grassrootsgrower

The DLC do not like the DNC now that Howard Dean has cleaned them out of the their powerful offices. Andy Tobias, the Treasurer, is the sole survivor of the DLC-dominated days of Terry McAuliffe. Democrats Abroad is an obscure outpost to be sure, but one with strong potential for growth. The problem for the DLC is that the growth will come from the grassroots, and they want a more conservative and values-based political powerbase so they can promote a Clinton-Clark ticket and a return to their good old days when the Party was basically a Joe Lieberman Appreciation Society. Basically, Little Napoleon's coup is a small but important skirmish in the battle over the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party. For the DLC, the DNC is just too progressive these days, and they cannot stand even small amounts of progress. Who will win the war: the DLC dinosaurs who support Bush's war policies or the growing numbers of progressives who support the changes to the Party led - not exclusively but to a significant degree by Howard Dean?

grassrootsgrower

You got it in one. It's the DLC versus the DNC. The DLC do not like the DNC now that Howard Dean has cleaned them out of the their powerful offices. Andy Tobias, the Treasurer, is the sole survivor of the DLC-dominated days of Terry McAuliffe. Democrats Abroad is an obscure outpost to be sure, but one with strong potential for growth. The problem for the DLC is that the growth will come from the grassroots, and they want a more conservative and values-based political powerbase so they can promote a Clinton-Clark ticket and a return to their good old days when the Party was basically a Joe Lieberman Appreciation Society. Basically, Little Napoleon's coup is a small but important skirmish in the battle over the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party. For the DLC, the DNC is just too progressive these days, and they cannot stand even small amounts of progress. Who will win the war: the DLC dinosaurs who support Bush's war policies or the growing numbers of progressives who support the changes to the Party led - not exclusively but to a significant degree by Howard Dean?

grassrootsgrower

A Republican until the day before he announced his presidential candidacy, Wes Clark was nothing more than a spoiler of Howard Dean's progressive momentum. Dean frightened the DLC-New Dems, and they propped up Wes Clark and fired him out of a cannon. From your comments on other threads, I do not expect you to concur. In my humble opinion, we do not need Republicans in the Democratic presidential primaries to skew the results toward the unwinnable. The fact that some DLCers are now pining away for another Wes Clark campaign proves the point that he is a long term spoiler. He could never win the nomination. He is simply not in the hunt on the podium. He has no message, and it is unlikely that he would know one if he ever heard one. Where is the basis in reality in the contention that Wes Clark could or might be a viable candidate?

with us having run 'moderate' DLCers. Something didn't work, and I think it's time for certain factions of this party to give up on their unicorn idea that there is this group of Americans who respect a watered down, spineless candidate.

In short: It. Doesn't. Work.

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You mean moderates who spit on coal mining, truck driving, cashier, etc. jobs?

Or do you mean moderates who are willing to bend/break environmental laws so as to get local people work whilst simultaneously screwing them out of far larger income sources?

Or do you mean moderates who crap on Tradional Christianity?

I certainly understand that we don’t want “Liberals” who refuse to discipline their children and instead let them play in the middle of the highway, but maybe, just maybe, many Americans have been sold a bill of Anti American goods.

Perhaps there is more to learn than can be learned from listening to the same tired old crap. Maybe people need to derive things from fundamental principles the way the framers did, and align themselves with American Liberalism rather than the extremism championed by the Right, Left, and fake moderates.

The only reason you believe these people to be “moderate” is NOT from polls of the populace, but rather from listening to which voices are the loudest. Well, new voices are speaking up.

grassrootsgrower

And I agree that we need to go back to basics. Embrace the tenets of the great Democratic administrations from the year dot to the Clinton Era. Run to our strengths, now cower when they are mentioned. The DLC have ruined too many elections, and we should not be willing to take it any more.

grassrootsgrower

How many more elections do the Democrats have to lose to convince you that Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh - and others of their stripe are losers. While Al Gore has made some more impressive moves recently, his 2000 campaign was a trainwreck engineered by the DLC and their Engineer-in-Chief, Joe Lieberman. Hillary may be disguising her basic progressivism under layers of "moderation" but she will have to move to the left to win in 2008 against a formidable opponent. BTW we had better be planning on facing a strong opponent in 2008. Woodward could even be right. It might be Cheney. Or, it might be someone even worse.

No, it is you who are being absurd. Your call for "just any Democrat" to be elected is why this Party has suffered defeat after defeat. The DLC has assumed that their choices for candidacy are much more informed (read corporate-directed), and therefore the rank-and-file voter has no need to interfere with "their" choices.

You are not a Democrat, any more than your DLC "heroes" are. You are another example of why our Party needs to rid itself of Republican-Lite DINOs.

Start here http://www.democrats.com/node/7018

Bottom line is that “Centrists” are centrist only in that they champion theories which fall between a very loud Right and a Democratic Party made meek by RINOs. They therefore do NOT champion a moderate position with respect to the populace they serve.

Example:

The Right and “Centrists” champion, or apologize for, a view of economics which is centered on the person. Sounds innocuous enough I know but wait. The mythos of the “rugged individualist”, the “entrepreneur”, the “job maker”, is floated continuously. Everything sounds as right as rain to the Right and the “Centrist” when framing things this way but much is in error.

