Flashing Yellow in the Pea Patch
OK, time to fess up — I had an existential meltdown last week; I hit a bump. We “took a turn” in the collective — and for a few days it felt to me like we’d reached the point of no return in this nation: stalled in a vortex of ruthless victimization, unable to make headway against the turning cogs, and so inbred with Bush’s worker bee’s [what James Carville, Bill Clinton’s version of Karl Rove, calls “ideologically driven buffoons,” below] that digging out will be almost as challenging, and undoubtedly more time consuming, than stopping the onslaught. We’ve pushed so hard to hold back the mayhem, to throw together a “fix” for this mess, that contemplating something more drastic is disorienting.
But this kind of feeling is what I call my “flashing yellow light.” Go Slow … give yourself time for the information to catch up to you.
Pulling my punches, then, I’d tabled a rant I’d written about the Number One Issue bleeding away our national heritage today which is … of course … the attack on the American Constitution. I’ll get to it again — count on it. But I had to sit with the situation for awhile … ponder what was clearly a sea-change of sorts, that came along with a weekend of HUGE weather around the globe, triggering deaths and migrations that added to the burgeoning number of displaced souls on the planet … another of those consistent “disruptions in the Force” to which we’ve become accustomed since the Christmas tsunami. We feel those things in the collective, they impact us even if we can’t reason why.
By Saturday I was bitchy and dour — but on Sunday I got one of those “cheer up, sport!” messages the Universe always sends to save me; and I got it, Heaven help me, by watching Meet the Press. In a debate between Harold Ford, Jr., defeated Blue Dog Congressman who lost his Tennessee seat in ‘06, swift-boated by [and infamous for] the blond “call me” ads the Pubs used against him; also current Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Committee [sneer — home of Blue Dogs and the Clintonesque “middle of the (red) road” thinkers like Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Caucus Chair, Rahm Emmanuel,] and Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, hosted in Tim Russert’s absence by White House reporter David Gregory.
First off, I thought it astounding to see this kind of conversation, with these kinds of personalities, broadcast on the nations premier political program; this couldn’t have happened a year ago, or even six months. Second, the Kos did not find himself in the defensive position in this debate, it was the DNC that no longer had the upper hand. Here was my ray of sunshine — here was where my breath started to come easier [entire transcript is last, if you missed it.]
- MR. GREGORY: …I want to set this up this way, because this, I think, goes to Markos’ point. If you look at where the party is today and where the Democratic field is spending a lot of its energy, this is how McClatchy Newspapers reported it this year. “The Democratic Party is growing more liberal. It’s more antiwar than at any time since 1972. Support is growing for such traditionally liberal values as using the federal government to help the poor. And 40 percent of Democrats now call themselves liberal, the highest in more than three decades.”
This, this past week from the online newsletter the Hotline about what the Democratic field has been up to, calling it Leftward Ho. “First,” it said, “if you want a spot-on gauge of Dems’ ‘08 confidence, check out the crowds before whom they are pandering, er, appearing. Just this week, it’s antiwar bloggers, labor (for the 3rd time) and gay-rights activists. Last month, they answered questions posed by Planned Parenthood, the NAACP and a snowman,” referring to the YouTube debates.
Congressman, does this not tell you that, in fact, maybe the left wing of the party is the new center?
Music, dearhearts – music to my liberal soul! I’m a progressive, I’ve always been one and I’ve always been proud to say it — it was taught me in my earliest religious training, it’s proved to be the most effective way in which to deal with others and it’s allowed me to keep some modicum of sanity in an insane world. In my recent post on the collapse of infrastructure, I got some interesting feedback from someone who said I was “whiny and depressing” and “wear dark blinders.” Gosh, he must trust George Bush and the NeoCon’s a LOT more than I do. FDR, in his estimation, made the Depression worse, creating us as dependent on government. I won’t go to swords-point with that, but we’re closing in on a time when there may be much less, perhaps NOTHING, to depend on, so a little soft-Socialism doesn’t look that bad to me.
The gentleman is uncomfortable with my passion — so I wonder if any portion of politics has become personal to him. And perhaps I’m wrong, but I’d guess that he has either the resources or the insurance that would allow him to make sure his kid didn’t die from an abscessed tooth; that the growing inequity of pay hasn’t come home to roost in the amount of groceries he’s able to put on the table, the instability of the market hasn’t driven him to his knees or lost him his home; that he would probably go on to tell me about “pulling on bootstraps,” if he had the opportunity.
[I would also suspect he is not a student of astrology, aware that the dissolution of structure and systems has created a global emergency.]
In short, if you AREN’T whining about what’s happening to this country, I will have to suspect you’re a “Have” [although they’re becoming an increasingly endangered species, these days.] I’ve been both “Have” and “Have Not” in my journey through time, here on Terra … I can see both sides clearly. And here’s my bottom line — I sleep very well at night, having behaved in the same manner through both sets of circumstances; “Feed my sheep” is both literal and figurative, and “Do no harm” is a concept that includes the sins of commission AND omission.
If that earns me “bleeding heart” status, que sera — I won’t be changing soon. I’m still an Independent voter, I still have major issue with the way the Democrats have handled so grave a threat to liberty as the Bush regime, I still display a bit of temper at the country’s slide into downfall that looks too reminiscent of Rome’s for comfort, and I still intend to “whine.” On the other hand, one mans “whine” is another [wo]man’s “preaching to the choir.” Know what happens when you preach to the choir? They begin to sing!
We’re shaking off our drowsiness but we’re not bright-eyed, yet … we need to be. We need new voices, awake and aware … we need not a “fix,” but a complete reconfiguration. And if that’s what we need, then there IS no choice between conservative and liberal … there’s only one way to get where we need to go and that’s by pushing out the walls of the box we’ve been suffocating in to embrace a new way of thinking — which is, so it appears, Exactly What We’re Doing!
The new paradigm we seek is already here in ways we can’t see yet; our spiritual awakening will inform our politics, and vice versa. The Second Coming of the Christ consciousness won’t involve a descent from Heaven televised by CNN, accompanied by sword-wielding ArchAngels and close-ups of a swooning Stephen Baldwin — it’s happening in hearts that are opening around the globe, that are giving up on the littleness of “me, me, me” and embracing the “we, we, we” demand of the Aquarian Age, extending itself in decency and compassion. We may have years ahead of “flashing yellow lights,” fits and starts and all of us waiting for the information to catch up with us … but its happening and we have reason to let go of the desperation that has dogged us since Bush took power, to turn our attention to what we want instead of what we’ve got, to build our blueprint with the REAL values of this nation and her people.
