In a lot of ways, the Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way are like the DLC. In election years, the DLC advises Democratic candidates to move to the right, and when the discord is noticed between their progressive record and their newly conservative rhetoric, they lose. Sometimes the candidates wise up, as Al Gore did, and go back to what has worked for them in the past - Gore won the popular vote. But sometimes they allow the DLC to twist them into knots, becoming pretzel like figures of nothingness that lose presidential elections - like John Kerry.
But no matter what happens you can be sure the DLC will be there the day after the election saying “you didn’t listen to us hard enough”. The DLC, though I may agree with some of their positions, has exactly one presidential victory to their credit - he also happens to have been the most accomplished political animal of all time, President Clinton. But those losses are never the fault of the DLC, they escape all culpability in their quest to make Democrats sound just like Republicans.
Which brings us to the Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way. Unlike other progressive groups, they don’t exactly have full plates. Their area of alleged expertise is the courts, specifically the Supreme Court, and their function is - at least in theory - to help the left provide a coherent counterargument to right wing nominations. You don’t have to listen to me, you simply have to ask Associate Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts about the bangup job these groups did.
But like the DLC, they are blameless.
Nan Aron of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said her coalition, while effective, was ultimately no match for a divided Democratic caucus that so far has failed to focus on the court. “Progressives marshaled resources and energies and members from around the country for this fight. But until the Democratic Party itself makes the court a priority, this will continue to be an uphill battle. Republicans have always been unified around an effort to transform the courts in a radical direction. Democrats have not yet engaged in a similar movement,” Aron told “PolitiScope.”
I’m all about tongue lashing the Dems for not being ready for the game, but you guys are the ones who we’ve been expecting to write the dang playbook - and you simply forfeited.
PFAW’s president, Ralph Neas, noted that the Senate’s 58-42 vote confirming Alito was the second-closest margin a Supreme Court justice has faced (the first — Clarence Thomas in 1991, when Democrats ran the Senate).
Well, wow golly. Do you want a cookie? Do these guys understand that the day after the Superbowl, all the big endorsement deals don’t go to the runner-up?
Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way need to have severe beatings with the cluestick. They are playing a 21st century game with a 19th century mindset and are getting outplayed.
Hmm. DLC backs Clinton = two presidencies. Further left groups back Gore and Kerry = zero presidencies.
Indeed, get out your stick and beat the DLC too.
Dugger
” I will raise your taxes didn t exactly work ”
No, honest talk with the voting public didn’t work because the RNC
noise machine utilizes the verbatim ‘lie’ so expertly. They are
proficient prevaricators.
However, “Read my lips…no new taxes!” worked just fine. The Dems–and the press–didn’t bother with the hard questions then, and they still refuse to ask them today.
“but according to the right Bill Clinton was essentially a communist, heck - anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman - including Joe Lieberman is basically a communist. ‘
No overstatement there. Nosiree!
Dugger, Who Still Believes ‘beloved’ Buddy was a Maoist Mutt
The DLC was a strong backer of Kerry and Gore, especially Kerry who they wanted as the candidate versus the “far left” Howard Dean. But don’t let the facts get in the way. As I stated above, I’m certain the victory of Bill Clinton was more due to Bill Clinton than the DLC. And I would certainly agree that a moderate is the best pick to be the leader of the Dems, but according to the right Bill Clinton was essentially a communist, heck - anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman - including Joe Lieberman is basically a communist.
Really?
Dugger, since I was a conservative during the clinton administrations I listened religiously to rightwing radio at the time (and continued to until about a 2 years ago). One of the impressions I got from all of this listening was that Clinton was a radical liberal. He was constantly painted as a draft-dodging, pot smoking, long haired socialist. That word, socialist, is burned in my memories of those years. I’m sure you remember how they treated bill and hilary during the short-lived era of socialized medicine. He was portrayed as so morally permissive that most wingers bought hook line and sinker that he was running drugs and killing vince foster. Just look at how the media paints hilary nowadays, saying she’s “moving to the center” for the presidential race, while she is hasn’t changed her positions in years. She may be mealymouthed, but she’s no radical. As Mike Malloy put it, Clinton was the best republican president we’ve ever had, and if every republican were like him, I’d be happy.
So I’m not sure what you added to this discussion with your pissy little “No overstatement there”. Do you just feel the need to say anything we know you’re there. Overstatement is the bread and butter of blogging, but OW’s portrayal of winger sentiment over the clintons is not all that exaggerated.
Jim Kunstler has an interesting story to tell about ‘legitimacy’.
A simple message which fits the sound ‘byte’ style
of modern electoral hijinks.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
Wasn’t it that little peckerwood Perot who gave Clinton his chance?
mjb,
Better is that you listen to right wing radio, left wing radio, the MSM, read papers and then decide crap for yourself. I feel fairly safe in saying OWs characterization was a gross overstatement - sp gross soas to be laughable. I work and can only listen to radio infrequently, read alot etc. I don’t actually recall anybody saying Clinton was a Commie - much less ‘the right’ doing it in general. Methinks OWjust grossly distorts every now and then to serve his ideological agenda.
