Beltway Democrats Sink Dean For America: The Fall of Howard Dean by Joshua Frank

[Demeter]

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/11/beltway-democrats-sink-dean-for-america/



... Howard Dean was a candidate from the Democratic mainstream. But, despite his ideological alignment with the New Democrats, he did take them on, hoping to disrupt their power-hold on Democratic politics. Dean was empowered. Not because he had a passion for progressive ideals, but because his followers led him down an alternative path. They saw Dean as a chance to challenge the Democrats for their centrist propensities. For that, Dean must be thankful, for the Deaniacs made him a substantial risk.

Howard Dean’s campaign first took on water after Al Gore endorsed Dean for president on December 9, 2003. Hailed by many in the mainstream press as a huge boost to Dean’s bid, the endorsement came at the same exact moment Democratic insiders were meeting to discuss how to sink his advances. For they knew he was a potential threat to the Clinton Democrats.

Theories of why Gore endorsed Dean spread like fire through the media. As political commentator Adam Nagourney told Gwen Ifill on PBS’s Newshour on the day of the endorsement: “One is that what is going on here is a proxy war between the Clintons and the Gores over the future of the Democratic Party. I think there is an element of truth to that. I don’t think we want to exaggerate that.”

He was right. The war had begun. Verbal bombs dropped—with one target in sight: the future of the Democratic Party. Dean was out for DNC blood, and Gore gladly went along for the ride. “Howard Dean was assassinated in broad daylight. Unlike Kennedy’s ‘grassy knoll,’ Dean’s killers are not hiding—it was the Democratic Party itself, and more specifically the Democratic Leadership Council, that successfully went after, and sabotaged his candidacy … The DLC reacted with fury to … going all out to torpedo his momentum,” Naeem Mohaiemen correctly opined on Alternet.org following Dean’s presidential death. “Although Democratic nominees soon piled on the ‘bash-Dean’ bandwagon, earlier attacks were carried out by DLC operatives. There was even the smell of scandal when two top Democratic candidates were found sharing information about Dean in an attempt to slow him down.”

[Cha]

1. Yeah, the dlc are

corporateA$$holes using the guise of "dem" to get what they want.

And Dean is still standing.

[yurbud]

9. A must read on the DLC for those who haven't heard of it:

This makes it pretty easy to interpret everything these guys say and do.

The only thing this doesn't make clear is these parasites DON'T care about winning as much as being faithful to their corporate masters.

Though the DLC offers a nominal $50 membership to anyone interested, its mass base is minuscule. "There's a New Democrat audience of about 5,000 to 10,000 people who get our stuff on a regular basis," says Matthew Frankel, the DLC's spokesman. And with a nonexistent grass-roots presence, the DLC is generally unknown except to practitioners of "inside baseball" politics. Yet the affiliation of scores of members of Congress has enabled the DLC to establish alliances with Fortune 500 corporate supporters, particularly along the so-called K Street corridor of Washington-based lobbyists and in high-tech enclaves such as California's Silicon Valley.

***

While the DLC will not formally disclose its sources of contributions and dues, the full array of its corporate supporters is contained in the program from its annual fall dinner last October, a gala salute to Lieberman that was held at the National Building Museum in Washington. Five tiers of donors are evident: the Board of Advisers, the Policy Roundtable, the Executive Council, the Board of Trustees, and an ad hoc group called the Event Committee--and companies are placed in each tier depending on the size of their check. For $5,000, 180 companies, lobbying firms, and individuals found themselves on the DLC's board of advisers, including British Petroleum, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Coca-Cola, Dell, Eli Lilly, Federal Express, Glaxo Wellcome, Intel, Motorola, U.S. Tobacco, Union Carbide, and Xerox, along with trade associations ranging from the American Association of Health Plans to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. For $10,000, another 85 corporations signed on as the DLC's policy roundtable, including AOL, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Citigroup, Dow, GE, IBM, Oracle, UBS PacifiCare, PaineWebber, Pfizer, Pharmacia and Upjohn, and TRW.

And for $25,000, 28 giant companies found their way onto the DLC's executive council, including Aetna, AT&T, American Airlines, AIG, BellSouth, Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications. Few, if any, of these corporations would be seen as leaning Democratic, of course, but here and there are some real surprises. One member of the DLC's executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively--meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.

***

After his populist turn, Gore surged in the polls in August and early September, and many analysts credited his fiery attacks on pharmaceutical companies, HMOs and health insurers, Big Oil, and George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich. "When I came on in July, Gore was already beginning to move in a populist direction," says Stan Greenberg, Gore's pollster for the last few months of the campaign. Brought in to replace Mark Penn, the chief pollster for both Clinton and the DLC, Greenberg helped move Gore to the left, targeting the candidate's message to recapture white working-class voters in the $30,000-to-$50,000 income range. On the ground, the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and other components of the Old Democrats' traditional voter base--organized labor, African Americans, Hispanics, abortion rights activists--conducted intensive voter education and the get-out-the-vote drives, and these groups now take credit for delivering Gore's popular vote victory.

But the DLC is having none of it. While acknowledging the importance of the old Democratic Party base, after the election Al From blasted Gore for alienating upscale "wired workers" in the new economy, the swing voters in comfortable suburbs who, he says, were turned off by Gore's populist message. In a special issue of Blueprint entitled "Why Gore Lost," From issued a scathing broadside against his former New Democratic ally. "By emphasizing class warfare," wrote From, "he seemed to be talking to Industrial Age America, not Information Age America."

http://web.archive.org/web/20010502041458/http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/7/dreyfuss-r.html|FULL TEXT>

[Fovea]

2. And the war continues.

With skin in the game for the third way/new dem/DLC crowd.
I see the aura of invincibility starting to fade.
Gore has taken the effort to a meta level, and even so,
the third way is looking pretty tired out there.

[yurbud]

8. the irony is that the New Deal consensus WAS a ''third way.'' DLC is really 1.000001 way

with difference from the GOP solely on boutique issues like gay rights and abortion that don't touch the core economic agenda of their corporate masters.

[Vincardog]

3. Did Dean hurt himself? Should I send a card? FUCK DLC propagandists.

[pansypoo53219]

4. the teevee gnews helped as well

dean shoulda kept mum on breaking media monopolies til he was elected.

[Larkspur]

5. Joshua Frank hates Dean

Read his piece with with that in mind.

[madfloridian]

7. Joshua Frank despises Dean.

I am cautious reading his stuff.

[FREEWILL56]

6. K&R because this is important to see imho.

If the corporatists (nicer word for fascists) are allowed to control the Democratic party then the 2 party system is officially dead as it would now be a 1 party system, but only from different neighborhoods.

[paulk]

10. joshua frank is a complete fucking idiot

he's nothing but a right wing water boy -

he's gone after every Dem there is at one time or another

be warned....