It ain’t over … but it’s well begun, my dears. And that’s the whiny, depressing news of the day. : )
A long and encouraging collection, below.
Jude
How Karl Rove lost a generation of Republicans
James Carville, Financial Times
August 14 2007
There is an old joke that campaign veterans toss around war rooms, bars and BS sessions. We say there are people who have worked in campaigns who say that they have lost some – and we call those folks operatives, managers, strategists, consultants; and then there are people who work in campaigns and say that they have never lost, and we call them liars.
The joke reflects an obsession with winning as the real benchmark of success in politics. By that measure, Karl Rove’s career has to be deemed a success. He built the Republican party of Texas into one of the most powerful state parties in America.
Nationally he has pulled off some of the most unexpected and impressive victories of modern political history. (I will not be debating the 2000 election for the purposes of this article, but I also will not be crediting him with it, so let us just move on to the next cycle.)
Mr Rove picked up seats in what was an almost historically impossible context in 2002. Then in 2004, he engineered one of the most remarkable feats in American politics. He got Americans to re-elect a president who they really did not want to re-elect. Even the Republican defeat in 2006 was predictable and well within the range of historical norms so, by this sport’s standard of winning and losing, there is still no black mark on Rove’s record.
If we concluded our analysis in 2007 and confined our judgment merely to Mr Rove’s immediate electoral record, we would have no choice but to judge him a spectacular success. There is no doubt that Mr Rove won elections. He has perhaps one of the most remarkable win-percentages in modern American politics.
If only things were so neat and simple. The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.
A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points.
Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government.
It is not just Democracy Corps that has found this. A host of new polls and surveys over the course of the past few months has served as a harbinger of a rocky 2008 election for Republicans.
The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.
Mr Rove’s famous electoral strategy – focusing on the Republican base first – is also largely responsible for a shift in international public opinion against the US. It would not be fair to blame Mr Rove for the Iraq war. But it is clearly fair to blame his strategy for the Terry Schiavo fiasco and the Republicans’ adherence to the policies and doctrines of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson. The world and now most of the US are contemptuous of the theocratic underpinnings of the policy Mr Rove ushered into government.
There is also a distinction to be made between Karl Rove the political strategist and Karl Rove the government official. Mr Rove was not just an operative sitting at the Republican National Committee and scheming. He had a West Wing office. This distinguishes him from other political operatives, whose roles were outside the White House doing scheduling, advance work and presentation. They were not firing and hiring or shaping national security policy.
Mr Rove was as powerful a government figure as he was a campaign figure. The past six and a half years of Mr Rove’s career were spent as a very, very senior and extraordinarily influential Bush administration official.
He has been assistant to the president, senior advisor and deputy chief of staff. Mr Rove was the architect of social security reform, immigration, the hiring and firing of justice department officials and the placement of literally thousands of ideologically driven buffoons throughout the US government. As deputy chief of staff he was also responsible for handling the White House post-Katrina reconstruction efforts. On these actions, history has already rendered its judgment on Mr Rove. And, as we say in Louisiana, “it ain’t pretty”.
When it comes to judging Mr Rove’s political career, I am reminded of Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s meeting with Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, when Mr Kissinger asked, “What do you think of the French Revolution?” Zhou replied: “It’s too soon to tell.”
If the trends hold, the one thing that we can be sure of is that Mr Rove’s political grave will receive no lack of irrigation from future Republicans. ++
The writer is an international political consultant, founder of Democracy Corps, and is working on a new book whose tentative title is The Lost Generation: How the Democrats can Capitalize on the Current Problems of the Republican Party. He was chief strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign
Trends
by digby, Hullabaloo
8/14/07
I just though you all might like to see this polling memo (pdf) from Democracy Corps. I think it speaks for itself:
Right now, the Democrats enjoy an average lead of 12 points in the generic presidential race (51 to 39 percent) and 9 points in the named congressional ballot (51 to 42 percent). But let us point to some of the trends underneath that make 2008 look like a very big election.
- • The Democrats’ lead in both the Presidential and Congressional races is undiminished in the ‘core’ group of the most likely voters. Usually, the Republicans cut some of the margin on Election Day because of turnout patterns, but that is not likely in 2008.
• Education – one of the best predictors of vote over the past decade – is losing its power,with both well-educated and blue collar voters moving to the Democrats. In the Congressional ballot, for example, the high school educated give the Democrat an 11- point lead, dropping to 10 points among those with some high school and 8 points amongthe college educated. In short, the rush to be done with the Republicans is turning America a little classless.
• The ‘opinion elite’ in the country – those with a college education and earning more than$75,000 – are supporting the Democratic presidential candidate by 11 points (52 to 41percent). The elites are apparently fed up with the state of the country under George Bush.
• While the Democratic Presidential candidate is winning the Kerry counties by a two-to one margin, the Republican candidate is only winning the Bush counties by 1 point (46 to 45 percent). The Republican nominee will struggle to come back in the battleground states. Just as important, a lot of Republican incumbents will be running in supposedly ‘red’ districts and states, but find them evenly divided. The Republican Presidential candidate is barely ahead among white rural voters (48 to 41 percent).
Contours of the New Electorate
• The Democratic Presidential candidate is carrying those with family members serving inIraq by almost the same margin as for voters overall, 50 to 43 percent. Democratic Congressional candidates who have been prominently trying to change Iraq policy have an even larger lead, 53 to 42 percent.
• The Democratic Presidential candidate is carrying all Catholics by 18 points and white Catholics by 13 (51 to 38 percent). This would represent a major change in political direction. In fact, the Democrat is running marginally ahead among white Catholics who attend Church every week.
• The big difference in the race is independents: Presidentially, Democrats are ahead by 19 points; Congressionally, by 14 points. It is the crash with independents more than Republican defections that is driving the Republican vote down.
• The Democrats are getting landslide margins with voters under 30; they are even winning whites under 30 by 14 points.
• Instead of losing younger white non-college men by 19 points as in 2004, the Democratic Presidential candidate now is losing them by only 2.
