Just as the radical right took over the Republican Party, the Democratic Leadership Council has been trying to consolidate it's power within the Democratic Party. If the polls are correct, and Lamont wins on Tuesday this will (hopefully) be just the first repudiation of these
congressional quislings. Their surrender of principle for power almost destroyed the Democratic majority in the US. But the reckoning may be nigh!
Well, after the break...
The DLC's "Republican-Lite
TM" politics
sold the soul of the party for phantom electoral success. As they kept getting stomped by the Republicans they'd keep moving the Democrats further to the right, since "that's where the votes were". The Republicans took their cue and moved even further to the right. Lacking any vision, other than "we're just like the guy you actually vote for," the DLC pushed politics so far to the right that the neo-cons took over the Republican Party, and with it the government.
After running Bill Clinton in 1992, and claiming it was the DLC message, not Clinton's magic or Carville and Begala's "War Room" that cinched the victory, the DLC proceeded to brainwash the progressives that they were too liberal and that DLC Democrats were better than Reagan Republicans. And they were right. Except, they couldn't win an election if this were Cuba and they were Fidel!
In '94 they lost the Senate and the House (chronology edited with assist from jiacinto: thx). In '96 they lost even more Senate and House seats (thank God Bill was still around). In '98 they actually added a few House seats, but then one of their founding members led the charge to cripple the Clinton Presidency. In 2000 they had one of their DLC founders on the National ticket. And lost. Argue all you want whether it was 271-266 or 5-4, they lost. They lost cleanly in Tennessee, Arkansas, Nevada, and Ohio. All were carried by the "old" Democratic machine in 1992. A real irony is that the Vice Presidential candidate (the aforementioned founding DLCer) all but castrated Bill Clinton politically, and with him went their best campaign weapon. The DLC's refusal to criticize Bush on the war or stand up for Kerry against the Swift Boaters sealed the fate of the 2004 election, a loss as astounding in retrospect as the Cubs folding in the NL East in 1969.
Well, the pigeons may finally be coming home to roost. The voters in Connecticut appear poised to tell the DLC they want their Democratic Party back. And they'll achieve this if they send their posterboy, Joe Lieberman, packing. Despite what Will Marshall is smoking, Lieberman has not been "demonized." In fact, I don't think there has ever been a more genial, considerate rejection of an incumbent in the last 100 years of American politics. You want demonized, look at Santorum and Harris, or maybe Cynthia McKinney.
Lieberman has been selling his DLC wares for more than a decade, and each year it wears a little thinner, until now it shines like a $50 suit. Failed right-wing ideas, like school vouchers, privatizing social security, millionaire tax cuts, oil company subsidies, and social-engineering judges just don't cut it in Connecticut.
I know, this is the richest state in the union; its got scads of local prep schools, its got scads of major financial companies, and its got scads of millionaires. But it's got scads of voters who know right from wrong, and that the American Social Contract says that you give back when you succeed, not take more. That's antithetical to a true DLC believer.
Once the first domino falls (perhaps this Tuesday?), the DLC will start to collapse (if you doubt this, just watch Hillary Clinton go after Rumsfeld today like Tom Delay grabs for a lobbyist's check). The ability of the true progressives in the Democratic Party to unseat an entrenched, unbelievably well funded ($10MM) congressional leader will be the alarm bell that wakes up the grass roots across the country. It will no longer be a "danger" to question the president about the war. It will no longer be a group of "narrow dogmatists" that fight for a balanced budget. It will no longer be the corporate machine of the DLC telling the voters what they should do for their elected officials.
If the bells ring loud enough the rest of the country will vote for progressive ideas and against the "status quo ante" of the Bush administration. We know that DLC members aren't willing to do it, so we'll have to do it ourselves. The death of the DLC will coincide with the resurgence of the (real) Democratic Party.