Hillary called for a "
cease fire" within the party:
"Now, I know the DLC has taken some shots from some within our party and that it has returned fire too," she told a gathering of the group here. "Well, I think it's high time for a cease-fire, time for all Democrats to work together based on the fundamental values we all share."
The poor, poor DLC forced to "return fire"? Please. The DLC has always been at the forefront of intra-party mud-slinging. They're just finally being called on it, and suddenly it's time for peace? If she wanted to give a speech to a centrist organization truly interested in bringing the various factions of the party together, she could've worked with NDN.
Instead, she plans on working with the DLC to come up with some common party message yadda yadda yadda. Well, that effort is dead on arrival. The DLC is not a credible vehicle for such an effort. Period.
This is the organization that defines "cease fire" by going on the attack and smearing progressives in an entire American city of over 100,000 people:
While someone from the daily kosy (misspelling intended) confines of Beserkely might utter ominous McCarthyite warnings about the "enemy within", here in Columbus constructive committed crusaders for progressivism are discussing ways to win back the hearts of the heartland.
Marshall Whitman can slam me all he wants. I can take it. But notice how he slams everyone in Berkeley? No good vital-center-seeking Democrats there! They're all "berzerk", ha ha! I bet he called up his old friends at the Christian Coalition and his current friends at PNAC to share that gem.
Cease fire, DLC style! Pleas take note, Ed Kilgore.
Marshall also hilariously calls the 300 elected officials at their conference as "grassroots". Um, my dictionary defines "grassroots" as:
Ordinary people regarded as the main body of an organization's membership.
Elected officials are not "grassroots". The people licking envelopes and getting out the vote and manning phone banks and attending rallies and helping build the party from the ground up -- those are the grassroots. And they weren't at the DLC's little shingding. But it's cute that they're trying to claim the mantle. If they had real grassroots supporters they wouldn't have to try so hard. Democracy for Texas had over 1,000 people at their event down in Austin. But then again, the grassroots likes DFA.
But hey, that's all fun and games, despite Marshall's and Ed's weird obsession over the words written on this site. (The "enemies within" line obviously struck a nerve.)
But if you want a current taste of the DLC's "our PNAC way or the highway" demands on the Democratic rank and file, read this.
The left's unease with patriotism is rooted in a 1960s narrative of American arrogance and abuse of power. For many liberals who came of age during the protests against the Vietnam War, writes leftish commentator Todd Gitlin, "the most powerful public emotion of our lives was rejecting patriotism." As he and other honest liberals have acknowledged, the excesses of protest politics still haunt liberalism today and complicate Democratic efforts to develop a coherent stance toward American power and the use of force.
When Americans ponder such questions today, their frame of reference is not the Vietnam War, but Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks evoked the most powerful upsurge in patriotic feeling since Pearl Harbor, and thrust national security back into the center of American politics. Democrats have yet to come to grips with this new reality. More than anything else, they need to show the country a party unified behind a new patriotism -- a progressive patriotism determined to succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror, to close a yawning cultural gap between Democrats and the military, and to summon a new spirit of national service and shared sacrifice to counter the politics of polarization.
There's nothing patriotic about sending our soldiers to die in a war based on lies about Iraq's threat to us and our allies. And what's more, the American people have realized it. Despite Will Marshall's contentions to the contrary, we are no longer living on September 12, 2001. The public's opinions have shifted based on the situation in Iraq and the rest of the world, no matter how much Will and the rest of his cohorts at the DLC and PNAC may want to shut his eyes, cover his ears, and shout "la la la I can't hear you!"
I could go on, but whatever. It's truly disappointing that this is the crap Hillary has signed on to. More of the failed corporatist bullshit that has cost our party so dearly the last decade and a half.
Also responding are Digby, Gilliard, Atrios, and Sirota.
(And, not to let them off the hook -- Bayh, Vilsack, and Warner also spoke at the event.)