• Union voters have not in recent decades been as solid for the Democrats as now. In fact, Democrats are winning white union households by two-to-one.
• One of the key blocs of ’swing’ voters is married women. They are breaking marginally for the Democrats this year after swinging strongly for the Republicans in 2004. White married women are breaking even in the Presidential, and Congressionally, the Republican candidate is ahead by only 4 points.
• One of the key blocs of ‘base’ voters for Democrats is unmarried women – who could comprise a quarter of the electorate. The Democrats are winning them by two to one; they are winning white unmarried women by over 20 points.
It’s a mistake to be complacent. A lot can happen in the next year and a whole lot of this comes from the incredibly sour taste in people’s mouths after six years of the Bush administration. (Thanks Turdblossom.)
But you have to be optimistic, at least, that the American people are eager to hear a new story. The question is whether the Democrats can tell it. ++
The Trouble With The DLC
Glenn W. Smith, CommonDreams
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Why are Harold Ford and others from the more paternalistic and condescending quarters of the Democratic Party so keen on discrediting the rising progressive movement? What have been the consequences of their obsession with “the middle”? Most importantly, how have the Tory Democrats managed to bury the expression of deep progressive values, and what should the progressive movement do about it?
For three decades, advocates of “centrism” have used their money to monopolize the Democratic message and leave the progressive base out in the cold, not spoken to. Since its founding in 1985, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been leading this effort. How did they pull this off? Before we get into that, let’s call them what they are. “Centrist” implies conciliation, moderation, compromise. It reinforces the mistaken idea that our political life falls along a neat, linear scale from left to right . That metaphor makes the center a pretty good and safe place to be. And that it certainly is not.
The plutocratic Democrats should be referred to not as centrists, but as industrial authoritarians. Their movement was born after the Nixon re-election in 1972. They blamed that landslide on Democratic Party rules changes that audaciously sought to include Americans formerly excluded from the back rooms of power. They fronted for older corporate interests - oil and gas, finance, insurance. The are really 19th-Century paternalists who would save us from ourselves by keeping us far from the plantation’s Big House.
These industrial authoritarians figured out how to dominate Democratic messaging. When DLC chairman Harold Ford lost his cool in his Meet the Press encounter with Markos Moulitsas on Sunday, it was clear just how determined they are to continue their domination.
Most of the messages delivered to voters were delivered in the course of elections, not between elections. It took a good deal of money. They had money. So their movement aimed at influencing those messages, making sure no alternative visions or values were discussed. Hence, the decline in the national and state Democratic parties, and any semblance of a progressive infrastructure. Their monopoly on message was achieved at the very same time the Right was building a message machine - think tanks, radio shows, magazines, local grassroots networks - that was all about delivering message and influencing the opinion environment before election seasons ever arrived.
Their campaign model intentionally inverted the logical plan, in which you would maximize your base vote and get just enough votes from outside the base to win. The centrists wanted to win with just enough base voters and the largest possible number of votes from outside the base.
With the centrist strategy, the base got a little mail and a few GOTV phone calls, the “swing voters” got messaged.
The development of so-called “coordinated campaigns” grew out of and advanced this strategy. Coordinated campaigns were pioneered by shrewd strategists in the South. Using efficiency as an excuse, the strategists developed coordinated efforts in which candidates for statewide office would pool resources to pay for base voter programs. These programs were usually light on message. It was all “get-out-the-vote” and very little “we stand with you for these values.” Aware that white voters in the region were bolting the Democrats in the wake of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, the plutocrats wanted to reassure white voters that the Democrats remained loyal to their interests. The bulk of campaign money - television ads for instance - were targeted to more affluent, white audiences.
It’s not difficult to see the consequences of this strategy. Progressive base voters, especially in African-American, Latino, and other disenfranchised communities, were abandoned when it came to Democrats voicing their values. Democrats could appeal to voters in the so-called middle with technocratic policies, promises of competence, and wonkish mumbo jumbo that either: 1) avoided values altogether; 2) Or, appealed outright to the authoritarian, “strict father” side of white suburban voters. Crime is a great example. The industrial authoritarians promised super-heroic crime-fighting sprees that would even embarrass Republicans. Forget the root causes of crime, like inescapable poverty, illness, crumbling schools, the disappearance of hope.
Another consequence was the meek response to GOP voter suppression. These Democrats seldom challenged the Right’s voter intimidation and suppression efforts, including the parade of police that prowled polling places in minority areas, phone banks into black precincts that gave incorrect polling locations or threatened arrest for those who might vote in the wrong place. Oh, there was the famous felon-purge of the voting rolls, used by Karl Rove in Texas in 1982. It had to be withdrawn after a non-felon, very white candidate turned up on the list.
Why so little concern for the progressive base? A growing progressive base was viewed as a threat to the industrial authoritarians for the same reason it threatened the GOP. Also, fears of being painted by Republicans as the party of Civil Rights made the industrial authoritarians exaggerate their distance from the true heart of their party.
As time went on, of course, their strategy became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It got harder and harder to boost turnout among minorities. Who could blame such voters? No one was listening to them, no one was speaking to them. If you want to have some fun, get a member of the Democratic consultant class to honestly tell you how many African American polls or focus groups they have conducted relative to their opinion research among the so-called “swing voters.”
At the Rockridge Institute we look for better ways of expressing progressive values, but we also analyze various reasons for the dominance of conservative values in the political sphere. Our work is not partisan, but the partisan structures that effect expression of core democratic values must be examined. There is no doubt that a critical reason is that the industrial authoritarians used their election-cycle monopoly of message to erase messages that spring from recognition of our social responsibility for one another, for the maintenance of an empowering government that protects while allowing every citizen a chance at flourishing. There was no egalitarian messaging from Democrats because those in charge of the messaging were not egalitarians.
The rise of the progressive movement in the early years of the 21st Century challenges this monopoly. The movement is listening to progressives of all kinds and colors, and it’s driving new messages of hope between and right through election cycles. MoveOn, Huffington Post, DailyKos, new think tanks like Rockridge, growing local and state progressive organizations, all of them are influence the opinion environment outside the old monopolized vehicles.
And a funny thing is happening. The core values of progressives are appealing to Americans of all kinds. It turns out that many of those so-called swing voters share these core values. They were longing to hear them expressed just as those formerly identified as the core progressive base were.
