How the DLC destroyed the Democratic party

[Suburbia]

The question remains this: Post-DLC, other than Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Hillary Clinton, who are the DLC's prominent members of today?

[tik 🪀✨]

The question remains this: Post-DLC, other than Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Hillary Clinton, who are the DLC's prominent members of today?

There aren't any because they've long since destroyed the Democratic Party.

[AggregateDemand]

DLC is the only reason the country is still standing. If they hadn't defeated the LBJ-progressives, Democratic Congress would have run the country aground in the 1980s. Furthermore, the Mountain West and Texas would never have turned solid Republican, if not for the hard left turn in the Democratic foreign policy regarding terrorism and nation-building.

The great failing of the DLC is healthcare, an issue they use to push the convoluted private-public hybrid systems like Obamacare and Hillarycare. The DLC are probably responsible for eliminating the $500B transfer from Medicare to Medicaid, and that's why I say Democrats are the reason we don't have single payer.

If you're the Democratic Party, you're attempting to dispel the allegations that the government is perpetually incompetent; therefore, should be dismantled. Left or right should be meaningless to them. If the government doesn't work, progressives and liberals lose. DLC was a half step in the right direction.

[SWE]

The question remains this: Post-DLC, other than Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Hillary Clinton, who are the DLC's prominent members of today?

There aren't very many prominent members of an organization that dissolved 3 years ago

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

This is an interesting thread to read going back.

Snowstalker, do you still think that West Virginia and Missouri will be back within reach of the Democrats in the future?  By the 2020s, no less?

[Antonio the Sixth]

what is this thread?

[TNF]

This thread reeks of liberal idealism.

The Democratic Party has never been the paragon of virtue that liberals pretend it was at some point or another during the heady days of the New Deal coalition. Even in those days, Roosevelt had strikers shot, interned the Japanese, arrested those opposed to the war effort, woefully underfunded the (paltry) welfare programs he was forced to established by an active an organized left-wing that included the Communists, the Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party and the CIO. Truman dropped the bomb on Japan not once but twice, started McCarthyism by purging the civil service of suspected reds and 'pinks' (read: gay men), once again utilized force against striking workers, and got the U.S. involved in a war for the defense of the Rhee dictatorship in Korea.  Kennedy almost got civilization wiped out in a pissing contest with the Soviet Union, started the conflict in Vietnam (and would have expanded it, had he lived), spied on MLK and dragged his feet on civil rights issues, and generally governed as a moderate Republican (for that period) in almost every respect.

Don't even get me started on Lyndon Johnson, the man responsible for America's means-tested, half-assed welfare state that humiliates the poor and denies aid to those who need it even to this day on a bunch of fundamentally middle class assumptions about what poverty is like. Lest we also forget Johnson napalming the hell out of Vietnam and escalating that stupid conflict until he destroyed the New Deal coalition entirely in the cauldron of war, race rioting, and general chaos.

tl;dr - The Democrats have never been good. Even when they were at arguably their best period (the New Deal years to the 1970s), they were still responsible for mass murder on an unprecedented scale, war crimes, all kinds of human rights violations, and of course, the absolute waste of money, lives, and resources that was the Cold War.

[Antonio the Sixth]

tl;dr - The Democrats have never been good.

tl;dr - The Democrats have never been absolutely perfect... which would be the only condition under which TNF could come to support a major political party instead of keeping ranting about the coming Revolution.

[Frodo]

Stupid thread -was the DLC responsible for the Republican landslides of 1972, 1984, and 1988?  

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Stupid thread -was the DLC responsible for the Republican landslides of 1972, 1984, and 1988?  

The Democrats retained the House in all 3 of those, and the Senate in both cases where they already it.

[TNF]

tl;dr - The Democrats have never been good.

tl;dr - The Democrats have never been absolutely perfect... which would be the only condition under which TNF could come to support a major political party instead of keeping ranting about the coming Revolution.

You're missing my point, which is unsurprising given your continued refusal to engage anything other than a caricature of what you assume are me views. The point of my post was to remind our liberal posters, who gush over how enlightened the Golden Years were and how great the Democratic Party was at that time, of the history they all too often minimize. I'd wager had a blue avatar posted the same thing you wouldn't waste your time berating them for not accepting the Democratic Party as the paragon of virtue you believe it to be (I'm sorry, that you, the "reasonable" one of us, believe was "good enough" all the while it vaporized two cities, engaged in three major armed conflicts that saw hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of other human beings killed, stood by as segregation went on unabated until it was finally forced to do something, etc, etc.) because you'd have the common sense to realize that a conservative is not going to like the Democratic Party no matter how it is sliced, given that the Democratic Party is a liberal party.

