by Bob Downing
May 17, 2003
An Open Letter to the Democratic Leadership Council and its leaders Al
> From and Bruce Reed:
As a young activist and union organizer I will doubtlessly be part of next year's Democratic push to unseat the President. Right now, after the historic world-wide anti-war protests, we in the Movement are ready to do the work: walking precincts, dialing thousands of phone numbers, and just talking to voters as many of us genuinely like to do. But having read about the memo the DLC is sending to the Democratic presidential candidates, I want to send your organization a very clear message:
If you want us to win this one for you, stay out of our way or risk becoming irrelevant.
Seriously. Your attempts to pull the Democratic Party to the right are bound to lose this election for us like you lost the last one. No, we haven't forgotten that Al Gore's highest surge in the polls came right after his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. In it he deplored "big tobacco, big oil, the big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs", but afterwards the "new Democrats" in the DLC urged Gore to go with a more moderate message.
He did--and he floundered right through Election Day trying to sound like a Republican. For a moment though he appealed to millions of Americans who are tired of stressing out about not having health care and not having a hospitable planet for their grandkids to live in, until your group used the press to pressure Gore to tone down his populist rhetoric.
Now you're at it again with a memo called "The Real Soul of the Democratic Party" splashed across newspaper pages. It tells candidates that it's "folly" to appeal to "Democratic activists instead of the Democratic rank-and-file", that Dick Gephardt's universal health care proposal is an example of pandering, and that traditional Democratic politics are "defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest group liberalism at home." Howard Dean is tarred with the label "activist" for suggesting that the government should be used to fight social evils.
It's all quite disgusting in its hypocrisy. I, for one, can imagine no greater "elitist interest group" than the wealthy Washington suits in the DLC who suck from the corporate teat for a living. I wonder if either of you have gone a single day in the past year without health insurance--because 60 million Americans have, and if we can get even a quarter of them registered to vote and to the polls, we'll win.
If we refuse to raise expectations, however, the rank-and-file will be too dispirited to vote, the Bush administration will have four more years to dismantle the vestiges of our greatest Democratic Party achievements (like Social Security), and the activists like me that you rely on for turning out voters will continue to flee to the Green Party.
Now is not a time to be over-cautious and to dilute our message with free market/anti-government propaganda. Harry Truman once said that if voters have a choice between a Republican and a fake Republican, they'll choose the real thing every time. In order to get Americans excited about voting we need to provide them with a real choice.
If, however, candidates stick with the DLC agenda of job loss through free trade, international resentment through unjustified wars, and business unaccountability through deregulation, the voters will know they have already lost even before Election Day, and they will stay home.
Yes, I know the DLC thinks its conservative Southern strategy is the only way to win, but the DLC's one victory in 1992 is not repeatable next year because there'll be no Ross Perot to split the conservative vote. The only way to win is to appeal to the half of the population that currently feels too demoralized to bother to participate.
I know these folks. You might write me off as a fringe-left Bay Area activist, but I can tell you that after talking to hundreds of struggling workers it is clear to me that California is at risk to go Republican next year. This is not because these workers will vote GOP, it's because they need hope to inspire them to go to the polls. Your organization only offers fear and Stalinist discipline.
If there is one Democrat who should be disciplined right now it's DLC booster Joseph Lieberman who tries to win points by attacking "big spending Democratic ideas of the past." What does it profit our party for its highest profile candidate to attack "Democratic ideas"? Republicans are too smart to attack their own achievements, but when Democrats do it the DLC applauds.
This cannibalization is exactly what the Republicans want. They worry when the Democrats start addressing the fundamental injustices of our society because they know this message has a broad appeal. The DLC though is too poisoned by corporate dollars to allow any deviation from its free market orthodoxy. They are too fanatic and corrupted to appreciate a winning, populist strategy of job creation, universal health coverage, and a clean environment.
It's too bad. I hate to think that we activists will spend the next 18 months spinning our wheels without having the tools of change necessary to engage the rank and file voters.
Let's stop this DLC sabotage before the train runs off the tracks. People are ravenous for change and ready to work for it, if only we can be convinced that the enemy is Bush and not the "new Democrat" appeasers who serve his corporate sponsors.
Bob Downing is a San Jose, California, based organizer for the Health Care Workers Union SEIU Local 250. He can be reached at mt2r at hotmail.com
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