Hence the DLC’s vicious attempts to discredit the movement. And that’s what they want. They don’t seek to win an argument over policy. They seek to destroy the credibility of their opponents and restore their message monopoly. If they don’t, they may face the creation of truly universal health care, for instance. And then what in the world will their friends in the insurance industry do? Why, they won’t have the money to keep the industrial authoritarians in power. ++
Glenn W. Smith is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.
No Center, No Centrists
George Lakoff, CommonDreams
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
“Centrism” is the creation of an inaccurate self-serving metaphor, and it is time to bury it.
There is no left to right linear spectrum in the American political life. There are two systems of values and modes of thought - call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have). There are total progressives, who use a progressive mode of thought on all issues. And total conservatives. And there are lots of folks who are what I’ve called “biconceptuals”: progressive on certain issue areas and conservative on others. But they don’t form a linear scale. They are all over the place: progressive on domestic policy, conservative on foreign policy; conservative on economic policy, progressive on foreign policy and social issues; conservative on religion, but progressive on social issues and foreign policy; and on and on. No linear scale. No single set of values defining a “center.” Indeed many of such folks are not moderate in their views; they can be quite passionate about both their progressive and conservative views. Barack Obama has it right: Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas - the ideas this country was founded on and that carry forth that spirit. Progressives care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on that care.
The progressive view of government is simple.
Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police, and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; social security, and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights, and so on.
Empowerment include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without the progressive empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely, or even mainly, on the state - about the “national interest” defined as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual people’s interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees, education, women’s and children’s issues, public health, and so on.
These are simply American values. The progressive movement is a patriotic American movement. People who call themselves “centrists” share progressive views on important issue areas, but have conservative views on other major issue areas. The areas vary from person to person. There is no single moral perspective, no single set of agreed upon issues.
The very idea that there is a “center” marginalizes progressives, and sees them as extremists, when they simply share fundamental American values. The term “center” suggests there is a “mainstream” where most people are and that there is a single set of views held by that mainstream. That is false.
The fallacy matters in terms of Democratic electoral strategy. The Democratic base consists of people who are mostly or totally progressive, just as the Republican base consists of people who are mostly or totally conservative. How does the Democratic Party as a whole, and how do Democratic candidates in particular, speak to those who are biconceptual?
I am a cognitive scientist and believe that people’s brains play a significant role in elections. From the perspective of brain science, the answer is a no-brainer. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) You speak to biconceptuals the same way you speak to your base: you discuss progressive values, and if you are talking to folks with both progressive and conservative values, you mainly talk about the issues where they share progressive values. What that does is evoke and strengthen the progressive values already there in the minds of biconceptuals.
And of course, you don’t negate or argue against the other on their framing turf - remember Don’t Think of an Elephant!
That was the winning strategy of Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Brown is a thoroughgoing progressive who never moved one inch to the right. He talked about the issues where he agreed with his Ohio audiences - and legitimately spoke for them.
Think about Barack Obama going to Rick Warren’s megachurch and getting a standing ovation from evangelicals because he talked about the places where he agreed with them, he activated his values in them (values they already had), he came across as a man of principle, and he didn’t get in their face about where he disagreed.
The losing strategy is to move to the right, to assume with Republicans that American values are mainly conservative and that the Democratic party has to move away from its base and adopt conservative values. When you do that, you help activate conservative values in people’s brains (thus helping the other side), you offend your base (thus hurting yourself), and you give the impression that you are expressing no consistent set of values, which is true! Why should the American people trust somebody who does not have clear values, and who may be trying to deceive them about the values he and his party’s base hold?
Harold Ford is a perfect example. He just wasn’t believable as a good ole boy Tennesseean when he took conservative positions. He just didn’t seem real. The “not a real Tennesseean” ad pointed up the discomfort that Ford’s overt appeal to the right aroused in Tennessee. It was perceived as sleazy, and the “Call me, Harold” ad pointed to it as well. The ads were racist in part, but they were more than just racist. It would be hard to imagine such ads directed at Barack Obama.
Which brings me to the DLC, which Harold Ford now heads.
My colleague, Glenn W. Smith, has pointed to the DLC strategy of getting as many “swing voters” as possible and the minimum number of base voters needed to win. That is why the DLC and Rahm Emanuel argued against Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy and for a swing-state alone strategy.
The DLC has concentrated on policy wonkishness (see their 100 new policy ideas on their website) rather than values. Their concentration on laundry lists of policies rather than vision, values, and passion has not helped the Democrats electorally.
The reason the DLC has been attacking progressives, Smith argues, is that DLC members have major conservative values and are threatened by the progressive base. Some of those values are financial: Wall Street, the HMO’s and drug companies, agribusiness, developers, the oil companies, and international corporations that benefit from trade agreements, outsourcing, cheap labor abroad, and practices that harm indigenous populations but bring profits. A powerful motivation for the party has been that, if they take such positions, they, like the Republicans, can get big money contributions from Wall Street.
But there is more involved here than money. The DLC seems also to share the foreign policy idea that we should be maximizing our “national interest” - our military strength, economic wealth (measured by GDP), and global political clout (presumably coming from economic and military clout). This is opposed to a foreign policy that maximizes the well-being of people, both at home and abroad.
But worst of all, the DLC has been cowed by the conservatives. They have drunk the conservative Kool-Aid. As Harold Ford intimated in his debate with Markos Moulitsas: To win you have be a hawk on foreign policy, a social conservative on abortion and gay marriage, and not raise taxes. Nonsense.
Even worse, Ford is suggesting that those in the party who don’t hold those views say that they do. There’s a name for someone who goes against his principles to pander for votes. It’s not a nice name.
In all the commentary about that debate, an important aspect has gone without comment. Markos certainly bested Ford. But to do so, he also had to best the moderator, David Gregory, who insisted on using the conservative-tainted word “liberal.” Over and over, Markos resisted Gregory’s frames. Gregory was not using Markos’ frames and Markos insisted on his own.
It is important to stand up to the DLC, and to the idea that there is a unitary mainstream center, that they are it, and that progressives are extremists and deserve to be marginalized. ++
George Lakoff is the author of Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, Whose Freedom?, and Thinking Points (with the Rockridge Institute staff).
