They Keep TRYING To Make "Liberal" A Dirty Word

As I get older I find myself getting more and more liberal. I think it is because I see the mean-spiritedness of the conservative movement now. I see the harm their ideas have done to this country. I find myself upset to see the conservative Democrats going along with some of the policies that really will hurt people in their everyday lives in a painful way. I remember how it really got going with Newt Gingrich and his language control attempts in his 1996 GOPAC memo. He and his cohorts made liberal sound like an insult. Then the think tanks on his side picked up on it, and a few on our side of the aisle as well. They sneered at liberals, made them synonymous with words like "fringe" and "radical". I remember when I first realized how most of my Republican family felt about anything remotely off center to the left. A family member scornfully called my parents "bleeding heart liberals." My parents were moderate old-fashioned Southern Baptists who even hesitated to sip wine because the church forbade it. I noticed it again in 2003, and it really hurt then. Those of us who became so active in politics with the Dean campaign were called liberals and scorned as fringe activists. It was stunning, and it carried right down to the local level. And it was not the Republicans who did that, it was our own party. The most annoying thing was the preempting of the labels. The conservative Democrats began to call themselves progressives as they pushed liberals aside and called them fringe. They also renamed themselves the "sensible center" and the "moderate middle" and other similar high-sounding terms. It started a long time ago. And through the years the degrading comments toward liberals/leftists/the left have escalated. 1985 Blueprint for reforming the party. In his "Saving the Democratic Party" memo of January 1985, From advocated the formation of a "governing council" that would draft a "blueprint" for reforming the party. According to From, the new leadership should aim to create distance from "the new bosses"-organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups-that were keeping the party from modernizing. From's memo sparked the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in early 1985. According to Balz and Brownstein, "Within a few weeks, it counted 75 members, primarily governors and members of Congress, most of them from the Sunbelt, and almost all of them white; liberal critics instantly dubbed the group 'the white male caucus.'" These words in the 90s from Al From, then head of the DLC, were real gems. He is actually saying that President Clinton beat the GOP to issues before they knew what happened. Something odd about bragging about pre-empting the Republican party. "One Election, Two Interpretations The predominant analysis in the media echoes the New Democrat view that Clinton won by pre-empting the right on such issues as crime, welfare reform, and a balanced budget. "Every time Dole tried to get cracking on an issue," Al From pointed out at a post-election DLC press conference, "he couldn't do it because the president had, in a sense, beat him there." Democrats at the Crossroads Pride in using the GOP's policies before they got around to doing it? There should be pride in standing for real Democratic values, not the punitive conservative ideas. An article from the DLC website in 2003 not only went after Howard Dean, his website, and his supporters, it attacked Democratic Underground. Yes, it really did. "Meanwhile, in addition to its standard-fare official website, deanforamerica.com, the Dean campaign also maintains a weblog called blogforamerica.com that plays a curious role in keeping activist supporters emotionally invested and engaged in the campaign. It is part sitcom, part soap opera. Enthusiastic campaign supporters participate in the drama, posting their own comments in related discussion areas. The interactivity and the cacophony of voices help create a sense of energy -- the feeling of a movement." But there is also another, simpler explanation for why fringe groups would be using the Internet better than mainstream campaigns: "Because they have to," said Fose, McCain's Internet manager. Certainly, the fringes of the political spectrum are active online on heavily trafficked discussion boards such as the left-wing democraticunderground.com and the right-wing freerepublic.com. Dean's fiery message resonates in the left-wing haunts. He is the favorite son on democraticunderground.com, according to the site's proprietor, David Allen, and the people posting on that site are an animated bunch. Much of what they post -- about Bush, and about moderate Democrats -- would not be appropriate to repeat here. But the question remains: It's easy to activate the activists, but what about everyone else? Nothing but Net I always find myself thinking that they must not need the activists since they so often scorn them/us. I hope they never find that the activists are not there anymore. Also in 2003 the same group defined the role of activists in the party. They as much as said there is none. There is no role for activists which they seem to equate with the left, with liberals. The Real Soul of the Party Hint: It is not activists. Not only is the activist wing out of line with Democratic tradition, but it is badly out of touch with the Democratic rank-and-file. "But the great myth of the current cycle is the misguided notion that the hopes and dreams of activists represent the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Real Democrats are real people, not activist elites. The mission of the Democratic Party, as Bill Clinton pledged in 1992, is to provide "real answers to the real problems of real people."Real Democrats who champion the mainstream values, national pride, and economic aspirations of middle-class and working people are the real soul of the Democratic Party, not activists and interest groups with narrow agendas." ..."What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home. That's the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one." An article in 2004 pointed out the newest young leaders in the New