I am hearing that abortion and immigration are two of the issues that are holding up the vote on health care reform. They shouldn't be, they should be topics on which Democrats have firm stands. Yet now we hear about 40 House Democrats who want abortion payments stopped even in private insurance plans.
And I remember when
Rahm Emanuel warned the DCCC's candidates against progressive immigration reform.The candidates that were picked to run by the DCCC were very controlled about how to handle the issues. They were subjected to Rahm's view of the immigration issue, that the Democrats could not win unless they turned to the right.
From 2008
"Two weeks ago he sent a DCCC-connected candidate training a video of himself haranguing congressional candidates to “move right” on immigration or risk defeat at the hands of Republicans. This is similar to the terrible advice he shoved down candidates’ throats last year, although then he was demanding they move to the right on Iraq, dooming the candidacies of Lois Murphy, Francine Busby, Ken Lucas, Tammy Duckworth, Diane Farrell and several others who went along with his demands. Yesterday Markos asked a blaring question at DailyKos: Is Rahm racist, or merely scared?. While walking the picket line at the WGA strike at Fox today Jane and I came up with the idea of inviting Emanuel over to FDL to ask him why he thinks adopting Tom Tancredo’s immigration ideas is a good idea and why he’s unleashed Heath Shuler to do just that."
Two issues that should be clear cut under a Democratic administration, yet they are not defined at all clearly.
There is more:
I remember what Steny Hoyer said last year when the FISA bill was passed. This one part stood out at me.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) called the House bill a “capitulation.” Firedoglake.com blogger Jane Hamsher — delivering the lowest possible blow from the liberal blogosphere — declared Hoyer “the new Joe Lieberman.”
Hoyer knew it was coming, and he persevered anyway. That he did so speaks volumes about who he is: a master of cloakroom politics who can use his friendships across the aisle to strike deals, even if others demand that his party hew closer to the positions that put it in power in 2006.
In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party — one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens. How Hoyer got the deal doneRemember all the activism, the phone calls, the emails to discourage the retroactive immunity of the telecoms? In the end it came down to one sentence from Hoyer:
that in the end we "neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November."I remember in June when the Washington Post's Dan Balz quoted some words from AL From, the founder of the Democratic Leadership Forum, a think tank which controls the Democratic Party's policies.
"One of the important things we had to do in 1992 was remove the obstacles that kept people from voting Democratic in the first place," he said.
That included addressing issues of welfare, fiscal discipline and crime. "As long as people thought we were going to take money form people who worked and give it to people who didn't work, they didn't want to listen to anything else," he added. "The Republicans have to make people understand that they're not just a right-wing, southern party."
During its formative years, the DLC was seen as an organization dominated by southern Democrats who were disaffected from the direction of the national party. The group was sharply criticized by liberal Democrats. Jesse Jackson, who took the DLC's critique of the party personally, dubbed them "Democrats for the Leisure Class."
Critics believed the DLC catered too much to the business community, was overly hostile to organized labor (though there was a later thawing in that relationship) and for what they claimed was an effort to force the party to turn its back on minorities in favor of the white middle class.
What Republicans Can Learn from the DLC When you remove all obstacles that keep people from voting Democratic....you stand for nothing at all. You don't stand up for women's rights, you don't stand up for the rights of gays, you simply act wimpy on issues.
Actually that was the goal of the DLC in the first place according to one of the founders, Simon Rosenberg.
Freed from taking positions that might make it hard to win."Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."
If you marginalize the progressive voices of your party, you might pay a dear price for that later.
There's a lot of money pouring in from other sources right now, all seems well to those inside the DC bubble.
But our party will have to take some firm stands. We will need to stand up and speak out loudly and clearly, and not in that weak little wimpy DLC voice the leadership used for years.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