Meet The Press transcript w/ Harold Ford, Jr., Markos Moulitsas
Aug 12, 2007
MR. DAVID GREGORY: Our issues this Sunday: the future of the Democratic Party. On a week when the Democratic presidential field courted key elements of the liberal base, there is an intensifying debate within the party about the strategy for success in ‘08. Liberal vs. centrist—whose voice will dominate on issues like the war in Iraq, terrorism, health care, trade and more? With us, representing the centrists, the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr., and for the liberal wing, one of the most outspoken and influential voices in the blogosphere, founder and publisher of the Daily Kos Web site Markos Moulitsas.
[…]
But first, the debate within the Democratic Party. We are joined now by former Congressman Harold Ford of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of the Daily Kos Web site.
Welcome, both of you. This has been a debate you’ve been having all week in print and online. The first time you two have been together to talk these issues through. And let’s get right into it.
Congressman Ford, you issued a kind of warning this week when you took this issue on, writing about it in The Washington Post. We’ll put it on our screen for our viewers to see. You wrote the following: “With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk. Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats to victory in the 1990s no longer matters.
“Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s leading centrist voice, aren’t needed anymore.
“But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before. George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment. Independents, swing voters and even some Republicans who haven’t voted our way in more than a decade are willing to hear us out.” Don’t abandon the center.
FMR. REP. HAROLD FORD JR. (D-TN): For us to win and do well, it will take a merging of both factions, every part of the party. Let me first congratulate Markos, not only on what he’s done to give voice and give rise to a series of not only grievances but a series of ideas from all members of our party. In a lot of ways, the rise of talk radio in the last several years, the last decade or so, has left Democrats wanting to be heard and left Democrats wanting to organize a message. He deserves applause not only for mobilizing and intensifying support for things that we care about, and I dare say many members in the mainstream political spectrum care deeply about. The DLC deserves some credit for that. I’d probably say the MVP, though, in the whole thing has been George Bush, the Republican Congress, and the mismanagement of this war and so many other missteps they have made that have worked to not only bring Democrats together, but it’s worked to even give Democrats a fair hearing amongst a broader cross section of America.
MR. GREGORY: But your purpose…
REP. FORD: The purpose…
MR. GREGORY: Yes.
REP. FORD: The purpose of this piece is to say let us not get caught up in taking credit, too much credit. Let us not get caught up in, in, in, in, in claiming that we are or they are or another group is more responsible. What we should be serious about, I think, is merging factions, organizing our platform around a clear energy…
MR. GREGORY: But, Congressman, you’re issuing more of a warning, saying, ‘Don’t lurch to the left.’
REP. FORD: Well, that, that, that is. And the reality is, in national elections, I believe to win you have to cross three hurdles. First, you have to demonstrate your strength and trustworthiness on national security. You have to demonstrate that your values are squarely in the mainstream of America. And, three, you have to demonstrate as a Democrat that you can be trusted on taxes, economic and fiscal policy. If we do those things, I believe we better improve our chances of winning. If we don’t, I think we run the risk of being so excited and enthusiastic that we miss an opportunity, an historic moment, to not only build a majority but to gain a chance to govern. What we’re really asking the American people to do in 2008 is to trust us, to invest in us with the power to govern and lead this country.
MR. GREGORY: A rebuttal from Markos this week where else but on the Daily Kos Web site. And you wrote the following: “The DLC,” Democratic Leadership Council, “doesn’t want a victorious Democratic Party unless such victories happen using their formula. We’ve been there, done that, and it simply didn’t work. We as a movement,” meaning the Net roots movement, “sprung from those failures. We helped build this majority,” the majority in Congress. “Not the DLC’s 350 or so members. This is not longer their party. And as such, we can look forward to finally being truly competitive for years to come.”
Markos, when you say that their approach simply didn’t work, what didn’t work?
MR. MARKOS MOULITSAS: Well, we’ve had 20 years of Democrats arguing that we can’t show passion, that we can’t really stand strong for being Democrats, that we must blur the distinctions. There’s been a line of argument that the DLC’s been pushing for many, many years that this is a conservative country, and as such, if we force people to choose between Democrats and Republicans, we’re going to lose these elections. And, and for many years this was sort of the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., and in the consulting class here in, in, in the Democratic Party. So what we did, though, in, in 2002, we started organizing. We looked at, essentially, what was a track record of failure for the Democratic Party. The Republicans were in ascendancy. They had the trifecta in government. And we said, “You know what? Things aren’t working. We need a new approach.” And what we did is we started organizing. We started pushing Democrats to be proud to be Democrats. This had nothing to do with being centrist or liberal or conservative. It had to do with standing tall for core progressive principles. In fact, one of the first people we, we supported was Stephanie Herseth in South Dakota, who is now a Blue Dog. Ben Chandler in, in, in Kentucky. So we, we work with, with politicians that really fit the people in their states and in their districts, and help them sort of get over this hump…
MR. GREGORY: But you call yourself a liberal partisan.
MR. MOULITSAS: Oh, I’m very much a partisan, absolutely. But, you know, one of my first allies…
MR. GREGORY: Who represents the liberal wing of the party.
MR. MOULITSAS: Not necessarily. What we’re doing…
MR. GREGORY: But you call yourself a liberal partisan.
MR. MOULITSAS: Because—you’re, you’re trying to make it about me, and here’s the difference is that this isn’t about me. I run a site and I’m part of a movement that has hundreds of thousands to millions of committed activists working on behalf of their candidates. Now, if they’re in Kentucky, they’re going to be working for Ben Chandler, because that’s who they have.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. MOULITSAS: So it doesn’t matter who I think is liberal enough or conservative enough. I don’t make those value judgments. I don’t—I’m not there—arrogant to think that I should be making those decisions.
MR. GREGORY: For, for both, for both of you, if you could advise the party’s nominee to say top three issues, and these are what your positions should be, what would they be?
MR. MOULITSAS: Well, you know, you’re starting talking about issues. What I want that candidate to do is to not be afraid to talk about who they are, to be authentic and to tell us who they are so that we can actually make a decision. And not me. I’m not going to make this decision. It’s not my job to decide who the nominee’s going to be. I want these candidates to speak to regular Americans. And for too long they’ve been speaking to the pundits, they’ve been speaking to shows like this one. They haven’t been really communicating to the base because they had to go through this media filter and this political filter, and now we’re destroying those filters. We’re saying go straight to the people, talk to them, make your case.