You (and the rest of the "reasonable" red avatar types) seem to go into convulsions whenever I, a socialist, argue that the Democratic Party is not worth supporting, all the while understanding and not engaging in stupid arguments with strawmen you've created in your minds when a conservative does the same. Why is it so hard to accept that a socialist would not support the Democrats? This is essentially the equivalent of wondering why a socialist (let's say in Britain) wouldn't support the LibDems.

If you can find a post where I "rant about the coming revolution," I'd like to see it. You know that statement has no basis in fact and/or are confusing me for Snowstalker. Your total lack of willingness to engage with an argument is yet more evidence that you have nothing to stand on, and I think to some extent you realize that, which is why you prefer to pick your fights with imaginary communists that rant about the revolution or some such nonsense.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Where's the argument I should engage with, exactly? Our disagreements aren't really rooted in ideology and policy preferences (well, not primarily - your stance on guns among others is quite nonsensical, but that's a minor issue). They're rooted in basic logic. You say that both parties suck and that therefore none of them is worth supporting. I point out that one is clearly worse than the other, and that therefore it still makes sense to support the latter. Politics is ALWAYS about picking the lesser evil. If you don't accept that, you're pretty naive and deluded. The length of your rants against the evil, EVIL Democrats doesn't change anything to it. If there is a credible third option, I'm interested in hearing what it is, because indeed it's not very clear to me what you're advocating. If it's not The Revolution^TM then what? You really think the Socialist Workers Party or the Workers' Socialist Party or whatever is gonna make an electoral breakthrough?

[Meursault]

The obvious solution is to re-cut the ideological cards once again.

If politics is, per Bismarck, the "art of the possible", then compromise is always inevitable. But the form that compromise takes need not always be cast in the same pattern.

The Left has been married to the notion of a beneficient government as guarantor of social justice since at least the Depression; at times they have seemed to prefer the welfare bureaucracy to the working class. But why? Is this inevitable?

There is another tradition available to draw on, that of direct action. And it can be as ready for realism as contemporary American liberalism/social democracy: sacrificing public sector unions for massively strengthened private ones; trading corporate tax breaks for co-operative tax exemptions; cutting welfare in favor of giving funds to charitable Worker Owned Enterprises.

We badly need an ideological realignment. The old Big Gubmint Left/Small Gubmint Right dichotomy is stale. And Socialism-From-Below is the way to go.

[Heimdal]

I think the greatest myth is how the DLC apparently saved the Democratic Party from the grip of Bolsheviks and Great Society liberals. The Democratic Party was on its way toward the right long before the DLC was founded in 1985. The speech President Kennedy was supposed to give in Dallas emphasized how many federal bureaucrats he had laid off. By 1975 the hottest thing a Democrat could talk about was how the private sector could solve problems better than the government and so forth.

With regards to the original question, it is obvious that the DLC didn’t destroy the Democratic Party. One can hardly say that a party holding the White House and the Senate is ruined. Of course it might not be as liberal or progressive as some people might. But as other people have mentioned, even the Democratic Party of Roosevelt and Truman had inbuilt features that was just as offensive to progressives.  In this respect the Democratic Party of old times was probably worse. The Democratic Party of today relies on compromise with neoliberals and Big Finance. The Democratic Party of the 1940s and 1950s relied on segregationists Southern Democrats.

[TNF]

Where's the argument I should engage with, exactly? Our disagreements aren't really rooted in ideology and policy preferences (well, not primarily - your stance on guns among others is quite nonsensical, but that's a minor issue). They're rooted in basic logic. You say that both parties suck and that therefore none of them is worth supporting. I point out that one is clearly worse than the other, and that therefore it still makes sense to support the latter. Politics is ALWAYS about picking the lesser evil. If you don't accept that, you're pretty naive and deluded. The length of your rants against the evil, EVIL Democrats doesn't change anything to it. If there is a credible third option, I'm interested in hearing what it is, because indeed it's not very clear to me what you're advocating. If it's not The Revolution^TM then what? You really think the Socialist Workers Party or the Workers' Socialist Party or whatever is gonna make an electoral breakthrough?

My position on guns is only "nonsensical" to you because you sincerely (and naively, I'd add) believe that working within "the system" is the only way to achieve much of anything, which is not something that I assume or hold fast to, given centuries of proof to the contrary. This is not to say that I believe that electoralism is pointless; if I believed that, I'd be an anarchist. I'm not an anarchist and I do believe that participating in elections is important if only to help establish a beachhead for a socialist future or use those offices for propaganda/agitation purposes. I'm just not naive enough to think that elections alone are the only way to change society.

