I was reading a great article about Visionaries over at Greater Democracy and noted the DLC Memo mentioned therein. (For those of you who don't know the DLC is the Democratic Leadership Council - the so-called "centrist" Democratic Party group often associated with Bill Clinton).
What gets me about this May 2003 memo is the almost bizarre characterization of Dean supporters as "elitist":
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.
I just don't know where they get this stuff. My guess is that its their knee jerk reaction to anyone challenging their assertion that they are the only "real democrats". How vile. They'd rather paint the heart and soul of their party (grassroots activists) as the problem rather than admit that they (the DLC wonks) are the elitists.
Update: After reflection, perhaps my distate for the DLC is better targeted at their leadership, and not neccesarily their rank and file. For example, there are some members of the DLC that I would have thought could be called "progressive". Also, the memo slams Gephardt, a DLC member. I'm starting to wonder how much this memo actually speaks for the DLC membership...
Update (2):: I've been scanning the New Democrats Online (the DLC web site) and the Progressive Policy Institute. Its not clear to me how much of the content on these sites is actually supported by their members. For example, here's an article supporting the righteousness of the war in Iraq, even though some of its members never supported the war. The DLC really confuses me - what is their organizing principle besides bashing progressives (even though some of their members are in fact, rather progressive)? And why do they use the term "progressive" in the name of their policy division -- the Progressive Policy Institute?
