As the DLC and "activist" wings renewed their longstanding struggle this week with the prize (whatever its value) of the DNC chairmanship possibly in the balance, I thought it might be a good time to point out a home truth here, in the arguable heart of anti-DLC country: we need 'em both. And until we grow up and figure out how to expand rather than "purify" our coalition, we'll keeping forming up circular firing squads.
In the weeks after the election, I had the odd revelation--one that has kept me off dKos, for the most part--that in several important ways, I was a New Democrat. I believe in balanced budgets, capitalism, federalism, American force as a vehicle for our values, good-government processes, and broad cultural tolerance.
But while I agree with much of their platform and stated priorities, the corporatist trappings of the DLC still bother me. And where the rubber hits the road, when it comes time to choose between corporate donor dollars and truth, I don't trust those guys to do the right thing. To the question of "reform insurgency" raised by folks as diverse as Kos and Bruce Reed of the DLC, this is also why the current leadership of the Democratic Party will never be able to make a really compelling case for economic justice and the level playing field. On the other hand, groups like MoveOn are becoming as polarizing on the left as the NRA and Christian Coalition-types are on the right. We need to figure out how to step back out of the spotlight, yet maintain influence--as those groups have managed to do.
The first step, though, is making piece within the center-left coalition. Josh Marshall gets into some of this on his blog today, describing the trap of lazy thinking that seems to have ensnared so many of the DLC haters in evidence at sites like this one:
The thinking goes that those behind the "corporate/DLC agenda" are simply closet Republicans, whose aim is to put a Democratic label on Republican policies or kow-tow and make nice to Republicans so much that the Democratic party becomes even more impotent and enfeebled than it already is. Whether these points are true or not, their model for successfully winning elections has been endlessly discredited and in any case all they're really about is serially abandoning the various groups that make up the Democratic party. And what right do they have to screw, or sell-out, of $%#& blacks or unions or the poor or gays or the environment, when these guys aren't even real Democrats anyway?
...I can see kernels of truth in the caricature. But this is a highly misleading portrayal of who almost all of these people are. And the caricature is sustained by a lot of people who only know what these folks are about from left-leaning anti-DLC polemics -- though I would say the DLC folks come in for a good deal of criticism for that being the case.
So before everyone goes off half-cocked, with misleading slogans and impressions, trying to purge this or that wing of the party, I would say, find out a bit more about the groups you're talking about. There are plenty of real differences to argue about without getting into shouting matches with folks who might agree with you about more than you imagine.
To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, when we fight amongst ourselves, our only reward is laughter in the halls of evil. I'd rather make Karl Rove cry than laugh.