Well is the opposite of this Communism? Or the caricature the Right portrays: Government “hand outs?”

Not at all. It has become none too obvious after decades of deafening Right Wing propaganda but the truth is slightly more complex and Democrats need to understand that. It is true that individuals can climb the ladder. It is true that getting a second job or gaining more education can aid the individual. It is FALSE that this will lead to less poverty or crappy midlevel jobs.

Republicans follow the individual because it is easier to get us pissed at each other. Democrats follow the structure of civilization. (If you study a river you can focus your gaze on a bit of dye in the water OR you can look at the structure. You can focus on the hump of water that lies on the upstream side of a boulder. Water continually passes through that hump but the hump remains.) Most jobs NEED to be done. Telling people to get a second job or more education does not change the fact that all those low level jobs will still need to be done by somebody. It is a Democrats goal to ensure that JOBS provide good incomes.

This income can come in several ways. The most immediate is direct pay, but I argue elsewhere that the vast majority need protection against implicit monopolies the way Aristocrats at the top vote themselves protection against explicit monopolies. In this way a Democrat can offer the bottom 90% crowd ($50/hour and under) a few other sources of income: Progressive Income Tax, Health Care, etc. all as compensation for labor.

The above is not just theoretical. A ton of cash was made as computer technology and third world labor came up to speed. The vast majority did not see it because they have been taught to do the opposite of what those at the top do. They gleefully stick their head up the bosses behind so as not to be called a Communist and the top dog laughs all the way to the bank. Raises have gone disproportionately to the top tiers over the last couple of decades and the vast majority is due a raise. This will mean less for those at the top but regardless of whether this occurs via fights within the market place or via the voting booth; the goals of Free Enterprise will not be crossed. In fact, they can only be realized by such a battle.

I know people who have worked for two decades at Sears “part time”. They worked them these 39 hour weeks so that they did not have to give benefits. They also did NOT allow them to work a second job at any retailer as that would be a conflict of interest. This disgrace amongst a myriad of others is due to Republicans and False Moderates.

No more second jobs. No more education. Good pay for hard work and beyond that do as you like. We’ll fight for it in the Market and at the voting booth. If a group of voters can get together to take from another group of voters (a Corporate Monopoly) to break Monarchy to form Aristocracy then a group of votes can do the same to form a Middle Class as long as they do not cross the line of Socialism –where compensation for labor in upper tiers is too small to draw those tiers to their work.

-A thousand pardons for the length.

Your concerns about "business" have EVERYTHING to do with fretting over how one business will compete with another. That is not the way to see the overall structure and not part of the dynamics that enter when you apply the same rules across the ENTIRE system.

When the median wage earner makes a 1.5 inch high stack of hundred dollar bills and the highest wage earners make a stack that exits the stratosphere (30 miles high) I assure you there is plenty of room for workers to make tons more money. You are being scared into believing there is no cushion.

There is. LOTS.

As long as the DLC picks and chooses our candidates for us (see Hackett and Super Tuesday) the primary process is meaningless. The rest of your "centrist" can't-we-all-just-get-along anti-Progessive diatribe places you far outside of mainstream Democratic thinking.

The Democratic Party IS divided, and has been ever since the self-appointed "New Democrats" have bought influence and power with money from the same sources as their pals over at the RNC.

Our goal at Democrats.com is to support Gov. Dean and his efforts to return control of OUR Party to its grass roots, and the DNC. As has been stated before, I would vote for a bonafide Republican before I would vote for a DLC "centrist" anti-American traitor.

into this site, perhaps you should get off your duff and fix the voting machines in your state. They are among the most evil machines in the country. This has been proved again and again and is well-documented on the net.

One other thing...try to avoid converting many of us to the deep south position you have taken in your posts.

Our party, the Democratic Party, has taken some stands you feel are hurting us. You are dead wrong. You need to educate yourself a bit and catch up with the rest of us.

grassrootsgrower

It is about extremisms and their political influence. You are aware that George Bush is the most religious president that America has ever had. Do you think that is a good thing? I don't. Freedom of religion does not mean that the president should be able to launch wars against biblical enemies of God's chosen people, but Bush's extremist religious beliefs have shaped US policy. Opus Dei is not about albino monk assassins. It is a religious order that promotes and attempts to legitimize extremism in governments. There are already four right-wing, extremist Roman Catholics on the Supreme Court and many others in the US government. They are just as dangerous as the extremist Christian evangelicals or the extremist Muslims or extremist Hindus, or any other form of religious extremism. We do not need any more extremism from anywhere in power in America today. Certainly not in the White House - and that is only one reason why Wesley Clark is unfit.

Your point about overseas ballots being discarded in Florida is very important. Why don't we have a federal voting rights act that requires the total tabulation of all votes cast in each and every state - at least in federal elections? I have no way of ensuring that the votes are counted at election time. But if they are, we know that for the first time in US history the vast majority of overseas ballots will be Democratic. That is because any American living overseas today is no fan of Bush. Bush's policies have made it virtually impossible to do business for one thing. I have never seen such a steep rise in Anti-Americanism - which has been a real problem since the end of WWII - but it is worse today than ever before - and getting worse every day.