Politics is only about choosing the lesser evil if you buy into the delusion that capitalism can be reformed and that one group of capitalist vampires are better than the other because they wave a rainbow flag or utilize affirmative action or whatever it is that keeps otherwise intelligent people supporting the parasites in the Democratic Party.

There is not, at this point, a strong third party capable of winning. But that doesn't mean that the development of one is impossible. The left has come close to establishing them in the past: the People's Party in the 1890s (before it's leaders endorsed your philosophy of "lesser evilism" and joined the Democrats), the Socialist Party in the 1910s (before it was destroyed by the state during World War I, that is, by a Democratic President), and attempts to form a labor party in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1990s (all of which were undone by your philosophy yet again). The point is that there is a yearning for and a possibility for a rebirth of electoral socialism in the states and I think that in the coming years that will definitely be recognized by everyone.

Your logic is that we on the left should support that which wants to exterminate us (the Democratic Party) because the Republicans are self-evidently worse. I don't think that's sound logic, and hasn't been historically, given that every attack upon the left has come from the "Good Cop" of the American political system. I don't think that any of the small socialist sects are going to win the Presidency or any of that anytime soon, nor do I think they should bother tying. The left has to win from the bottom up; it has to build an umbrella organization incorporating all left-wing elements, from the Greens to the Socialists to Socialist Alternative to PSL, etc, etc. Left unity is happening all over the place these days, from Greece to Spain to the UK to France, etc. There's no reason why it can't happen here. But it won't be worth a damn if it doesn't try and work with people directly, rather than indirectly by focusing on electing a bunch of people completely out of touch with them at the federal level. It has to start by rebuilding the union movement and taking over the factories, electing city councilors, school board members, mayors, etc.

It may not be as sexy or glamorous as winning the White House, but that can also come in time. I'd rather wait it out and build something respectable from the lowest levels first than throw away all my principles and scruples in hopes of winning the Presidency while a strong left-wing movement does not yet exist.

[windjammer]

TNF,
I have a question for you, and seriously this is serious. Why not simply voting for the Republican party? I mean, obviously this is the worst. But if people become poorer, inequalities grow, a socialist revolution would be more likely to happen, wouldn't it?

[TNF]

TNF,
I have a question for you, and seriously this is serious. Why not simply voting for the Republican party? I mean, obviously this is the worst. But if people become poorer, inequalities grow, a socialist revolution would be more likely to happen, wouldn't it?

Because simply voting for the GOP wouldn't produce a socialist revolution. Revolutions are not instantaneous events, they're events that one builds toward. You can't have a revolution without a movement of people behind it. Just voting GOP without engaging in effective movement building won't in and of itself produce a revolution.

[windjammer]

TNF,
I have a question for you, and seriously this is serious. Why not simply voting for the Republican party? I mean, obviously this is the worst. But if people become poorer, inequalities grow, a socialist revolution would be more likely to happen, wouldn't it?

Because simply voting for the GOP wouldn't produce a socialist revolution. Revolutions are not instantaneous events, they're events that one builds toward. You can't have a revolution without a movement of people behind it. Just voting GOP without engaging in effective movement building won't in and of itself produce a revolution.

Voting for the GOP doesn't mean you can't build a revolution, no? I mean, people would be more and more upset, and at the same time, the number of people who would like a socialist revolution would grow.
Since you believe the Democratic Party is a capitalist party, <hy not accelerating things?

[TNF]

TNF,
I have a question for you, and seriously this is serious. Why not simply voting for the Republican party? I mean, obviously this is the worst. But if people become poorer, inequalities grow, a socialist revolution would be more likely to happen, wouldn't it?

Because simply voting for the GOP wouldn't produce a socialist revolution. Revolutions are not instantaneous events, they're events that one builds toward. You can't have a revolution without a movement of people behind it. Just voting GOP without engaging in effective movement building won't in and of itself produce a revolution.

Voting for the GOP doesn't mean you can't build a revolution, no? I mean, people would be more and more upset, and at the same time, the number of people who would like a socialist revolution would grow.
Since you believe the Democratic Party is a capitalist party, <hy not accelerating things?

Because voting for the Republicans still means voting for the capitalists, which is a waste of time and effort. It would be much better for any potential movement organizers to target people who normally vote Republican and try to bring them into the fold than it would be to waste time voting for Republicans. I'd wager that a genuine socialist movement would be appealing to a lot of Republican voters, especially if that movement emphasizes things like co-operatives, co-op led re-industrialization, community involvement and the building of a strong civic culture, etc.

