At Jacobin, Lily Geismer, assistant professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, writes—Atari Democrats. Here is an excerpt:
In late 1992, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) published a “blueprint for a new America” entitledMandate for Change. Issued as the group’s former chair prepared to assume the presidency, the document was intended as a “guide to the progressive ideas and themes that energized Bill Clinton’s winning campaign” and an outline of “a new governing agenda for a new era in American politics.”
Animating that agenda were several core principles: “economic growth generated in free markets as the prerequisite for opportunity for all,” “equality in terms of opportunity, not results,” and a rejection of both the “liberal emphasis on redistribution in favor of pro-growth policies that generate broad prosperity” and the “Right’s notion that wealthy investors drive the economy.”
Clinton himself blurbed the book, praising the authors’ “new governing philosophy based on opportunity, responsibility, and community.” At last, the president-elect declared, the Democratic Party was moving “beyond the old Left-Right debates of the past.”
Mandate for Change also contained a narrative of political history that validated the DLC’s own efforts to remake the party. The authors depicted a Democratic coalition “pulled asunder” in the late 1960s “over issues of race, war, and cultural alienation.” It was Clinton, the authors gushed, who had rescued the party from disarray and oblivion. DLC founder Al From recycled the “Clinton-as-savior” narrative in his memoir, arguing the New Democrats’ philosophy and strategy had brought the Democrats in from “the wilderness.” Yet while the party had indeed been transformed since the late 1960s, the heroic tale of rebirth obscured a much more complex restructuring.
These changes should be viewed neither as the betrayal of the Democratic Party’s purpose in the late 1960s nor as a product of the DLC’s political genius. Rather, they reflect a broader shift in the balance of power within the party. Since the 1960s, suburban knowledge professionals and high-tech corporations have supplanted urban ethnics and labor unions as the party’s core constituency. This shifting base intensified structural inequality and constrained the party’s ability to deliver progressive reforms.
While suburban knowledge workers make up a small portion of the electorate and an even smaller percentage of the national population, they have come to hold a disproportionate amount of political power — especially within the Democratic Party. This cohort tends to vote in high numbers, contribute to campaigns, engage in issue-based advocacy, and receive outsized media attention. [...]
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FFS DU JOUR
Poachers in northern Canada kill elk, take two heads as trophies, leave the rest
Authorities are looking to track down the poachers responsible for shooting five elk and discarding the carcasses near Fort Vermilion, Alberta. The remains of two bull elk, two pregnant cow elk and a calf were found buried in snow, presumably done to conceal their whereabouts," according to a Fish and Wildlife spokesman. "In the case of the two bull elk, their heads were taken, but everything else, it appears, was just wasted," he said. If they are caught, the poachers could be fined up to $50,000 or sentenced up to a year in jail. Canada’s Wildlife Act makes it a crime to waste the edible flesh of big game animals. The elk were also hunted out of season.
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TWEET OF THE DAY
Crying me a bucket here for the people who got really hurt by Bomani Jones’ shirt but find nothing wrong with the racist Chief Wahoo caricature that demeans Indians. On “Mike and Mike” this morning, ESPN told him to cover it up while he was on camera. Another example where challenging racism is considered worse than the racism being called out. Kudos to Jones.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—American Exceptionalism and Iraq:
Ever since I chose two months ago to support Barack Obama as the better remaining choice after John Edwards left the presidential race, I’ve not had second thoughts. But neither have I made a secret of my misgivings about various policy stances of the Senator from Illinois. Nowhere have these misgivings been stronger than when it comes to reshaping foreign policy, in general, dealing with the military-industrial-congressional complex, in particular, and, most immediately, figuring out what the United States should do next in Iraq.
While much campaign discussion among partisans has focused on the differences between what Senator Obama said in his October 2, 2002, speech about Iraq and what Senator Clinton said in her October 10 speech before she voted on the authorization to use force, what matters now has very little to do with they said and did more than five years ago. What matters is where we go from here in the sixth year of occupation.
During Tuesday’s hearings on Iraq, as refreshing as it would be – and as accurate – neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton (nor any other Senator who questions General David Petraeus) will say "imperialist" in reference to the bloody U.S. visitation on Iraq or its larger foreign policy. Nor "hegemony." Whether it be politicians, or textbook writers, or megamedia mavens, or, sadly, many historians, America simply cannot be attached to "empire" no matter the evidence. It’s just so ... un-American.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, we were obligated to cover the primary slapfight, because news. Greg Dworkin & Armando do most of the work. Iceland update! Trump plans to demand tribute. The racketeering theory of the Flint water crisis.
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