BY A. ALEXANDER | May 20th, 2007
By mid-2006 it looked like the DC Democrats had learned their lesson. It appeared they had finally realized that the Democratic Leadership Council’s (DLC’s) political playbook, was little more than the perfect recipe for becoming an irrelevant political party. During the last election cycle the once spine-challenged DLC smitten Republican wannabe DC Democrats, had actually embraced their base and began confronting the GOP’s failed anti-working class policies. The result was electoral victory.
To their credit, for the first two or three months, the DC Democrats governed the nation with the enthusiasm that they had co-opted from their thriving political base. Democrats opened meaningful investigations into the Bush administration’s many illegal activities; they fashioned and passed a minimum wage increase; Reid and Pelosi worked together to close holes in domestic security; Democrats formulated legislation designed to reduce corporation representing lobbyist influence; and they formulated plans to end the Iraq War.
One by one the Republicans managed to stall the passage of the Democratic agenda and the Democrats immediately reverted to their inside-the-beltway, guaranteed to lose DLC playbook. Instead of continuing to confront the administration over Iraq, Democrats entered negotiations that will eventually yield them nothing and bring the war’s end no closer than the day it began in 2003. Instead of continuing to pressure the White House and Republicans to end the war, Pelosi and Emanuel hitched their political fortunes to the DLC inspired “free trade” agenda and immediately went about the business of selling out the American worker.
That single act, selling out the American worker in favor of enriching corporations, is proof that the DC Democrats have sidled up, again, to the failed approach and agenda of the DLC. Incredible as it may seem, it appears to have taken the Democrats all of five months in power to forget that it had been the DLC’s failed policies that had kept them in the political wilderness for all those years. And, too, Democrats seem to have forgotten that following their base had returned the Party to political power.
The Democratic Congressional leadership would do well to be rid of the DLC and, perhaps, have Senator Webb of Virginia school them on something called “populism”. Senator Webb understands the wave of discontent that is sweeping across America. He understands that the American worker is sick and tired of always getting the short end of the stick and that more policies designed to benefit corporations, won’t win any elections for the Democratic Party. Corporations, if the Democrats hadn’t noticed yet, have a Party…the Republican Party. Webb senses that Democrats could, if they had the courage and wisdom to align with the working people, establish a political dominance that would last into the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, DC Democrats have no interest in what Senator Webb might have to say. The DC Democrats have already turned their back on the base - on the working American and have realigned themselves with the guaranteed-to-lose DLC. The proof of the DC Democrat re-conversion can be found in the recent corporate coddling and selling out of the American worker - eh-hem - “fair trade bill” that Congressional Democrats secretly negotiated with the Bush administration.
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