Remember the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Council -- a few years ago we couldn't tune into a Punditry mudfest, without getting a healthy dose of their 'kinder and gentler' Corporatist talking points from the “Democratic corner”.
What ever happened to those "middle of the road" Democratic standard-bearers anyways? What happened to that not-so-grand Social-downsizing Experiment, of theirs?
Well, let's first review some not-so-ancient recent political history, on what the DLC was all about …
Democratic Leadership Council -- wikipedia.org
[...]
Positions [of the DLC]
It is the opinion of the DLC that economic populism is not politically viable, citing the defeated Presidential campaigns of Senator George McGovern in 1972 and Vice-President Walter Mondale in 1984. The DLC states that it "seeks to define and galvanize popular support for a new public philosophy built on progressive ideals, mainstream values, and innovative, non-bureaucratic, market-based solutions."[9]
The DLC has supported welfare reform, such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996,[10] President Clinton's expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit,[11] and the creation of AmeriCorps.[12] The DLC supports expanded health insurance via tax credits for the uninsured and opposes plans for single-payer universal health care. The DLC supports universal access to preschool, charter schools, and measures to allow a greater degree of choice in schooling (though not school vouchers), and supports the No Child Left Behind Act. The DLC supports both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). [...]
2003 invasion of Iraq
The DLC gave strong support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Prior to the war, Will Marshall co-signed a letter to President Bush from the Project for the New American Century endorsing military action against Saddam Hussein. During the 2004 Primary campaign the DLC attacked Presidential candidate Howard Dean as an out-of-touch liberal because of Dean's anti-war stance. The DLC dismissed other critics of the Iraq invasion such as filmmaker Michael Moore as members of the "loony left".[14] Even as domestic support for the Iraq War plummeted in 2004 and 2005, Marshall called upon Democrats to balance their criticism of Bush's handling of the Iraq War with praise for the President's achievements and cautioned "Democrats need to be choosier about the political company they keep, distancing themselves from the pacifist and anti-American fringe."[15] [...]
Criticism
The DLC has become unpopular within many progressive and liberal political circles such as the organizations Center for American Progress, Democracy for America, and the blogs Daily Kos and MyDD.
Some critics claim the strategy of triangulation between the political left and right to gain broad appeal is fundamentally flawed. In the long run, so opponents say, this strategy has resulted in concession after concession to the opposition and promotion of a neoliberal economic agenda favorable to corporations and entrepreneurs, including those seeking to privatize public services, while alienating traditionally-allied voters and working-class people. [...]
Others contend that the DLC's distaste for what they refer to as "economic class warfare" has allowed the language of populism to be monopolized by the right-wing. [...]
OK, since Neoliberalism is at the core of this anti-populism school of thought, what is Neoliberalism?
What is neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism is a very important, yet often misunderstood concept. To give a short, oversimplified definition:
Neoliberalism is a small-state economic ideology based on promoting "rational self-interest" through policies such as privatisation, deregulation, globalisation and tax cuts.
[...]
The economic model that the word "neoliberalism" was coined to describe was developed by Chicago school economists in the 1960s and 1970s based upon Austrian neoclassical economic theories, but heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's barmy pseudo-philosophy of Übermenschen and greed-worship.
corpwatch.org defines Neo-liberalism like so:
The main points of neo-liberalism include:
1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much.
2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.
4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."
Progressives have long fought against the rise of Corporate-catering Neoliberalism -- even when it comes from within their own Democratic ranks ...
How the Democrats Became The Party of Neoliberalism
by Arun Gupta, telesurtv.net -- Oct 31, 2014
[...]
Bill Clinton campaigned as a “New Democrat”: tough on crime, fiscally responsible, and stern with welfare recipients. Clinton effectively fulfilled the Reagan Revolution by gutting welfare, passing NAFTA, deregulating telecommunications and the finance sector, and ramping up government spying, policing, and immigrant detention. Clinton could grant the right-wing’s wish list because the Democratic base was conditioned to supporting any deal no matter how bad because the Republicans would supposedly be worse. Yet Clinton needed Republicans to pass NAFTA because the Democrats controlled Congress. He threw millions of poor women and children off welfare to shore up his right flank in advance of the 1996 election.
And there's this Neoliberal critique of the DLC’s first presidential-experiment:
Reconsidering the Legacy of Bill Clinton: When the Democrats Turned Neoliberal
by Steven Jonas for Buzzflash at Truthout, truth-out.org -- Aug 14, 2014
[...]
