red onion

There is a fight going on for the soul of the democratic party, that is now becoming more apparent to myself, and the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC believes we ought to be more centrist, in order to win the presidency. Yesterday, Kos on the Daily Kos asked for suggestions for bumber stickers for the DLC (seriously folks), only, he didn't get many serious answers. Many were quite hilarious. My contribution was this:
"Help, I'm stuck in 1992, and I can't get out", which is, admittedly, not very funny, but is a reference to the DLC's obsession with Bill Clinton, and how Clinton was as a centrist.

All of this begs further study, of course, which I don't have time for today. The farmer at Escaton links to Digby at Hullabalo, for an analysis of the DLC:

It seems that by the DLC’s calculation, the “far left” doesn’t consist of Green party members or anti-globalization protestors or radical groups like Earth First and Peta. According to them, middle aged, middle class Democrats like me who enthusiastically backed charter DLC favorite sons Clinton and Gore in 3 successive presidential elections, supported the wars in Kosovo and in Afghanistan, aren’t fond of bureaucrats whether they work for government or the corporations, respect the need to curb long term deficit spending and come down on the side of the CATO institute as much as the ACLU when it comes to civil liberties…are now “far left.”

Concering a subject important to me right now, economics, the farmer also linked to an awesome sight called the Conceptual Gurerilla's Strategy and Tactics, on the subject "cheap labor conservatives".

Using this ideology, the cheap-labor ideologue paints himself as a defender of “freedom” against “big government tyranny”. In fact, the whole idea that the “private sector” is independent of the public sector is totally bogus. In fact, “the market” is created by public laws, public institutions and public infrastructure.

But the cheap-labor conservative isn’t really interested in “freedom”. What the he wants is the “privatized tyranny” of industrial serfdom, the main characteristic of which is – you guessed it -- “cheap labor”.