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No mercy

By Owen Paine on Monday September 18, 2006 11:16 PM

Max Sawicky tries a grapple with the DLC legacy, in connection with the recently-made-public IRS decision to revoke their tax-exempt status:
Some are crowing about this IRS decision.... Any monkey wrench into a major Dem group, merits aside, helps the other side....
In the comments he gets batted around some and fights back valiantly. There's even some guy there who writes a lot like me.

Still. By '08 we'll have had 16 years of DLC hegemony -- 8 years of DLC White House power that only gave the profit-max machine time to take over Congress and consolidate itself, before the present potlatch. You really think the party of FDR and ER can mobilize anything this way with these pragmatics in the lead float?

Pragmatics, Max, is for using power, not winning it -- not if social reform is your mission, anyway. Now if your mission is rotation in office and a change of foliage, well, fine.

These DLC bastards are poison. They need to be forced upstairs to the party attic, with the high-school yearbooks and the post cards from aunt Bonnie. Hell, they're even reproducing themselves. They have spawn -- look at the Kos borg: it's just just an eerie, nerdy, downmarket virtual-cult version of the DLC.

Winning is the key. Pragmatism the way. Kos: the DLC in scout shorts.

Comments (5)

J. Alva Scruggs:

The sides argument cuts a number of ways. The DLC itself undermined the clear cut sides argument by pointing out how much Republicans loved their policies. The frequency with which both sides take sides, together, against the best interests of the country as a whole undermines it further. They've made some mighty disingenuous claims about not fully comprehending the Bush administration's policies. Please. Kerry his own fool self lead an invesitgation into the Iran/Contra retreads trying to pass themselves off as statesmen. They were a known quantity coming in and their agenda abundantly clear. The DLC led the stampede to support it.

And surely there's some room in this -- some obvious room -- for a determination based on class. The DLC is an elite that follows a defector strategy, against their own kind, purely for self-aggrandizement with no reciprocity outside their claque and for the least pragmatic of all goals, a steady stream of defeats undermining their power base. They've made it work by threatening to wreck the party. They're the worst of a bad lot; they give the greater evil overwhelming cover. So how does a blow against them, which is really more of a gnat bite, benefit the greater evil? At best, it gives them some talking point credibility with the people whose lives revolve around loathing the Clintons. If anything here, this is a favor to the Democratic Party itself.

This gnat bite, if it stands, will cost them a few million dollars, tops, out of many more and which their donors can easily cover.

You can't argue with anyone who still insists there's an "Other side." Hell, Bill Clinton spent the aftermath of Katrina practically French-kissing Papa Doc Bush on national TV, but still these buffoons cling to the idea that there's an "Other side."

I'm tired, Boys. I'm so fucking tired.

Dan Raphael:

Well, of course, every "progressive" Dem from the prowar Howard Dean to the PATRIOT Act-endorsing rest of them, would agree that the DLC is bad news. A good example of the fractured analysis you get--when not being serenaded with yet another chorus of "be realistic--vote for the better death!"--is this peace at CommonDreams by David Sirota: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0917-31.htm .

He comes perilously close to admitting to himself and then to others, that the Dems are worthless, spineless, unprincipled, and corrupt. What he does, to avoid this unacceptable epiphany, is to hurriedly note there are others (meaning, not too many, and definitely a minority) who are in ways not named by him, sincere and honest people.

Maybe so. But you know, sincere and honest people operating in an insincere and thoroughly duplicitous political party, must themselves become corrupt in order to have the influence that self-proclaimed progressive Dems say they need in order to change the party.

It all stems from a basic misunderstanding of what the "Democratic" Party is. Rather than being an imperfect but accessible instrument of the people's will, it is a maze designed to keep the people's will out, while ensuring that the center of the maze is always occupied by the dollar. Talk of reforming the Dem Party makes as much sense as "reforming" the Mafia--the institution does not exist to do anything other than hurt the people, by way of transferring the labor of our lives over to those who already have power and wealth in abundance.

Figure it out.

Brian Miller:

I'm multi-posting, I know...but the hope of the Democratic Party and "the Left" is to support candidates like Representative Ford, who hates Gays, loves the Iraq War, loves the Bankruptcy Bill, wants plenty of school prayer, and loves his fetus-American constituents. I'm inspired. Heck, Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein are indeed too liberal (hack...gag...hack). We need a good ol fashioned Evangelical!

js paine:

dan R

u write :

"It all stems from a basic misunderstanding of what the "Democratic" Party is. Rather than being an imperfect but accessible instrument of the people's will, it is a maze designed to keep the people's will out while ensuring that the center of the maze is always occupied by the dollar."

that sure does capture operational
result

but not the structure
at the national party level
which is what may kead to
you going tooo far with your next line

"Talk of reforming the Dem Party
makes as much sense as "reforming" the Mafia"
--the institution does not exist
to do anything other than hurt the people..."

and why is that off track ???

because this institution is not a
single structure with a top down design
nor a single control tower

its more like a slime with a network
of interconnected lumps

and right now and for many years back
(to say 1977)
the core controlingthe whole
sprawling mess
are
lumps( more or less loosely
interconnected)
that push
a new democratic /neo liberal
program

its prolly much like
the structure of k street
a n infestation
of like parasites
passing themselves off as a symbiote

but this party network core
has no cast iron unified characteristics
like a maze
it can be broken up
because it can be posed
lump against lump

and whats more after the core brakes up
the operational
program can be changed

yes reform of these badgers is impossible
but they can be over thrown

will it be anytime soon ????

soon as in b4 the 08 prez run


i doubt it .. more and more every day

but then
is this core's overthrow necessary
for social progress ????

who knows

perhaps all we ned do is blow it up

but over throw is not impossible
even by 08

there is precedent for a radical over throw
in 1896 the gold dems entrenched at the party helm for 22 years
were over thrown totally
they even left the party in a huff
for a few years
and only made one come back in 04
only to be submerged again

and the over throwers didn't
even need to win
in fact they lost 3 prez elections themselves

but there's over throws
that do get reversed too
like in 1972
the insurgents held power for about 6 months
but the damage that over throw did
to the regular core
effectively
spelled the end to that old regular core
they restored themselves much like the bourbons but not for long or for real
nope
instead the party was taken over incrementally
by the same hodge podge
push me -pull me monstrosity
we still face today


at any rate its clear to me what has to be
done
attack the party's left flank
if possible destroy it

hack away at the so called
real progressives inside the party today

bust up the prog caucus
vow to expose them and defeat them in 08
with a wave of real outside progs

shoow their supporters
the farce and humiliation
these clowns live with

yes
battered prog syndrome

behold
the merciless neglect
and episodic battering
their ilk take at the hands of the lib-prags
notice the obvious corporate plants
inside their caucus
hell
tom lantos is no more a progressive
then
ollie north
anyway
u get it
the targettheme for the ridicule blitz :

"battering big donk bastard liberals and the progs who love them"

force those progs to show they're real progs force em to jump ship
to denounce and refuse to caucus
with the common sense get along lib-prag hags

if they don't their impostures
expose em

like those ny/nj
carpet baggers barney and bernie
the sugar plum twins
of progressive fraud

its the correct road now
for those
still big party focused
but who are pushing pro job holder change here


as to
where that road leads ...well we'll see

if u wanna play it safe
forget em
go local

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