MR. GREGORY: Congressman…
REP. FORD: (Unintelligible)…one…
MR. GREGORY: …top, top three…
REP. FORD: I hope we can merge all the factions in our party to organize around a clean energy future, developing not only a plan to win and improve our chances of, of instilling stability in the Middle East, but to find ways to, to attract and—new energy, and for lack of a better word, and new investments to find new energy sources for the future. Two, to fight the growing inequality. I give, I give them credit also for highlighting and bringing attention to the fact that there’s a growing gap between people who have and people who don’t and, more importantly, people who want. And the Democratic Party’s longtime tradition has been to address those issues. And finally, we’ve got to find ways to address the health care and education challenge in this country. The next president of the United States, he or she will have the challenge of uniting the country around a common agenda and then working his or her heart out, not only to build support here, but to hap—to help re-establish a marker about this great country around the globe.
MR. GREGORY: For…
REP. FORD: And it will take both sides…
MR. GREGORY: For, for either of you.
REP. FORD: …to do this, in addition to independents and Republicans…
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. FORD: …which is why I think—I don’t mean to cut you off—but which is why I believe it’s so important that we not lose sight of the fact that this is a moment that the country’s waiting to hear where Democrats stand on these big, important issues going forward.
MR. GREGORY: For either of you, is fighting and winning the war on terror in the top three priorities?
REP. FORD: Oh absolutely.
MR. MOULITSAS: Well, there’s just no doubt about that. I mean, there’s a real disagreement about how to best do that obviously. I mean, this all sounds great and, and, and wonderful, and obviously we can all get to—you know, we can all come around inequalities and opportunity and, and energy independence and that sort of thing. The problem we have, though, is we’ve, we’ve had a, a, an organization that, one, has, has been on the wrong side of a lot of ideas. We’re talking John Breaux, Senator John Breaux, who’s an architect of George Bush’s tax cuts, which have led our nation to record deficits, record debt, and a crumbling infrastructure, as we’ve seen in Katrina and as we’ve seen in, in Minnesota. I mean, crazy thing, but the American people want their bridges to stay in one piece. So we, we have a situation like that.
On Social Security…
REP. FORD: You can’t blame the—Markos, I got great respect for you, but I’m not going to let you get away with blaming the Democratic Leadership Council or anything that we support, sir, for, for anything…
MR. MOULITSAS: Senator John Breaux, who was the chairman of the DLC…
REP. FORD: Right.
MR. MOULITSAS: …was the chief architect. This is something you put…
REP. FORD: But not of crumbling—not of crumbling infrastructure.
MR. MOULITSAS: Well, what do you think, you’re going to cut taxes and not pay for the priorities in our nation. I mean, obviously, there has to be a way to pay for these things. And to come out and say, “Well we’re going to cut taxes, and we’re going to let these deficits run up, and we’re going to let our infrastructure crumble,” clearly it’s the wrong way to go.
On health care, on the war in Iraq, which you still refuse to say is a big mistake.
REP. FORD: It’s, it’s…
MR. MOULITSAS: You, you were on just on Fox News. So, clearly, we have a situation where you have an organization that’s been on the wrong side of the issues and has failed to really build a movement, has failed to really draw popular support. And it’s telling that five years ago, when I first came on the scene, I used to attack many organizations—organized labor. I used to attack a lot of the issue groups and—because I saw them all as part of this failed Democratic Party establishment. We were losing elections. At YearlyKos, we had all these organizations at the same table—labor, the issue groups. The one organization that was still missing was the DLC. That’s the one organization that refuses to acknowledge…(unintelligible)…with me.
MR. GREGORY: Let me just—before I let you respond…
REP. FORD: Sure.
MR. GREGORY: …I want to set this up this way, because this, I think, goes to Markos’ point. If you look at where the party is today and where the Democratic field is spending a lot of its energy, this is how McClatchy Newspapers reported it this year. “The Democratic Party is growing more liberal. It’s more antiwar than at any time since 1972. Support is growing for such traditionally liberal values as using the federal government to help the poor. And 40 percent of Democrats now call themselves liberal, the highest in more than three decades.”
This, this past week from the online newsletter the Hotline about what the Democratic field has been up to, calling it Leftward Ho. “First,” it said, “if you want a spot-on gauge of Dems’ ‘08 confidence, check out the crowds before whom they are pandering, er, appearing. Just this week, it’s antiwar bloggers, labor (for the 3rd time) and gay-rights activists. Last month, they answered questions posed by Planned Parenthood, the NAACP and a snowman,” referring to the YouTube debates.
Congressman, does this not tell you that, in fact, maybe the left wing of the party is the new center?
REP. FORD: No. What it suggests is that we need each side of this party and every side of this party to be a part of helping to win. Let, let me just step back just to respond to one or two things my friend said.
The DLC—there are a lot of things we have in common, which, which…
MR. MOULITSAS: Absolutely. Absolutely.
REP. FORD: …you may not know, we may not know. This organization started out really as a, a—still remains a reform movement. We have been anti-establishment. We took on big money in politics long before I got the—long before I got in politics. I was 15 years old. We took on lobbying reform long before it was popular to do. We took on corporate subsidies and even huge farm subsidies when it was unpopular to do. As you look forward today and you look at some of the accomplishments, remember, the last president—Democratic president to win two terms was Bill Clinton. Whether we like him or not, when you’re liberal or conservative, you have to agree that balancing the budget, producing surpluses, the biggest land set aside since Teddy Roosevelt, reductions in abortion, reductions in crime, increases in child enforcement, increases in trade enforcement actions. It’s hard to deny, when 43 million more Americans have health insurance, more kids are in college, that’s a legacy that I think we can all not only be proud of as liberal, conservative, whatever the case, but Americans can be proud of. And finally, I think going forward we’re not going to win if you and I are arguing against one another. The truth of the matter is our challenge and our challenger are those who want to move the country backwards, who want to rescind some of the great investments we’ve made in this country toward making America stronger, brighter and more whole. I happen to think that blaming John Breaux, the DLC, for crumbling bridges or even this war is unfair. Had America and had the Congress known what we know today about Iraq, there’s no way I would’ve voted for it or anyone. The truth of the matter is we face a different moment now in how we move the country forward with regard to this war. And my clear energy point, David, is about fighting terrorism. I think it has to be a central part and a nucleus of not only taking on terrorists anywhere on the globe where they may pose a threat to us, improving and strengthening—and Markos is a veteran, and I applaud him for that—strengthening our military and respecting our military differently, but we’ve got to find ways to re-establish our marker in the world.
