"Behind the DLC Takeover" Nichols. From 2000. Shows their power.

[madfloridian]

The other articles were from other sources, and different years. This is from 2000...

http://www.progressive.org/nich1000.htm

SNIP..."At the national convention of a major political party, an ideologically rigid sectarian clique secures the ultimate triumph. It inserts two of its own as nominees for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. Heavily financed by the most powerful corporations in the world, the group's leaders gather in a private club fifty-four floors above the convention hall, apart from the delegates of the party they had infiltrated. There, they carefully monitor the convention's acceptance of a platform the organization had drafted almost in its entirety. Then, with the ticket secured and with the policy course of the party set, they introduce a team of 100 shock troops to deploy across the country to lock up the party's grassroots."

SNIP..."Founded in the mid-1980s with essentially the same purpose as the Christian Coalition--to pull a broad political party dramatically to the right--the DLC has been far more successful than its headline-grabbing Republican counterpart. After Walter Mondale's 1984 defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, a group of mostly Southern, conservative Democrats hatched the theory that their party was in trouble because it had grown too sympathetic to the agendas of organized labor, feminists, African Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, peace activists, and egalitarians.

And they found willing corporate allies, in corporate America, who provided the money needed to make a theory appear to be a movement. In the ensuing fifteen years, the DLC's impact on the American political debate has been dramatic. The group now controls much of the upper-level apparatus of the Democratic Party.

They have only supported business-friendly candidates
SNIP..."Powered by generous contributions from groups such as Americans for Free International Trade and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the New Democrat Network intervenes on behalf of business-friendly Democratic Congressional candidates in primary and general elections. The group already has more than sixty members in the House Democratic Caucus, and it hopes to push that figure to eighty after November's election--a goal that will be advanced with a budget expected to exceed $5 million....." (in 2000)

And a quote from Jim Hightower in the article:
"With the DLC in a position to influence the Democratic Party, Wall Street wins either way," says populist Jim Hightower, who has abandoned his lifelong loyalty to the Democratic Party this year in order to back Nader's candidacy. "If the Republicans win, the corporations have a party in power that will do their bidding. And if the Democrats win, Wall Street knows the DLC will keep them in line."END SNIP...

[Zhade]

1. The DLC keeps screwing us all. They should be removed from power.

Hence, :dem:

[lancdem]

4. What power do they have?

Did they tell Kerry to hire Bob Shrum, who's never won a presidential election in his life? Did they tell him not to respond to the Swift Boaters until it was too late?

[lancdem]

2. The Repukes are the enemy, not the DLC

Kerry was one of the most liberal members of the Senate, and he got the nomination. How does this illustrate the influence of the DLC? Lieberman was the biggest DLCer running, and he went nowhere.

[madfloridian]

3. Ok.

Whatever you say.

[lancdem]

6. I just want people to keep their eyes on the ball

I think all this anti-DLC stuff is a waste of time and energy. What's the point? The only time they had any real influence was when Clinton was president.

[madfloridian]

7. Oh, the power is there.

You do you think labeled Howard Dean as a lefty freak type. They did it. He was one of them when he was governor, but he spoke out against them.

Gore spoke out as well, they went after him. Told him to stop his populist message.

[lancdem]

11. Gore won in 2000, but I still think he ran a dumb campaign

for a number of reasons having nothing to do with populism. Dean is a great Democrat who did a lot for the party (and still will, I'm sure), but if his candidacy were strong enough, he would've been able to overcome such attacks. That's part of the game.

[madfloridian]

16. They play the game by corporate rules.

They are powerful, and we matter to them not at all.

[DireStrike]

5. The DLC is the reason we don't have MORE liberals in power.

Kerry may have been one of the most liberal people in senate, but he's still pretty far to the right.

[lancdem]

9. Huh?

Kerry "pretty far to the right"? Did you ever bother checking his voting record? And no, I mean his whole record, not just the IWR vote.

BTW, I didn't realize the DLC kept liberals out of the Senate. I thought it was because liberal candidates couldn't win in the red states. Silly me.

[punpirate]

15. Kerry is a charter member of...

... the DLC, and is mentioned by the DLC as one of its 20 Senate New Democrats. Lieberman was only one of four DLCers running in the 2004 primaries--Edwards, Graham, Lieberman and Kerry.

[DinahMoeHum]

8. The DLC plans only worked in 1992/1996 because of Bill Clinton.

they haven't worked for anyone else except for Bill Clinton.

And sorry, Hillary doesn't count here. She's not a Southerner.

The DLC/DNC axis needs to acknowledge mistakes or get run over by the progressive wing.

Check out this manifesto: The November 3 Theses:
Link:
http://www.3nov.com/theses.html

:kick:

[fujiyama]

19. You're absolutely right

The DLC tried to claim a lot of credit for Clinton's wins, but Clinton won because he was Clinton.

The DLC is meaningless and soon even K Street won't give a shit for them because the Democratic party has so little influence in Washington anyways.

[Beacho]

10. I'm tired of being told to sit in the back of the bus

Let the DLC chase the mythical 'moderate middle', which is neither moderate, nor the middle.


DLC might as well become the *koff* moderate wing of the repukes, which is what it is in all but name.

[lancdem]

12. And Kerry was the DLC's first choice?

Hardly.

