Centrism defined by the left (sarcasm put in italics)

From David Sarota's blog:

Looking out over Washington, DC, from his plush office, Al From is once again foaming at the mouth. The CEO of the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Council and his wealthy cronies are in their regular postelection attack mode. Despite wins by economic populists in red states like Colorado and Montana this year, the DLC is claiming like a broken record that progressive policies are hurting the Democratic Party.

From's group is funded by huge contributions from multinationals like Philip Morris, Texaco, Enron and Merck, which have all, at one point or another, slathered the DLC with cash. Those resources have been used to push a nakedly corporate agenda under the guise of "centrism" while allowing the DLC to parrot GOP criticism of populist Democrats as far-left extremists. Worse, the mainstream media follow suit, characterizing progressive positions on everything from trade to healthcare to taxes as ultra-liberal. As the AP recently claimed, "party liberals argue that the party must energize its base by moving to the left" while "the DLC and other centrist groups argue that the party must court moderates and find a way to compete in the Midwest and South."

Is this really true? Is a corporate agenda really "centrism"? Or is it only "centrist" among Washington's media elite, influence peddlers and out-of-touch political class?

This blog is controlled by corporations. If only they'd release their grip on me, I might discover the truth: that Americans are craving an economic message from the 1890s! The key to electoral success is to bash corporations and "big wigs" and "fat cats". They're pulling the strings everywhere.

Bill Clinton and the DLC are so hopelessly out of touch. Can't they see that their brand of politicking never won the Democratic Party any presidential elections?

I fail to see how the paranoia of the far-left is any worse than the belief that God chose the president?

On one side, God elects the GOP and Satan controls the Democrats. The "homersexuals" are infiltrating society and recruiting gays at Middle Schools, and the abortion doctors are experimenting with ape babies in order to perfect the practice of harvesting organs from aborted babies. Democrats hate America and are rooting for the terrorists. Christians and white people everywhere are under attack by Affirmative Action and secular judges. Meanwhile, the liberal media refuses to report on any of this because they're controlled by homosexuals and Jews.

On the other side, Democrats fight the evil corporate interests (some of which have actually infiltrated our party!) and the "big wigs" and "fat cats" use the Republican Party as their puppet. The working man is so held down and blinded by the corporate controlled media that he actually votes for the party that's hurting him! The Saudis control everything and it's America's fault that these psychopaths want to blow us all to smithereens - we meddled in the affairs of other countries several decades ago. Meanwhile, we're opening firehouses in Iraq instead of America, and brown people are taking our jobs because of free trade.

Pretty soon, Senator Moore (D) and Senator Dobson (R) will be debating these pressing issues on Capitol Hill.

Or...we could boot Michael Moore out of the Democratic Party. We could do it. He can return to Ralph Nader, for whom he campaigned fiercely in 2000.

The Republicans have chosen to be radical. They've embraced idiots like Sanitorum, Coburn, and Demint and rejected moderates like McCain. We don't have to do the same thing just to spite them.

Zell Miller and his Nazi friends

Look what these bastards are doing now:

For one night only, it'll be spitballs and Swift Boats together on the same stage — a who's who of Sen. John Kerry bashing.

The American Conservative Union on Thursday announced it has tapped Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., to present the "Courage Under Fire" award to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth at the Conservative Political Action Conference's Feb. 16 banquet.

Miller and the group of Vietnam veterans were behind perhaps the campaign's two fiercest and most memorable attacks on Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bid.

Miller, who is retiring next month, scorched Kerry in a Republican National Convention keynote address in which he suggested the four-term Massachusetts Democrat had voted to cut so many weapons systems, it appeared he wanted to send the military to war with only spitballs.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran ads after the Democratic convention questioning whether Kerry was in fact the decorated Vietnam War veteran that he claimed to be.

"The swift boat veterans performed an invaluable service to America," Miller said in a statement. "These veterans took a lot of undeserved criticism for daring to speak the truth."

The Swift Boat Nazis for Truth aren't people. They're a steaming pile of human fecal matter. I'm not being extreme or using hyperbole. That's the truth. And now Zell Miller is lumped in with a group that even most Republican Senators condemned as dishonorable. I'd love to meet one of these idiots and give them the heil sign.

Montana on the road to swing state, DailyKos on the road to Neverland

Kos claims that Montana is on the road to becoming a swing state. His evidence:

Montana 2000:
Bush 58
Gore 33
Nader 6

Montana 2004:
Bush 59
Kerry 38
Nader 3

and

Clinton carried Montana in 1992, though it wasn't due to strong Clinton support. Clinton garnered just 37.6 percent of the vote, to Bush's 35.1 percent and Perot's 26.1 percent. But it is interesting to note that John Kerry, Mr. New England Liberal, outperformed Clinton performance in the state.