Dugger
The fact is, Clinton ran as a centrist in 1992, governed as a big spending liberal from 93-94 (it was part of the reason the Dems lost control of Congress). What did we get in those two years? Tax increases, an attempted takeover of our health care system, gays in the military, family leave, The Brady Bill, the ridiculous “assault weapon” ban and the attempt to implement a federal tax on all enery sources. Please don’t start debating the merits or lack thereof of these issues. I’m just using them to illustrate a point. Aside from NAFTA, the labeling of Clinton of a big spending, tax raising liberal was an accurate description of him. And while he was able to get much of this done because of having Democrats in control of Congress, much of it was NOT popular with the public. Hence the GOP takeover in 1994.
It wasn’t until after the GOP took over Congress that Clinton resumed his tactic of triangulation. He signed tax cuts, welfare reform, GATT, supported telecommunications deregulation, and financial services deregulation.
So it wasn’t just Clinton. It was also in part the DLC and Dick Morris.
Your premise is simply false. Nowhere have I advocated a move to the left for the Democrats, nor would I want that to happen.
Our esteemed host, as well as the denizens at places like The Lost Kos seem to think that moving to the left will help the Democrats electorally. My question is: where would it help them? The prescription being given guarantees, once again, losing the entire South, as well as the non-coastal West. Which states that president Bush won do you think the Democrats would suddenly carry by shifting to the left?
Remember, Bill Clinton won because he was competitive in the South, and won a few southern states.
I can understand the temptation for y’all to blame Senator Kerry, because he was a lousy canddiate. But in 2004, Republican candidates for the House of Representatives won three million more votes than Democratic candidates; it wasn’t just Mr Kerry’s loss.
If y’all want to win, you need to either move toward the center, the way Bill Clinton did, or persuade a whole lot more people than you have that left-wing solutions are the real answers to their problems, and I don’t think that the latter course will work.
Y’all really have two problems: economics and social issues. On economics, well liberals simply don’t understand economics; if they did, they wouldn’t be liberals!
And on social issues, y’all simply didn’t understand what happened in 2004.
Yeah, I know, Oliver, I’m pimping my own site there, but I really do think that my friends on the left have made some serious miscalculations.
I really enjoy watching people trot out the same straw men and specious talking points over and over and over again.
Wanting a government driven by reality and not some cracker fantasy where the U.S. is the God given slayer of all people not Baptist is not “leftist.” That is pure right wing spin to avoid ever having a substantive debate, as is “please don t start debating the merits or lack thereof of these issues. I m just using them to illustrate a point.” Huh? “Don’t debate whether I am speaking the truth, just let me use these possibly false points to support my argument?” Did I get that right? JayC, you may have a point to make, but telling everyone to just ignore the factual accuracy of your post while asserting the supposed ironclad nature of your conclusions is pure GOP mantra. It’s the proverbial “truthiness” trap.
As for some of the other nonsense:
conservatives sure understand how to rack up debt
and ruin the economy for everyone but the rich
Of course conservatives understand taxes…well…the rich ones anyway
For those that think they have cornered the argument by accusing libeals of not understanding economics
As for republican “successes,” particularly recent electoral wins, you have to look past rather glaring issues like election fraud and illegal redistricting, particularly in Texas and Ohio.
How can anyone seriously contend that, even today, that Bill Clinton isn’t the Right’s favorite go to guy to accuse of and blame for everything? I’d say just Google Clinton’s name and any widely known conservative pundit or prominent right wing figure, but the number of hits is so astronomically high as to render it ridiculous to even try to sift through it all.
So yeah, the Dems need to “move left,” if only in the sense that they need to grow a pair and stop triangulating their way into irrelevence. Democrats are sucking GOP tailpipe for a number of reasons, and one of the biggest is simply not presenting a forceful opposition party with conviction and some semblance of a plan for our future (beyond saying “we can do better” and accusing the GOP of being “bad managers”… gawd the Dems are such clowns).
As usual, a winger has amnesia about the Clinton days.
I lost all respect for People for the American Way, who are SUPPOSED to be fighting religious influences in public life, when they refused to attack Joe Lieberman’s puritanical statements as eagerly as they did Republicans. I’m a life-long Democrat through 10 Presidential elections — the last Republican I can remember voting for for anything was Thatcher Longstreth for mayor of Philadelphia, but he was running against Frank Rizzo — but if I want to support the Democratic Party, I will. I wanted, in PFAW, to oppose the creeping religiosity in America. Certainly Bush was worse on this, but I also didn’t want a group to argue ‘lesser evil’ on THIS topic.
Jim
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