The Trouble with the DLC

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From Truthout:

By Glenn W. Smith
The Rockridge Nation
Monday 13 August 2007

Glenn W. Smith examines how a strategy pursued for decades by advocates of "centrism" has suppressed appeals to progressive values.

Why are Harold Ford and others from the more paternalistic and condescending quarters of the Democratic Party so keen on discrediting the rising progressive movement? What have been the consequences of their obsession with "the middle"? Most importantly, how have the Tory Democrats managed to bury the expression of deep progressive values, and what should the progressive movement do about it?

For three decades, advocates of "centrism" have used their money to monopolize the Democratic message and leave the progressive base out in the cold, not spoken to. Since its founding in 1985, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been leading this effort. How did they pull this off? Before we get into that, let's call them what they are. "Centrist" implies conciliation, moderation, compromise. It reinforces the mistaken idea that our political life falls along a neat, linear scale from left to right. That metaphor makes the center a pretty good and safe place to be. And that it certainly is not.

The plutocratic Democrats should be referred to not as centrists, but as industrial authoritarians. Their movement was born after the Nixon re-election in 1972. They blamed that landslide on Democratic Party rules changes that audaciously sought to include Americans formerly excluded from the back rooms of power. They fronted for older corporate interests - oil and gas, finance, insurance. The are really 19th-Century paternalists who would save us from ourselves by keeping us far from the plantation's Big House.

These industrial authoritarians figured out how to dominate Democratic messaging. When DLC chairman Harold Ford lost his cool in his Meet the Press encounter with Markos Moulitsas on Sunday, it was clear just how determined they are to continue their domination.

Most of the messages delivered to voters were delivered in the course of elections, not between elections. It took a good deal of money. They had money. So their movement aimed at influencing those messages, making sure no alternative visions or values were discussed. Hence, the decline in the national and state Democratic parties, and any semblance of a progressive infrastructure. Their monopoly on message was achieved at the very same time the Right was building a message machine - think tanks, radio shows, magazines, local grassroots networks - that was all about delivering message and influencing the opinion environment before election seasons ever arrived.

Their campaign model intentionally inverted the logical plan, in which you would maximize your base vote and get just enough votes from outside the base to win. The centrists wanted to win with just enough base voters and the largest possible number of votes from outside the base.

With the centrist strategy, the base got a little mail and a few GOTV phone calls, the "swing voters" got messaged.

The development of so-called "coordinated campaigns" grew out of and advanced this strategy. Coordinated campaigns were pioneered by shrewd strategists in the South. Using efficiency as an excuse, the strategists developed coordinated efforts in which candidates for statewide office would pool resources to pay for base voter programs. These programs were usually light on message. It was all "get-out-the-vote" and very little "we stand with you for these values." Aware that white voters in the region were bolting the Democrats in the wake of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, the plutocrats wanted to reassure white voters that the Democrats remained loyal to their interests. The bulk of campaign money - television ads for instance - were targeted to more affluent, white audiences.

It's not difficult to see the consequences of this strategy. Progressive base voters, especially in African-American, Latino, and other disenfranchised communities, were abandoned when it came to Democrats voicing their values. Democrats could appeal to voters in the so-called middle with technocratic policies, promises of competence, and wonkish mumbo jumbo that either: 1) avoided values altogether; 2) Or, appealed outright to the authoritarian, "strict father" side of white suburban voters. Crime is a great example. The industrial authoritarians promised super-heroic crime-fighting sprees that would even embarrass Republicans. Forget the root causes of crime, like inescapable poverty, illness, crumbling schools, the disappearance of hope.