MR. GREGORY: Let, let, let me pick up on this—the war on terror, particularly the, the war in Iraq, which a lot of people believe is, is a distinct—there’s a distinction between the two. So let me focus on Iraq because you talked about the DLC not apologizing for support of the war, and yet, there is division within the Democratic Party on that particular point.
REP. FORD: Even the Republican Party.
MR. GREGORY: And the Republican Party. The Washington Post reported it this way, “According to a … Washington Post-ABC News poll … even among Democrats, there is no consensus about the timing of any troop withdrawal. While three-quarters want to decrease the number of troops in Iraq, only a third advocate a complete, immediate withdrawal.” Another issue important to the base and, and, by extension, the Net roots has to do with gay marriage. This is a Pew poll in January of this year. Look at the division allowing legal gay marriage, among Democrats, 49 percent in favor, 43 percent oppose.
Markos, does that make the point to you or at least raise the argument that some of what you’re arguing is not in the mainstream of the Democratic Party?
MR. MOULITSAS: Absolutely not. I mean…
MR. GREGORY: There’s more division.
MR. MOULITSAS: …on the, on the Iraq issue, this is semantics. Whether we get out in three months, six months or a year, there is a strong consensus, almost universal in our party, and vast majorities among the American public that people want out. People want this war to end. They want our troops home.
MR. GREGORY: Right, but, but, but…
MR. MOULITSAS: They want to bring our troops home to be with their families.
MR. GREGORY: But how you get out is not just semantics, it’s a very important point.
MR. MOULITSAS: Of course it’s—well, when you ask a poll question, though, and you say, “Do you want to get out immediately or do you want to get out in six months or a year?” We’re talking semantics. The bottom line is that the vast majority…
MR. GREGORY: Yeah, but doesn’t that speak to the issue of, of how you form an exit strategy?
MR. MOULITSAS: Not, not at all. Because we’re not going to get out while we have George Bush as president. I mean, so if we say we want to be out in three months, clearly we could be out yesterday, I’d want to be out yesterday. I also understand, as a veteran who worked in logistics, that you can’t pull out 150,000 troops overnight or even in three months. So, yes, there’s an ideal situation, which is let’s get them out as quickly as possible, so that the poll questions in that regard I think are very much moving in semantics. But I do agree with Harold the, that we, we do need to work together, and I hope you’ll be at next year’s YearlyKos conference…
REP. FORD: I hope you’ll come to ours, too.
MR. MOULITSAS: …nicknamed—it’s going to be called Net Roots Nation, but, but what we need…
MR. GREGORY: Would either of you go…
MR. MOULITSAS: Yeah.
REP. FORD: I would go.
MR. GREGORY: …to each other’s conventions?
MR. MOULITSAS: I would, I would go.
REP. FORD: I—I’d—I’ll make clear that I will be there next year.
MR. MOULITSAS: But, ultimately, I—if it was up to me, I would be sitting here right next to—talking to Senator Harold Ford and we had…
REP. FORD: Appreciate that.
MR. MOULITSAS: …we had 10 Senate races and one was run sort of on the DLC platform of blurring distinctions and, and not really proudly standing for Democrats. And I hope that the DLC moves forward, being proud of being Democrats.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. MOULITSAS: It doesn’t have anything to do
REP. FORD: But…
MR. GREGORY: But—right.
MR. MOULITSAS: …with being conservative or liberal, being proud to be Democrats…
REP. FORD: But, Markos, let, let me say…
MR. GREGORY: But does it trouble you, congressman…
MR. MOULITSAS: …and, and we won.
MR. GREGORY: …that none of the Democrats running for president came to your convention this year?
REP. FORD: Naturally, we wanted them all there, but primaries on both sides. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson looked like raging conservatives.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. FORD: They didn’t look that way when Mitt Romney was governor and Fred Thompson was Senator.
MR. GREGORY: In other words, you think they’re going to come back to the center.
REP. FORD: They’ll all be there next year. But let me, let me just—the DLC, balancing budgets, trading surpluses, reducing welfare, reducing crime, introducing the earned income tax credit, raising the bottom 20 percent income 24 percent.
MR. MOULITSAS: You’re, you’re taking, you’re taking credit for everything that, that, that President Clinton did.
REP. FORD: No, but, but, Markos, but you’re blaming—no, no, but you’re blaming me for John Breaux. It’s not fair.
MR. MOULITSAS: And—right.
REP. FORD: Bill Clinton…
MR. MOULITSAS: And you’re taking credit for everything Clinton did and…
REP. FORD: But he was chairman of the DLC, Markos.
MR. MOULITSAS: And ultimately, think about this. You talk about a feeling…
REP. FORD: But you can’t have it both ways, sir.
MR. MOULITSAS: …of the American…
REP. FORD: I have great respect, but you can’t have it both ways.
MR. MOULITSAS: No, no, no. You’re talking about bringing the, you know, appealing to the vast majority of the American public. Bill Clinton never one with 50 percent plus one of the votes.
REP. FORD: But he was president twice. I’ll take his record any day of the week.
MR. MOULITSAS: The most, the most talented—the most talented politician of our era, incredible political talent, wasn’t able to beat—to win 50 percent of the American vote. Now, last year in 2006, running as strong unapologetic muscular Democrats, Democrats brought in 56 percent of the vote. We are appealing to the mainstream. We brought in independents in droves, and it wasn’t just George Bush.
REP. FORD: Right.
MR. MOULITSAS: George Bush gave us an opening.
REP. FORD: I would agree.
MR. MOULITSAS: But if it was George Bush, if it was only George Bush, you would be senator today.
MR. GREGORY: But let me just…
REP. FORD: But Jon Tester—Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Jim Webb…
MR. MOULITSAS: Jon Tester, we beat in a primary. We beat…
REP. FORD: Let me finish. Let me finish. Let me, let me…
MR. MOULITSAS: …a GOP-backed primary candidate.
