It Always Gets Worse

It should go without saying that it is wildly unethical for a purported news outlet to turn over network airtime to a family member of the president so she can relentlessly promote his agenda and routinely interview his top officials — but Fox executives have apparently given up even the pretense that the network is something more than Trump’s personal megaphone.

It should.

Don’t get me started on Wittgenstein

😄😎🧔

Reminds me of

republiQans do this every term. Everywhere. Legal or not.

Cheatin’ motherfuckers.

Heidegger?

https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/the-end-of-the-dlc-era-049041

Interesting.

The centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which fought and largely won a battle for the soul of the Democratic party in the 1990s, is on the verge of bankruptcy and is closing its doors, its founder, Al From, confirmed Monday. 

The group’s decision to “suspend operations” marks the conclusion of a long slide from its peak of relevance in the Clintonera, and perhaps the beginning a battle over its legacy, as the organization’s founders and allies argue that it has been a victim of its own success – and its liberal critics are already dancing on its grave.

…The DLC’s demise is, however, is bringing no mournful elegies from the liberal groups who made its name a synonym for everything they saw as wrong with Bill Clinton’s party: what they saw as a religion of compromise, a lack of principle, and a willingness to sell out the poor and African-American voters at the party’s base. 

\“One of the things that’s happening right now in Democratic politics is that progressives are winning the battle for the party,” said Progressive Congress president Darcy Burner. “The corporate-focused DLC type of politics isn’t working inside the Democratic party.” 

The DLC was formed in the 1980s - the debacle of the 1984 Mondale campaign was a key motivator - to wage just that kind of intra-party war against what From and his allies saw as interest-group liberals content to consign the Democratic Party to minority status. The group and its best-known chairman, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, pushed balanced budgets, free trade, tough-on-crime policies, and welfare reform – all of which alienated the base, but became a key part of Clinton’s “New Democrat” agenda and his presidential legacy. 

…The DLC’s raison d’etre, though, became less clear once Democratic moderates had already taken back the party. And after the Clinton years, it picked what many Democrats still see as the wrong fights. 

In particular, its support for President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq – which most Democrats now view as one of the most profound mistakes of a generation – proved a key break from the emerging consensus of the party, and one from which it probably never recovered. That choice echoed through DLC battles with Vermont Governor Howard Dean in 2004, and From’s support for Joe Lieberman’s independent Senate candidacy against a Democratic nominee in 2006. Many Democrats never forgave the group for its compromises during a decade during which Bush’s slim governing majority was viewed as more an accident than a cause for rethinking their basic assumptions. 

In the Obama era, the group has simply struggled for relevance. Its leaders remained close to the Clintons, and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton headlined the DLC’s 2006 annual gathering in Denver. But as Hillary Clinton’s presidential fortunes waned, so did the DLC’s influence. By the summer of 2008, the organization was kicking off its annual meeting a mere block from Senator Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago - but the candidate didn’t find time to drop by.

I mean, that’s 14 years ago, or 17 since Obama said No, but it’s not “become the party”. We still see examples - Pelosi preventing AOC from chairing Oversight for example - but even those are notable as exceptions.

There absolutely is an argument to be made that middle-class voters (such as they may be) can flip between parties. I disagree 100% with the centrist bullshit of the deceased DLC, but it’s still a question any political progressive will have to reckon with.

Lovely! (Very Quiet) Pictures You Can Hear.

Well I knew the DNC and the DNCC but not the DLC. Because they don’t exist anymore, still - TIL!

The Democratic Leadership Council was a non-profit 501 corporation that was active from 1985 to 2011. Founded and directed by Al From, it argued that the United States Democratic Party should shift away from the leftward turn it had taken since the late 1960s. One of its main purposes was to win back white middle-class voters with ideas that addressed their concerns. The DLC hailed the election and reelection of Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of Third Way politicians and as a DLC success story.

DLC and everyone closely affiliated.

So anyone formerly in the DLC and their children, I guess.

I’m sure he’ll find there’s compromises to be made at any level. Sure, capital class which - for a mayor I guess - would be the high-dollar contractors and consultants the city pays, but also the neighborhood groups and the food service groups and so on. You can piss off some of them but not all the time, and you can’t piss off all of them any time.

What’s DLC?

Anyone taking bribes (from billionaires or otherwise) should be a given, right? Is it that all “Establishment Democrats” take bribes from billionaires? So there could be a national elected Democrat who is not an “Establishment Democrat”? And if taking bribes from billionaires was the qualification, wouldn’t that make trump an “Establishment Dem”?

When I think of “Establishment Democrats” I think about long-term federal officeholders like Schumer, but also Schiff and King (who is technically an Independent). They’re “Establishment” because they’re at the higher levels of office in the country. I could also see Cuomo being called “Establishment Democrat” because he’s in a huge city and has outsized sway, but that’s kind of different, hence my question.

So an “Establishment Dem” supports Mamdani and y’all are mad about it?

“Hey! Get back here!”

Tell me about it!

I mean, really - who are the Establishment Dems? Anyone in the DNC? Anyone who’s a Democrat? What’s been Established?

Other . . people?

Do you work with other people?

It involves compromise, doesn’t it. Why would more people make that different?

If you don’t compromise you have to overcome with sheer numbers. Do you think “the people” are going to rise up and do what it takes to not compromise? I’d like to think so, but I also know that’s not going to happen.

So yes, compromise is going to be part of it. That’s how the world works. There have been a LOT of people who have tested that theory, and it always goes one way. Either compromise or make up the difference with big numbers.

It should say “Don’t Disturb” it’s been “Do Not Disturb” for too long. It’s time we embrace the contraction.

“He’s doing the right thing because lots of these people don’t deserve to be here,” Arpineh told the BBC over the phone from the Adelanto immigrant detention centre in California’s Mojave Desert.

“I will support him until the day I die. He’s making America great again.”

Okay, bye!

“I don’t blame Trump, I blame Biden,” Arthur says. “It’s his doing for open borders, but I believe in the system and all the good people will be released and the ones that are bad will be sent back.”

While many of those detained do not have criminal records, Aprineh is a convicted felon, which makes her a prime target for removal.

Yep, bye! I mean, that’s terrible, I’m sorry you’re going through that but then that’s what you wanted. So. Okay?