Democrat movement. Note the use of the words "interest groups", "minority groups" "weak on defense." One of the founders once said of the DLC that they had been founded to lessen reliance on the traditional interest groups and get funding from corporations. Then they did not have to stand for things that made it hard to win. These young New Democrats have the talking points down pat. (Jamal)Simmons and his fellow "Young Turks" worry about the Democratic Party's dependence on interest groups, their relations with minority groups, the stereotypes that they are weak on defense and values, the Republican appropriation of the "reformer" label and the swaths of America that Democrats seem to have written off." .."We respect the struggles of the feminist movement, the civil rights movement and Vietnam, but (we) are not defined by those struggles," says Kirsten Powers, 37, a New York-based strategist and commentator for Fox News. "We want to take what is good in liberalism and make it better, and get rid of what is not working." ..."Simmons, Powers and New York City-based consultant Dan Gerstein have been three of the bluntest commentators. "The party in certain respects is fossilized," says Gerstein, 37. "It's trapped in the last vestiges of the New Deal coalition. That coalition is no longer an electoral majority or even close to it." A former aide to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Gerstein wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Democrats have "fallen right back into the elitist, weak-kneed, brain-dead trap" they thought they'd escaped with Bill Clinton." It's time to pass torch, younger Dems say The words about "the left" have gone on for years, decades. In 1998 Al From said: "I've got bad news for the President's opponents in both parties: New Democrats are winning the battle for their party's soul. New Democrats, not liberals, will be the party's dominant force in the 21st century." New Democrats are here to stay In 2003 Evan Bayh had choice words about the left. His words were condescending. Bayh has a history of sparring with the left in his party. As chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council in 2003, he warned of then-rising presidential campaign of Howard Dean. “The Democratic Party is at risk of being taken over by the far left,” he told DLC members in 2003. “We have an important choice to make: Do we want to vent, or do we want to govern?” Bruce Reed of the DLC talked about how the DLC has completed its mission. “The political mission of the DLC has been largely accomplished,” said Reed, who’s had the group’s No. 2 post since 2001. “Twenty-five years ago, the forgotten middle class had serious doubts about Democrats, and now Democrats are winning the middle class, suburban voters, moderates by handsome margins. Our next challenge is to deliver on that promise and earn those votes for years to come." Political mission completed He did not refer to voters on the left. Some of the most contentious words used by the party have been directed, not at Republicans, but at "the left", "liberals". Notice how this article accuses us having narrow agendas. We are called "elitists" by those who sit in their ivory towers and make the decisions. The Real Soul of the Democratic Party Real Democrats who champion the mainstream values, national pride, and economic aspirations of middle-class and working people are the real soul of the Democratic Party, not activists and interest groups with narrow agendas. Most Democrats aren't elitists who think they know better than everyone else; they are everyone else. They don't swoon when they hear a candidate say it's time for Democrats to dream again. What they want is the American Dream, where everybody who works hard and plays by the rules has the chance to get ahead. SNIP..."Not only is the activist wing out of line with Democratic tradition, but it is badly out of touch with the Democratic rank-and-file. In 1996, a survey by the Washington Post compared the views of delegates to the Democratic convention to those of registered Democratic voters. The delegates perfectly mirrored the Democratic electorate in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. But they could not have been more different when it came to class and education. Democratic delegates were nearly five times more likely than Democratic rank-and-file to have incomes over $75,000, three times more likely to have a college degree, and over four times more likely to have done postgraduate work. No wonder that when the New Yorker recently asked Karl Rove to describe the Democratic base, he said, "somebody with a doctorate." One of the latest to toss careless words out about liberals is Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln calls out the Democratic left In a new interview with The Hill, Sen. Blanche Lincoln -- facing a tough Democratic primary challenge funded by national progressives on Tuesday -- called out her opponents on the Democratic left wing. Lincoln said she is facing criticism from a political movement that she suggested is divorced from the political reality. Divorced from political reality? There is a constant in the jibes at the left, the liberals. We are always talked about in the 3rd person. Like we were in a separate place or location in time and space from the rest of the party. We are referred to as they or them, never in the 1st person plural like we or us. The words through the years have left their toll. As we have moved to the right things have changed in this country. The wars are growing longer, the rich are getting richer, and now the poor are growing poorer. Each time we get in power now we move right so as not to offend the Republicans, while they have no hesitation about offending us greatly and often. The most annoying thing of all is the attempt to portray liberals as not very bright, not very politically savvy, unable to see the big picture. That's the problem. We do see the big picture. We see the harm done when there is a concerted effort to define a whole group of people as being fringe and inadequate. We see the harm done when we fail to stand up to the meanness of the conservative movement of today.