REP. FORD: But, but, but, Markos, Markos, he ran to the right of the DLC and…(unintelligible)…on several issues. He ran to the left on other issues.
MR. MOULITSAS: On what issues?
REP. FORD: On guns, on gay marriage.
MR. MOULITSAS: That’s not to the left. I’m not a pro-gun Democrat.
REP. FORD: On guns, on gay marriage. There are a number of issues on cultural issues. Jim Webb the same way. My only point is this. There’s no need for us to argue. Those guys won, and we should be proud. I think…
MR. MOULITSAS: Because they were proud Democrats.
REP. FORD: And I’m one, too. There’s no need to question my allegiance. I want to do nothing more than ensure that progressive causes and interests are advanced. I want nothing more, and I, I know you do as well, want Democrats to win. We do nothing but help Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani when we argue essentially over semantics.
MR. MOULITSAS: So will you go on—will you stop going on Fox News and attacking Harry Reid for abandoning…
REP. FORD: No, but, but…
MR. MOULITSAS: …the troops…
REP. FORD: I’m, I’m not…
MR. MOULITSAS: …betraying the troops?
REP. FORD: I…
MR. MOULITSAS: You just said that a couple days ago.
REP. FORD: But, but, Markos, in all fairness, your site has posted awful things about Jewish-Americans. Your site…
MR. MOULITSAS: That’s not true.
REP. FORD: …has offered…
MR. MOULITSAS: It’s not allowed.
REP. FORD: You—now you have a site up about…
MR. MOULITSAS: It’s not allowed.
REP. FORD: …something about Cindy Sheehan, she uses it as a—she has a heavy presence there in talking about her run against…
MR. MOULITSAS: It’s called democracy. If you don’t like regular people—hundreds of thousands of people…
REP. FORD: No, no, I love it. But you can’t be critical of us.
MR. MOULITSAS: …talking, you’re going to have—you’re going to have…
REP. FORD: …of us.
MR. MOULITSAS: Of course.
MR. GREGORY: Let me—let me insert…
MR. MOULITSAS: Because I don’t control hundreds of thousands of voices. You and your organization have a few dozen people. You can control that message. And you don’t need to attack Democrats.
MR. GREGORY: Let me insert here and conclude by asking you about Hillary Clinton. Because it’s quite striking what you have written about her in the past going back to last year. This is what you wrote in, in The Washington Post about her: “Hillary Clinton is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment.” Referring in part to her husband’s leadership as well. “She epitomizes the ‘insider’ label of the early crowd of 2008 Democratic contenders.
“Senator Clinton shows no proclivity for real leadership as a lawmaker. Afraid to offend, she has limited her policy proposals to minor, symbolic issues. She doesn’t have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name. Meanwhile, she remains behind the curve or downright incoherent on pressing issues such as the war in Iraq. The last thing we need is yet another Democrat afraid to stand on principle. Her advisers have stripped what personality she has, hiding it from the public. What remains is a heartless, passionless machine.
“Today we regard Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as anything but inevitable. Her obstacles are big, and from this vantage point, possibly insurmountable.” She appeared before the YearlyKos convention this year, just last week, and she had this to say. Let’s watch.
(Videotape, August 4, 2007)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): I’m aware that, you know, not everybody says nice things about me. But—yeah, I know, it’s a burden I have to bear. But let me start by saying something, perhaps, a little unexpected, and that is thank you. Thank you for caring so much and being so involved in helping us create a modern, progressive movement in America.
(End videotape)
MR. GREGORY: You did a straw poll on the Daily Kos Web site that had her losing to Edwards and Obama. She is, according to national polls, a going away front-runner at this point just in, in the national polls. Have you changed your opinion of her?
MR. MOULITSAS: Well, I think, clearly—I mean, let me start off by saying, you know, she’s one of the warmest politicians I’ve ever met—I’ve said this, I’ve written about this—in person. And for some reason when you see her in these public—in debates, you know, she comes across as colder. And I, I’ve never been able to understand why that is. You know, I am afraid that her advisers are really hiding the, the human being behind, you know, behind that suit. Because she’s an incredible human being, very accomplished.
They’re, they’re making strides. Yes, absolutely. I think they’re realizing that this isn’t a movement—we’re talking hundreds of thousands of millions of people. This isn’t something you just toss aside or dismiss. And she’s making great strides in giving this community proper respect. Again, it’s not about me.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. MOULITSAS: You know, I could care less whether I like her or not. She doesn’t care if I like her or not. But what I’ve done is create a forum where she can go talk to directly to these people. And she was at 9 percent in the last poll. Nine percent of a million people on the Daily Kos is still about 90,000 committed, hard-core activists working on her behalf. I think any candidate would kill for that kind of support.
MR. GREGORY: Congressman, final point here. Is your primary message that compromise is going to be inevitable if Democrats want to win the White House?
REP. FORD: Merging of factions and recognizing that our agendas are far more in common than there may be in variance. The reality is our real challenge is developing a coherent, cogent platform that a majority of Americans can rally around that will not only give us a political victory, but will give us a chance to do something that George Bush and up to, up to a year ago most Republicans weren’t able to do in the House and Senate, which is to govern and govern effectively. If we cross the three hurdles of national security, values and an ability to manage people’s money through taxes and fiscal discipline properly and in a smart way, we will not only advance the progressive cause, but we will give an opportunity to bring to life and to bring to fruition so many of the things that Markos and I care deeply about. And I dare say the millions of people on his Web—that, that follow Daily Kos, and there’re millions of people that subscribe to him and what he does, and I dare say there’re millions that subscribe to the DLC, and more importantly the country. That’s what this is about. And that’s what we’re about.
MR. GREGORY: Quickly, your final thought.
MR. MOULITSAS: Yeah, no. I mean, I’m, I’m looking forward to hopefully merging factions. Everybody else in the party coalition has come together. You’re the lone holdout. I hope that’s not the case next year.
REP. FORD: We’ll be there, and I hope you are as well.
Thank you.
MR. MOULITSAS: Thanks.
REP. FORD: Good meeting.
MR. GREGORY: All right. Harold Ford, Markos Moulitsas. A good handshake. Thank you very much. The debate will continue… ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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