read that but i distinctly remember it. I figure it was his "leftism" not his race that scared them!

[emulatorloo]

60. I'll admit no such thing. DLC may have sucked, but your OP is an overreach

if you think this OP helps Bernie in his efforts to win over AA voters, you are sorely mistaken.