[windjammer]

TNF,
I have a question for you, and seriously this is serious. Why not simply voting for the Republican party? I mean, obviously this is the worst. But if people become poorer, inequalities grow, a socialist revolution would be more likely to happen, wouldn't it?

Because simply voting for the GOP wouldn't produce a socialist revolution. Revolutions are not instantaneous events, they're events that one builds toward. You can't have a revolution without a movement of people behind it. Just voting GOP without engaging in effective movement building won't in and of itself produce a revolution.

Voting for the GOP doesn't mean you can't build a revolution, no? I mean, people would be more and more upset, and at the same time, the number of people who would like a socialist revolution would grow.
Since you believe the Democratic Party is a capitalist party, <hy not accelerating things?

Because voting for the Republicans still means voting for the capitalists, which is a waste of time and effort. It would be much better for any potential movement organizers to target people who normally vote Republican and try to bring them into the fold than it would be to waste time voting for Republicans. I'd wager that a genuine socialist movement would be appealing to a lot of Republican voters, especially if that movement emphasizes things like co-operatives, co-op led re-industrialization, community involvement and the building of a strong civic culture, etc.

Are you serious??? The Republican Party is full of social conservative and fiscal conservative...

[Meursault]

Who are members of the working class. Progressivism is useful only insofar as it empowers workers.

[TNF]

Are you serious??? The Republican Party is full of social conservative and fiscal conservative...

Of course I'm serious. There are plenty of working class people who self-identify as Republicans for a variety of reasons, some founded in reality (a perception that the Democratic Party despises them and regards the lot of them as dunces) and some rooted in a false consciousness that sees the GOP as more in tune with their values and aspirations than the Democrats. Those voters could be won over to a program that emphasizes a socialism compatible with promoting individualism (emphasizing workers' ownership and worker self-directed enterprises), upholding community cohesion and promoting solidarity (and using social shame and/or social action to punish those who act in an anti-social manner, especially big capitalists which undermine social cohesion), and inspiring a sense of duty and obligation to one's fellow person.

There's a certain collectivism inherent in conservatism that could be used as a basis of arguing for socialism, rather than against it, and that could readily be appealing to working class conservatives. Any real socialist outfit in the U.S. is going to have to be a working class rainbow coalition, and so without appealing to working class whites (a good deal of whom vote Republican) it can't even begin to materialize as a real and effective opposition to the dominant ideology of identitarian politics, arguments about white privilege, social liberalism, etc.

[windjammer]

Are you serious??? The Republican Party is full of social conservative and fiscal conservative...

Of course I'm serious. There are plenty of working class people who self-identify as Republicans for a variety of reasons, some founded in reality (a perception that the Democratic Party despises them and regards the lot of them as dunces) and some rooted in a false consciousness that sees the GOP as more in tune with their values and aspirations than the Democrats. Those voters could be won over to a program that emphasizes a socialism compatible with promoting individualism (emphasizing workers' ownership and worker self-directed enterprises), upholding community cohesion and promoting solidarity (and using social shame and/or social action to punish those who act in an anti-social manner, especially big capitalists which undermine social cohesion), and inspiring a sense of duty and obligation to one's fellow person.

There's a certain collectivism inherent in conservatism that could be used as a basis of arguing for socialism, rather than against it, and that could readily be appealing to working class conservatives. Any real socialist outfit in the U.S. is going to have to be a working class rainbow coalition, and so without appealing to working class whites (a good deal of whom vote Republican) it can't even begin to materialize as a real and effective opposition to the dominant ideology of identitarian politics, arguments about white privilege, social liberalism, etc.

Hmmmm, so globally William Jenning Bryan???

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Are you serious??? The Republican Party is full of social conservative and fiscal conservative...

The Republican party has very few fiscal conservatives.  It has plenty who abuse the language of fiscal conservatism to justify providing inadequate resources to deal with governmental responsibilities, but a true fiscal conservative would not refuse to consider tax increases as part of a package to bring the long-term budget back into whack.

[TNF]

Well I certainly wouldn't advocate incorporating social conservatism (or traditionalism, which I think is a better term to describe it) into such a movement per se, but it would definitely be better, IMO, to skip all the potential means those in power have of dividing such a movement by adopting a "live and let live" attitude on the issues which could potential rend that coalition apart. Focus on the class struggle first and foremost, settle the other disputes within the movement after the class struggle has been won.