DLC-"We like Being in the Minority Party"

Clinton's New Job: Defining the Center
• Party moderates pick the New York senator to draft a plan to craft the Democrats' agenda.

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of influential party moderates, on Monday named Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to direct a new initiative to define a party agenda for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton — once considered a champion of the party's left — with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion.
-This is the final straw for me supporting Hillary Clinton in the primaries. She’s thrown in with the DLC. I’m a yellow dog democrat, not a blue dog.

"Now, I know the DLC has taken some shots from some within our party, and that it has returned fire too," she told the gathering in Columbus. "Well, I think it's high time for a cease-fire — time for all Democrats to work together based on the fundamental values we all share."
The DLC helped formulate key "New Democrat" ideas for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, such as welfare reform and national service. Clinton was the group's chairman from 1990 through 1991 and brought many figures involved with it into his two administrations.

Since Clinton left office, a broad array of liberal activists, many of them clustered around left-leaning websites such as the Daily Kos, have accused the DLC of weakening the party by advocating positions they say have blurred distinctions with the GOP. These include support for the Iraq war and free-trade policies.

David Sirota, a Democratic consultant who has his own liberal Web log, responded to news of the "American Dream Initiative" by warning that Democrats would be doomed to "permanent minority status" if they followed the DLC direction.
-Sirota is right. DLC strategy is all about triangulation. Remember, Clinton never won a majority. He always had crazy Ross Perot to split the vote. Clinton based his elections on his own charisma and never helped build up the party infrastructure. Party infrastructure for Clinton was having rich people stay in the Lincoln bedroom. Howard Dean is building party infrastructure, with little help from the DLC.
"The fact is, the Democratic Party has to make a choice: Is it going to continue to follow the DLC, be a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America, and lose elections for the infinite future," he wrote in an e-mail. "Or is it going to go back to its roots of really representing the middle class and standing up for ordinary people's economic rights?"
-DLC means Dick Licking Corporatists. Stopping selling your soul for corporate donations.
All this suggests strains could develop between Clinton's desire, as a potential 2008 contender, to write a plan popular with as wide an array of Democrats as possible and the DLC's hope of crafting a sharply focused, centrist political roadmap.
-Sharply focused centrist is an oxymoron. Centrist means you don’t really believe in anything. After 8 years of Bush’s right wing policies, do you really think being a centrist is what America needs. As republicans keep going right why does the DLC keep chasing after them? I guess because the DLC doesn’t believe in Democratic principles.