Lieberman, the DLC and democratic values

I just read a couple of articles by Matt Taibbi, who writes for Rolling Stone. These articles take a look at the DLC and the Lieberman - Lamont race in the Democratic Primary for Senate in Connecticut.

Why the Democrats are Still Doomed takes a look at the DLC and their new mouthpiece, Conservative David Brooks of the NY Times. Taibbi discusses an article Brooks wrote about the Lieberman - Lamont race that attacked Lamont supporters as leftists that are unfairly attacking the nice, squeaky-clean Lieberman.

But the most objectionable thing about the Brooks column was its crude parroting of a suspiciously similar DLC editorial published about a month before (See Road Rage, from the August 10th, 2006, issue of Rolling Stone) entitled "The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism." Both columns described Lamont's Internet supporters as "fundamentalist" liberals bent on a "purge" of poor nice old Joe Lieberman, who represents heterodoxy, centrism and bipartisanship. Brooks used the word "purge" twice; the author of the DLC column, Ed Kilgore, used it eight times.

Let's be clear about what we're dealing with here. These people are professional communicators. They don't repeatedly use words like "purge" and "fundamentalist" -- terms obviously associated with communism and Islamic terrorism -- by accident. They know exactly what they're doing. It's an authoritarian tactic and it should piss you off. It pissed me off.

Taibbi, in a conversation with a DLC spokesperson, then questions who these leftists are by bringing up statistics saying that over 440,000 people visit Daily Kos daily and that a recent Gallup poll showed 91% of Democrats supported some kind of withdrawl from Iraq.

"So let me get this straight," I said. "We have thirty corporate-funded spokesmen telling hundreds of thousands of actual voters that they're narrow dogmatists?"

He paused and sighed, clearly exasperated. "Look," he said. "Everybody in politics draws money from the same basic sources. It's the same pool of companies and wealthy individuals . . ."

"Okay," I said. "So basically in this dispute over Lieberman, we have people on one side, and companies on the other? Would it be correct to say that?" I asked.

"Well, I guess if you live in a cartoon world you could say that," he said.

I think it is about time an anvil falls on the DLC and then the Democartic party can get back to putting people above profit and winning elections again.

Check out Taibbi's other article about the DLC and the Lieberman-Lamont race called Lieberman: Bush's Favorite Democrat.