marco said, among other things . . . " I'm not sure that you're being fair to the DLC. Consider that decisions made by the president alone, while important, tend to be less important than many of the practical decisions of his appointees. While Clinton might be well to the right of anyone here, including myself, his political appointees by and large seem quite satisfying and seem to be drawn from traditional Democratic constituencies (yes, I know, there are counterexamples as well)."
Compared to almost all of them, our friend DeLong is a positive Bolshevik. No real liberal got a position with influence over economic policy, or if he/she did, they morphed into un-liberals.
People here I think misconstrue the nature of the DLC. It's not a top-level organization. It's an outfit that caters to Democratic elected officials who were conservative to begin with. The only person coming out of there who became a real heavy-weight is Bruce Reed. Their top economist, a guy named Rob Shapiro, took six years to get an Administration job, and that was as a Commerce deputy secretary or something like that for economic statistics. They stage corporate funded bashes for right-wing dems to hold forth, and they issue a modest amount of research and policy stuff. Even my own organization is larger than they are.
" . . . One shouldn't confuse that with a strategy to disenfranchise the progressives."
Actually DLC has been pretty explicit about their desire to disenfranchise progressives. Though more recently they have tried to make nice, a little bit.
> Nader is well-positioned to move forward, with or
> without Nathan. The Greens are not the critical
> factor in this. It's the Ralph Party. The resignation
"I don't think that that's to the Greens' credit. Perhaps every small party should parachute in a celebrity to gain votes? Perhaps every celebrity should sponsor a political party of their own? Marco"
No it isn't, but that's the way it is. This year does point up the importance to a marginal party of exploiting celebrity, but it can't be just any celebrity. Ralph is a walking, angry encyclopedia of progressive program, and a tough s.o.b. to boot. There aren't many like him. When he asserts something, people believe, with justification, that he knows what he's talking about, and given the power he could do something too.
max