Bill Clinton introduced us to Big Pharma advertising for prescription drugs on television. The main purpose of these ads, at least as they are now constructed, would seem to be to attempt to protect the firms from charges of non-full disclosure when various pharmaceuticals come to suit. But at the same time, with the visuals all the way through and the often dream-like text about what the pills can do for you at the beginning and the end, the ads: a) reinforce the US drug culture: "take this pill; it will solve your problem"; b) add to the pressure that physicians feel all the time anyway about prescribing; and c) attempt to make patients into self-prescribers.
Following a Reagan decision of 1987, Bill Clinton eliminated what was called the Fairness Doctrine that governed the use by private parties of the publicly owned radio and television waves in the United States. This is what has led to the dominance of US radio in particular by the right-wing political talk that so reinforces the political agenda of the GOP/Tea Party. (By the way, Obama reinforced this elimination in 2011.) [...]
Finally, but again also just briefly here, we must mention what were likely the two most important actions/disasters of the Clinton administration in the economic realm, each of which has played a direct role in the continuation and indeed strengthening of Reaganomics and the increasing stranglehold that the GOP/Tea Party has over fiscal policy. First was the Repeal of the Depression era Glass-Steagall Act that had separated commercial and investment banking. That repeal of course led directly to the crash of 2008 from which millions of people on this country have never recovered and likely never will.
Then there were NAFTA and the World Trade Organization initiatives, which led to the massive export of US capital to countries with (much) cheaper labor and that "massive whooshing sound" of job outflow that Ross Perot referred to in the 1992 Presidential Election Campaign. [...]
Thus ends the History lesson on Democratic efforts at Social-Economic restructuring -- at least some of the most impactful the highlights.
So what ever happened to the DLC?
Once again wikipedia provides the answer:
On February 7, 2011, Politico reported that the DLC would dissolve, and would do so as early as the following week.[4] On July 5 of that year, DLC founder Al From announced in a statement on the organization's website that the historical records of the DLC have been purchased by the Clinton Foundation.[5] The DLC's last chairman was former Representative Harold Ford of Tennessee, and its vice chair was Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware. Its CEO was Bruce Reed.
But Hillary is NOT Bill. She is her OWN person, with her own ideas. Granted.
But she is ALSO a vital part of the Clinton Foundation -- which will be the "GOP elephant in the room" if and when she wins the nomination. And the GOP will parade the former SOS track-record, for all that it is worth. Like it or not.
Economic Populism is popular. Despite the DLC's failed attempts to silence it, the last few decades. And the GOP is trying to co-op that POPULIST message. Especially since the presumed Democratic Nominee has ceded that idealist high-ground, as in a rare moment of recent candor:
Clinton 'pleads guilty' to being a moderate (with Video)
by Dan Merica, CNN.com -- Sept 10, 2015
Hillary Clinton confessed Thursday to something liberals have long suspected: being a moderate Democrat.
"You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center," Clinton told the audience at a Women for Hillary event in Ohio. "I plead guilty."
Then there was the first Democratic Debate, where Clinton let her Neoliberal-cred seep through the shiny new progressive exterior ...
Despite Bernie Sanders’ Prodding Last Night, Hillary Clinton Stuck to Her Neoliberal Talking Points
by Jesse Myerson, inTheseTimes.com -- October 14, 2015
[...]
She tipped her hand, though: pressed repeatedly to agree or disagree with Sen. Sanders’s preference for expanding Social Security, Clinton insisted that she’d rather “enhance the benefits for the poorest recipients of Social Security.” Similarly, as to whether she agrees with Sanders’s health care approach, extending Medicare to everyone, Clinton declined to answer (she doesn’t, though), insisting vaguely that “we agree on the goals, we just disagree on the means.”
Here was the vintage neoliberal approach with which the Clintons are justly associated, unchanged by the financial crises and social movements that have shifted the political terrain since its heyday in the 1990s. The means Sanders favors, the ones that work in Denmark and elsewhere, are universal programs aimed at providing the working class with relief from our dependence on capitalist firms for deriving the means of our own subsistence: public pensions so we aren’t at the mercy of a perfidious “savings industry” and public health care, so we go not merely by the grace of a sector Clinton cited as one of her most prized enemies, but which has contributed more than $11 million to her over her career. (With enemies like this…) [...]
So what ever happened to the goals and interests of the DLC?
These are alive and well, and currently campaigning for your votes ... Afterall, think of the Alternatives -- if YOU DON'T vote for the lesser of two 'choices' the most "centrist" candidate out there; even if grudgingly so.
Hillary might as well 'own it.' Afterall, there are worse things to be, than the modern incarnation of the DLC ...
You could be Donald Trump, for instance. And that quite likely, is where the new political fault-lines will lie.
"At least Hillary's not The Donald." So get out there and Vote. Yay! Two cheers for modern Democracy in action. Yay!
