Noam Scheiber of The New Republic (!) pens an obituary for the DLC that describes moderate-liberals like myself perfectly.
Today, the council has almost no constituency within the Democratic Party. About every five years, the Pew Research Center conducts a public opinion survey to sort out the country’s major ideological groupings. In 1999, Pew found that liberals and New Democrats each accounted for nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base. By the next survey in 2005, New Democrats had completely disappeared as a group and the liberals had doubled their share of the party. Many moderates, radicalized by President Bush, now define themselves as liberals.
Contrary to the popular caricature of me, I am far from a diehard liberal ideologue. Within the Democratic caucus my position on issue after issue trends from moderate to conservative, especially on military issues, crime, and education. And while my social positions are to the left of the mainstream (I think gays should be allowed to get married, think marijuana should be legal, am against unfettered access to guns), the DLC who I at least may have agreed with on some issues in the past (NAFTA, for instance, which I still kind of support) they just sound like idiots now, telling Democrats that the way to win is to act like Republicans. Especially since that formula is exactly why Democrats were in the minority and out of the White House.
I tried to explain to people in 2000 that the DLC was no longer helpful.
Gore listened to them then, took their advice, and lost himself an election.
You still kind of support NAFTA? What? You still can’t hear that giant sucking sound. First, it sucked jobs out of America, now is sucking desparate people into America from Mexico and Central America. It was the only thing Ross Perot was ever right about, except maybe when he took his Mercs to Iran to rescue his employees.
One of the little-ballyhooed connections is between the DLC and the Pundit Class in Washington.
The DLC gained stature because of people like Broder, Ignatius, Kelin, Russert, Cokie Roberts et.al., people who value “centrism” regardless of the consequences and gave From and his crew airtime and column inches.
People who nodded approvingly as Cheney, Scalia, Thomas, Limbaugh and Bush MOVED the Center to the Right, and took the Pundit Class with them.
We, who USED to be the center wandered around disenfranchised, raging against people like Michael O’Hanlon and Joe Lieberman who wittingly or unwittingly chopped the legs out from moderates who counselled no war in Iraq, no deficit spending, no tax cuts, no.. well, you get the point.
Now, we moderates have established a new center, built around truth and immediate accountability and citizen journalism. That’s where Ollie and KOS and comments like this one come in.
DLC has no one to blame but themselves. When their axis was moved, they were supposed to rage and hold their terra firma.
But then, what would have happened to the invites to those delicious foie-gras canapés, and the Johnny Walker Blue at all those Washington soirées with Andrea Mitchell, Greenspan, and the Cheneys?
They bought their bed. Now let them lie in it.