Threat from Within
Are you familiar with the DLC? Don’t feel bad if you aren’t; while the Democratic Leadership Committee is a major force in US government, they’re not an official party, just a special interest group. There’s too many special interest groups out there to keep track of without a scorecard, so for anyone but political junkies, they’re just another semi-anonymous group that surfaces and submerges in the news almost too quickly to notice.
I wasn’t really aware of them, myself, until this CNN article brought them up. In short, the article is about a veiled threat from the DLC to Nancy Pelosi suggesting she retract her call for superdelegates to be mindful of popular opinion in the Democratic primaries, and that voters might react badly if the superdelegates are seen to overturn what is perceived as the popular choice. Pelosi’s advice would hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances, since Obama currently leads in popular and by-state vote. “We have been strong supporters of the DCCC….” begins the relevant segment of the DLC’s letter. (The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is an arm of the national Democrats assisting Democratic House candidates.) And if you don’t turn a blind eye to gaming the election, reads the subtext, we’ll stop donating to all the Democrats.
The maneuver isn’t illegal; nobody can dictate whether or to whom you give political financial support. It’s not even surprising in Washington: politicians in both parties have been bought for generations at all levels of government. The Republicans under Delay’s leadership practically made selling government favors their raison d’etre.
Buying elections remains an ugly practice, no matter how technically legal, and no matter who does it on whose behalf. Curious, and uninformed, I decided to look into the DLC and figure out what they’re all about. Turns out they’re the same billionaires who backed Bill Clinton’s successful run in ’92, and the very people the Democrats’ once-populist ideals were jettisoned to accommodate in a desperate bid to compete with Republicans on their home turf of selling political favors to the very wealthy, which explains a lot of Clinton’s presidency. Now the DLC backs Hillary Clinton, who they figure they can trust to bring home the bacon, even at the expense of the working class that forms the backbone of the party. If the DLC’s letter to Pelosi is not a bluff, and Pelosi et al stick to their principles, then doing so will carry a stiff price. Principles often do.
I cast this as a power-versus-principles issue because more is at stake than allowing a heavy-hitting plutocracy to dictate its choices to the Democratic party. Looking over the DLC’s own website, it seems they’re all in favor of cutting taxes. Lots of taxes. Also of doing what is necessary to appeal to right-wing Christians, on the grounds that they’re breeding faster than NPR listeners. Also “taking on” the cultural forces that make it so hard to raise our kids decent—you know, censoring media content. They’re big on crime prevention, heavy on the punishment-deterrence side, with a side of neighborhood watch groups, light on the social justice side. They urge Democrats to support military adventurism, so as not to lose elections by looking “soft.” They like free trade. They like school vouchers, allowing parents to abandon failing schools to families who may have no other choice. In short, they’re right-wingers posing as Democrats, farther right than Nixon would have dared. And that’s what the DLC has to say about itself.
Mindful that I shouldn’t let other sources speak for the DLC, but equally aware that the DLC’s public image might suffer some heavy spin, in much the same way that ultra-right wing groups speak through euphemism and code, I picked up a few outside opinions, too. Many of these were unkind. The wiki entry cites criticism that the DLC’s strategy of “triangulation”—appealing to the middle ground—merely consists of endless concessions, which have still somehow failed to win elections; apparently, such concessions merely move the line of what people think to be the center. Howard Dean cast himself as coming “from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” in contrast to the DLC, which was behind intra-party efforts to destroy his 2004 presidential bid. The triangulation strategy dictated Kerry; you remember how successful that was. Some fellow Well members treated the DLC as a conspiracy (already fairly successful) on the part of plutocrats to infiltrate and subvert the populist party as well as the aristocratic one, turning our democracy into one great fraud.
I’m not sure I’d go that far. A deliberate attempt to subvert the party sounds a little too “conspiracy theory” for me, despite the backing the DLC receives from ultra-right organizations like the Bradley Foundation and seating a director from the Christian Coalition. But when you get right down to it, what’s the difference between saboteurs trying to destroy populism from within and a misguided faction abandoning populism on its own initiative. Think about it.
The DLC hopes Democrats will sell their ideals for the promise of victory, the way the Republicans sold their ideals in the neocon takeover, with disastrous consequences. If the Democrats abandon their populist base in order to win at any cost, there is no longer any reason to hope they will.