They asked for donations "to help strengthen the Democratic base statewide."
My husband, God love him, ripped the caller a new one. And he doesn't even read blogs (he hears about them secondhand from his crazy left-wing wife).
"Do you know where you're calling?" he said, his voice rising with a mixture of incredulity, anger and just a touch of amusement. "This is Massachusetts. The legislature is 95% Democratic. And you want me to give you my money WHY?"
He said the caller (in all likelihood a paid solicitor -- the DLC doesn't use unmanagable grassroots volunteers when you can hire someone to do the same job) was taken aback, but then went back to her prepared script.
"Look, I've never even heard of you folks, and I'm not going to give my money to you from a phone solicitation," he said. "Send me some literature, and I'll donate if I think you deserve my support for whatever it is you're supposed to stand for." And with that, my brilliant, darling hubby hung up, muttering, "Sheesh. Idiots."
And that, my friends, is in a nutshell why I loathe the DLC.
More after the flip.
The whole rationale for the call was simply mind-boggling. For starters, it's redundant and wasteful for PAID phone callers to solicit money to strengthen local organizations in the bluest of blue states.
But I see a darker purpose here. I think that the Democratic Leadership Council is trying to rake in grassroots donations because they see Howard Dean's success in doing the same, and are frightened. Frightened of him, of the grassroots, of the waning of their own influence, as that of the grassroots organization he is building grows.
Not one week ago, both my husband and I got surveys and solicitations in the mail from the DNC, signed by Dean. I think it's no coincidence that this call comes so closely on the heels of that mailing.
For Dem voters who don't think about politics until they have a ballot in their hands, it confuses them when the DLC calls. They think it's an official party rep talking, and are likely to give their limited political dollars to them and their handpicked Joementum candidates, leaving nothing to support the DNC's own efforts.
Calling and asking for individual donations "to strengthen the party statewide" is EXACTLY what Dr. Dean has been doing. They want to pre-empt his message and siphon off those donations first, where they're to be had. The DLC wants to stop the grassroot's growing importance while giving the impression that they're also listening to the rank and file of the party.
I call bullshit.
The mission of the DLC, as it's currently constituted, is to preserve the DLC and consolidate its power within the party so it can continue its mission. It's a circular and self-justifying argument, wasteful and useless in the extreme in the struggle we now face to rescue the country from its slide toward one-party rule.
From the DLC website (italics mine):
While the parties are seen as moving towards left and right, the voters are moving to the center. There are now more moderates and fewer conservatives and liberals than a quarter century ago when Ronald Reagan was first elected.
The challenge to Democrats is simply this. To make significant gains in Congress and win back the White House, they have to offer an agenda that convinces voters they will govern from the vital center.
We're convinced Democrats can do that by offering voters progressive ideas for keeping their families safe, assuring them a chance to get ahead, helping them raise their kids in a difficult environment, and fixing a political system that seems increasingly remote from everyday life. In other words the key for Democrats is to offer new and innovative ways to honor their first principles -- security, opportunity, responsibility, and community -- not to abandon their values.
In shaping alternative policies -- particularly on national security, terrorism and Iraq -- Democrats have to be very careful to avoid reinforcing the negative stereotype that has cost us so much in the last two national elections.
It's telling that these useful idiots put "fixing the system" last in their laundry list of "progressive ideas," the others being, in order, security, upward mobility, and social stability for the middle classes that they yearn to snag.
The DLC just doesn't get it. The system is broken, smashed to pieces and trampled underfoot by graft, greed, runaway corporate influence, Repug think tanks, and domination by the consultant class.
They bang the drum that Dems need to become more like Repugs, appealing only to issues that directly concern individual voters, without addressing the problems that have traditionally concerned the traditional Democratic base of workers, blue-collar families and the disenfranchised; making sure there is a social safety net for the least among us; church/state separation and the right to privacy, free speech, and freedom of conscience; respect for the environment; of diplomacy first and war as a last resort; and a system that doesn't reward corporate greed or teach that you get ahead by stacking the system.
This is exhibit one why the DLC is so dangerous to the fight against Republican oligarchy. They -- meaning Al From and the consultants who earn their living steering this group away from the messy, rocky, uncivilized shoals of knuckles-bared campaigning to a kinder, gentler, mushy 'vital' centrism that offends no one -- have bought the Repug frame lock, stock and barrel. Namely, those who vote Repug have values. Those on the left profess none, and that's why undecideds favor Repugs. So, dear me, we have to reassure these nervous nellies that no, you can be a Dem and still have "values."
Feh. This group's website crows how they advocate "activist government," when in fact they have actively worked against activist grassroots movements from the get-go. If they had their way, folks like Howard Dean would be muzzled and the consultant classes would run the party entire, forever and ever, amen, becoming "activist" only when their paid pollsters give them permission to do so.
The fact that they ask for dollars to strengthen the Democratic state organization in what is arguably the bluest of blue states is wasteful in the extreme and patently absurd -- if in fact that's what those dollars will be used for. I somehow doubt it. Even if we were a red state, the DLC isn't interested in strengthening the party on the state level, because that would diminish their own influence nationally. And that's the last thing they want.
The DLC doesn't want to fix things. They see Repug piggies at the slop trough and want some of that for themselves.
But they're not getting one dime from this household for that purpose.