Without personal attacks, here is my problem with the DLC: [View All]

[Selwynn]

The DLC doesn't represent me.

There it is, plain and simple. There is virtually no position held by the DLC that I can agree with. And, I never felt like I was an "extremist" or "outsider" or on the "far left" of the Democratic party until Bill Clinton and the DLC "New" Democrats came to town.

So my resentment from the DLC comes from the fact that it feels like a betrayal of the base principles of the Democratic party that I believed in. To me there is no significant difference between the DLC's positions and positions of mainstream (note mainstream) republicans. And I believe mainstream Republicans are tragically wrong on most of their stances.

To further explain my problem, I don't believe that simply "winning" is the ultimate objective. It doesn't matter if you "win" if you are not in the right when you do win. If my party takes as its own all the positions of my opponents, then it matters little if we "win." My problem is the DLC is that it takes the easy path toward "success" defined as winning elections by navigating the gutless center than rather than taking on the harder task of changing the hearts and minds of the public, standing up as an opposition party and truly heralding a genuine alternative to conservative politics.

So even if it was conclusively pr oven that taking on a conservative agenda is the way to win elections, I would still rather lose elections (in the short run) while continuing to boldly speak out for what's right. To me, its kind of like imagining Dr. Martin Luther King if he had become an apologist for segregation, coming up with a rationale for why those in the Civil Rights movement should support the status quo. If that concept sounds absurd to you, then you understand how the DLC feels to me. We are a nation in need of people to stand up and speak out on principle - and principles are always considered extreme to the mainstream. Principles are not about the middle ground. Principles are about what's RIGHT and what is NOT right. Conservative politics in all its forms is not right. Moderates are enablers to political atrocity. That's how I feel.

So, my problem with the DLC is that it feels as though they are trying to steal the party I belong too out from under me and "revamp" it into a party which I want no part of.

I don't believe the difference between conservative politics and progressive politics is a difference of perspective only. I don't see political differences as simply two (or more) equally right different approaches to the same problems. Not at all. I see the difference between conservative politics and progressive politics (which by the way, are virtually non-existent in Washington anyway) as the difference between a kind of fundamental wrong that is destructive to the foundational ideals on which this nation was founded, unjust, inequitable, invasive, exploitative and a kind of fundamentally just stance that is truly for the people, pursuing honest equity, preserving liberties, and affirming of the basic rights and status of every human being.

To me there is little distinction between the unjust evil of the republican agenda and the complaisant unjust evil of the DLC.

That's my problem.
Sel