So...liberal John Kerry scores .4% better than moderate Bill Clinton, and conservative George W. Bush scores 24% better than moderate George HW Bush. And that shows us that Montana will soon be a swing state?

Montana is one of the top 4 most conservative states in the Union. We won a governor's race this year, and that's great, but that doesn't put it in play for Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Thanks for the comments

Someone keeps commenting (I think it's Brennan). Thanks for the comments. I'm trying to get more people to trash me on here but it's not easy sometimes. I'm getting plenty of hits lately - just not many comments. Join the "fray"!

By the way - I'm trashing liberals so much lately because liberals run the Democratic Party and we lost this time. I hate George W. Bush. We need an effective weapon to combat his infinite evil and stupidity. And I happen to believe that the most effective weapon is moderation.

I don't mean compromise. I mean bold ideas from the center. We shouldn't give anything to the simple minded/anti-intellectual/blood thirsty/subtly racist/theocratic right-wing of the Republican party. Instead, we should bludgeon them over the head with a mix of bold proposals - from the center, the center-left, and sometimes even the left (especially if you're talking about social policy).

Things not sentenced to death today:

My complete and utter lack of interest in this trial.

Move On

Chris Suellentrop gets at something that I've been saying for a while: many people wasted their money over the course of the last 2 years:

There are worse things to do in life than make people feel good, but most political organizations—especially ones that spend more than $30 million during an election and get called a left-wing Christian Coalition—have more concrete goals. MoveOn, however, isn't an organization so much as an outlet. It's a network of aggrieved liberals, connected by the central nervous system of the Internet, and it enables its members to convince themselves they're "doing something" when they're really not.

"They say they want to mobilize Democrats, but it doesn't seem like they have any infrastructure to do so," an aide to one of the Democratic presidential candidates told me. "It seems that they run ads to build name recognition, so they can raise money, so they can run more ads." If the goal is to energize the Democratic base, MoveOn isn't even succeeding at that, the aide complained. They're "just exciting a finite universe of hysterical liberals."

In the days after Sept. 11, Americans wanted to do something, anything to help those who had been struck by tragedy. So they did something: They gave blood, and they went home feeling better about themselves, knowing they had done their part. Later, they found out that the country had given so much that, more than likely, their contribution was thrown away. During the therapeutic politics of the 2004 presidential campaign, MoveOn was the Red Cross: It made liberals feel better, but all those $50 contributions were wasted.

I think this year's presidential race proves that there is a "money ceiling" in races with universal name recognition. At a certain point, an increase in funds directed towards a state doesn't do much. If we had spent $5 million more in Ohio, for example, it wouldn't have made a difference. People would have been robo-called 12 times a day instead of 10. Big deal. Or their door would be knocked on 3 times instead of 2. Whoopie.

What did MoveOn.org do, anyway? They send out a "daily outrage" email. They ran some expensive ineffective ads. Can anyone remember any of them?

Dean on Meet the Press (followed by a rant)

Dean had some good things to say on Meet the Press. Most people misunderstand his message, however.

Dean's message is (and always was) that Democrats should fight for our positions (no matter what they may be). That could be from the center or from the left. We need a vibrant left and center in order to win elections.

But right now we're stuck with a left wing that is frothing at the mouth and looking to expel the center from the party.

The left seems to have this idea that centrists are controlled by corporations and lobbyists. Again with the anti-capitalist conspiracy theories...

In the minds of many on the left, this country has moved too close to pure free market capitalism and too far away from a mixed economy (it started under Reagan and continued under Clinton). They're right that we need a safety net for health insurance, but beyond that I don't think the government needs to get back into the business of throwing cash payments at poor people (job training programs, yes, but blank checks? No.)

Another constant gripe on the left is that the media has consolidated. I think that's a pretty big problem and we'll need someone to do something about it. You won't find many fans of today's media out there - on the left or the right. But the idea that the media is part of a huge "corporate" conspiracy to numb our minds and feed us right-wing propaganda (a constant theme on the left) is ridiculous. Television has always distracted us from more important things, but it's a powerful medium if used towards the right purpose. Nothing has contributed to the cultural moderation of society more than television (with it's gay characters, single parents, and racially tolerant messages). And all under the watch of these supposedly "right-wing" corporations.

The truth is that most people with plenty of money are socially liberal or moderate (hence, the growing "professional" class within the Democratic Party). They're not our enemy and they're increasingly alarmed by the puritanical nature of the GOP. We need their money (do you really think that your $25 dollar donation to the Dean campaign affected ANYTHING?) and we need their support. So get off their backs, already!