nader

The Corporatist Democratic Leadership Council

by Ralph Nader

Dissident Voice
August 7, 2003

Al From, the founder and soul of the soulless Democratic Leadership
Council(DLC), assembled his flock in Philadelphia recently and warned
his comrades about a takeover of
the Democratic Party by "the far left." Launched in 1985, the "far
right" DLC grew to have a controlling interest in the Party through the
efforts of then-Governor Bill Clinton,
Senator John Breaux, Senator Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman.

If there were a superlative to the word "hubris," it would come close to
describing Al >From and his DLC cohorts. With unseemly regularity, they
take credit for all Democratic
victories as having been rooted in their philosophy of
turn-your-back-on-organized labor and open-your-pockets-to-corporations
(who fund the DLC, incidentally). All Democratic
defeats are explained as owing to losing candidates being too "left" or
too "populist."

The DLC brags about one of their own-- Bill Clinton-- developing the
message that brought the Democrats the White House in 1992, after the
disastrous failed and supposedly
ultra-liberal candidacies of Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis
in 1988. Clinton insiders will tell you that Ross Perot (and his 19
million voters) was more responsible
for beating President George H. W. Bush than the DLC strategy.

So what is the explanation when two of their very own, Gore and
Lieberman, lost what should have been a landslide election in 2000? Soon
after the election was stolen by
the Bushites and the Supreme Court, From's group gathered to post-mortem
the reasons why Gore lost (though he won) and concluded it was because
he chanted populism
("I will represent the people, not the powerful"). A few months later,
Lieberman agreed with From, saying he would not have campaigned with
words that criticized industries like
the oil, insurance, drug and HMO barons. (To his credit, From has not
blamed the Greens.)

But Gore won the election-- both the popular and, as subsequent reviews
documented, the electoral vote in Florida as well. (See Jeffrey Toobin's
book "Too Close to Call.")
Instead of going after the still-operating perpetrators of this theft in
Florida and pushing for national electoral reform that not only
accurately counts all the votes but eliminates
the disenfranchisement of citizens from the voting rolls, the DLC
continues its ideological tautologies.

Observers are still waiting for the DLC to explain how, with Democratic
candidates espousing its protective imitation of Republicanism, the
Party could lose more governorships,
more state legislatures and both the U.S. House and Senate. Overall, it
has been downhill since the DLC drove the Party into groveling
haplessness beneath corporate
lobbies and their corrupting campaign contributions.

As the New Republic, a fan of the DLC, reported, the Party deliberately
chose conservative Democratic challengers to win back the House in 1998
and 2000 only to have them
go down in defeat. DLC-type Democratic Senate incumbents went down to
defeat in 2002, plaintively expressing their support for George W.
Bush's war mongering and
pro-super wealthy tax policies.

To the DLC mind, Democrats are catering to "special interests" when they
stand up for trade unions, regulatory consumer-investor protections, a
pre- emptive peace policy
overseas, pruning the bloated military budget now devouring fully half
of the federal government's entire discretionary expenditures, defending
Social Security from Wall Street
schemes, and pressing for universal health care coverage.

So right-wing is the DLC, mounted imperiously on their sagging Party,
that even opposing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, that cause huge
federal deficits and program cuts in
necessities such as health, education, environmental protection and
children well-being, is considered ultra-liberal and contrary to winning
campaigns.

"Special interests" to the DLC means defending the rights of African-
Americans, Hispanics, blue-collar workers, and securing the full day in
court for wrongfully injured
Americans. Being serious about consumer justice and environmental
protection also raises DLC's eyebrows.

It is hard to discern how much is left for the Democratic Party's raison
d'etre when these activities are excluded.

In 1995, Al From emerged from a closed-door meeting with Silicon Valley
executives and announced his support for their restrictive legislation,
which passed and made it
harder for defrauded investors to hold the responsible outfits
accountable. Al >From was on another mission that day- raising money
from these same computer industry
moguls.

Small wonder that the DLC is not exactly hard on the ensuing corporate
crime wave that has looted or drained trillions of dollars from millions
of investors and pensions.

So far right is the corporatist DLC that it believes that the Party can
move toward Republican positions and still maintain its voting base
among labor and minorities because
they have nowhere else to go. Maybe that is one reason so many of these
voters are staying home.

Liberal Republican Senators in the Seventies, such as Jacob Javits (New
York) and Chuck Percy (Illinois), would now be considered on the left
wing of the DLC-dominated
Democratic Party.

Besides, what does the Democratic Party win if it loses its historic
principles as the Party of working people and the downtrodden? Nothing
more than the right to take marching
orders from its corporate paymasters.

Ralph Nader is America’s leading consumer advocate. He is the founder
of numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, and has
twice run for President as a
Green Party candidate. His latest book is Crashing the Party: How to
Tell the Truth and Still Run for President (St. Martin’s Press, 2002)
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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