[Larkspur]

13. Kerry/Edwards ticket was touted right after Gore bowed out

The DLC favored Kerry. Individual DLC barons may have favored others, like Al From hawking for Lieberman, but the general DLC consensus was Kerry/Edwards. Dean broke onto the scene unexpectedly in March and nearly ruined their hold on power.

[Cheswick2.0]

22. oh just stop please

It doesn't matter if Kerry was their first or fifth choice. What matters is that he bent over backwards to get their approval. He got it and when he didn't win it all their little syncophants come here saying it was because he was too liberal.
The DLC is powerful not matter how many times one of you tries to pretend it isn't so. The article discribes them perfectly.

[Beacho]

14. Actually Kerry was the first choice

He was the 'establishment' candidate and then Dean scared the bejeesus out of the poobahs at the DLC, when Kerry was getting beaten.

They pulled in all their markers to make Iowa happen

[bobbyboucher]

17. The DLC will leave the Democratic Party in ruins, no doubt.

How do I know this? Mostly because they are about to drive me and a great number of others either toward Green Party building, or withdrawal in disgust.

Just take a look at what has happened to the amount of control that the Democrats have had since they came into the fray? We have been steadily marginalized and now are completely in the minority and staring at fascism. They have changed the Democratic Party from the opposition party to the acquiesce party.

Hey DLC, GO FUCK YOURSELVES.

[Ken Burch]

18. I just want the DLC to Leave the Democratic Party, period.

If Kerry wasn't the DLC's first choice(their first choice was arguably Lieberman)he was always the close second.

The 2004 Democratic Convention was run on strict DLC guidelines, with progressives and activists silenced(and in some cases physically kept miles away in the Orwellian-named "free speech zone")and big donors getting to run the show from luxury boxes over the convention floor
(...I mean, Jesus, LUXURY BOXES? this was supposed to be a convention, not a pro sports event).

The DLC script was followed throughout the fall, when the party refused to give the millions of progressives and activists working their asses off around the country any ammunition with which to fight back against the Naderites, while at the same time the Kerry campaign effectively goaded Nader into staying in the race with their obsessive legal efforts to drive him off the ballots.

We did it the DLC's way, and the responsibility for the defeat is theirs. Since they showed, by their actions, that they always effectively wanted Bush reelected, we should congratulate them on their success as we kick their Dixiecrat asses out the door.

The only hope we have is to become a true grass roots "People's Party" once again. No more big donors, no more "party professionals"
(how professional are you if you couldn't get your guy elected, anyway?) It's time to shake things up and kick out the jams!

Resistance has to start today, and we need to be the lead recruiters for the people's army that will be needed to stop this regime.

2002 and 2004 prove, once and for all, that bland centrism equals defeat.

[Julien Sorel]

20. The DLC "hijacked" the party. Except...

And, with virtually no debate, the convention endorsed a platform that, on the vast majority of issues, deviated radically from the views of most party members. According to a New York Times survey of convention delegates, traditional liberalism remained the most popular ideological stance. Trade union members made up a quarter of the delegates, and people of color were better represented than at any major party gathering in the nation's history.

Unfortunately, this is less than honest, as surveys have consistently shown that DNC delegates are more liberal than the average Democrat. So the writer plays a little sleight of hand (His integrity is disposable: after all, he is out to save the world from the clutches of the DLC, and if he has to lie to do it...), and "the convention," which the writer implies, but never proves, is actually DLCers in smoke filled back rooms, jams the platform down the throats of the delegates.

Ah well. If you can sit, slack-jawed, through a Dean speech thinking he's the greatest orator since MLK, it is hardly fair to blame you for uncritically reading this tripe and believing every word.

[madfloridian]

21. Strong advocates for NAFTA and WTO and fast track authority.

SNIP..."The DLC got so excited about putting expansion of NAFTA on fast track in 1997 that it hired lobbyists and aired its first-ever television ad campaign, a $200,000 initiative that urged viewers to tell Congress to hand over trade negotiating authority to the President. Congress said "no" then, but the position resurfaces as a plank in this year's platform.

The PPI shares offices with them.
SNIP..."The Progressive Policy Institute is head cheerleader for the World Trade Organization (WTO). The institute issues papers with such titles as "The Progressive Case for a New WTO Round." And it was in the forefront of efforts to discredit critics of corporate-designed trade liberalization. An institute briefing paper penned by Jenny Bates condemned the rhetoric employed by WTO critics, arguing that "the approach being adopted by many of these groups goes beyond reasoned criticism and enters the realm of vitriolic hyperbole, not employed with such passion since the activism of the 1960s."

[janx]

23. Who pays these guys? Where do they get their money?

?

[madfloridian]

24. Here is something about their funding.

SNIP..."Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader, whom the DLC dismisses as "a cranky peddler of corporate conspiracy theories," says publicly what many veteran Democrats admit privately. "You had Al From and the DLC and the corporate lobbyists running the Democratic Party convention this year, picking the candidates, writing the platform, just as they'll run things in the fall and after November if they're given a chance," says the consumer activist. "Even if Al Gore wanted to do the right thing, which I do not suggest that he does, he would be told by the DLC and its corporate contributors, 'We're sorry, that's not in the script.' "

Those corporate contributors--whose names fill the lists of givers to the DLC and a closely linked political arm, the New Democrat Network--include Bank One, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, the Health Insurance Corporation of America, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, Occidental Petroleum, Raytheon, and much of the rest of the Fortune 500."

I know a party needs funding, and I know the corporations can give more, but when it gets out of hand....then congress does not need the people, does not need to listen to them.