Major leaders in the Democratic party – including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and NY Governor Kathy Hochul – have still refused to endorse Democratic nominee for New York Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, despite him winning the primary fair and square.
In this ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, Mehdi presses Doug Jones, a former Democratic senator from Alabama, on the matter. Jones admits, “If you were a Democratic leader, it’s hard to not endorse a Democratic nominee.”
“The mayor of New York’s got a whole bunch of folks that he’s got to deal with in order to get New York where he wants it to be,” Jones explains. “And that’s going to take some ability to compromise. If he [Mamdani] does that, he can be successful. So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Democrats should start compromising with their left instead of capitulating to republicans and demanding that the left be happy with their “compromise.”
Establishment Dems sure are compromised.
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?
DLC and everyone closely affiliated.
Anyone taking bribes from billionaires.
How do you define establishment dems? Or is this the same tired “always be attacking” on the least interesting angle — definitions of words? Is that you, Jordan Peterson?
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.
The DLC doesn’t exist because it consumed the entire party. That’s the point.
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.
So you’re going to ignore that Hilary was the party head in 2016? Biden’s entire presidency? The Harris campaign? These are deep neoliberal DINOs.
In 2016 party head was Debbie Wasserman-Schultz until the convention, when she was ousted for her crimes. Donna Brazille finished the year as interim chair.
Biden’s entire presidency had some spectacular progressive wins, are you going to ignore that? The Harris campaign was excellent until the Biden people demanded she not speak against his administration. DNC consultants then tried to highlight her appeal to “everyone” which, as always, is a mistake.
“Deep neoliberal DINOs” is just right-wing trolling language y’all use for reasons that escape me. As if politics is an epic videogame and the actual work of running and maintaining a party is either utterly unknowable or extremely evil.
It’s just regular boring stuff for most of it, and until “the left” or whatever can get good with something, anything, that resembles a national party, you’re going to have two choices. That’s just the simple reality of the situation. So please help us.
Are you going to ignore the chaotic fascist idiocy that is the result of not voting for Harris? Because it sounds like “the left” (or whatever it is) is super happy about it. If it isn’t, then its planned response to fight it is either a cartoonish wish that anyone over 30 can tell you is not going to happen (national workers strike! Arm the revolution!) or it doesn’t exist. (See above)
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.
🙄
Fuck compromise. That’s not what the people want.
The party of “no matter who and no matter what they do” now wants the left and ONLY the left to “compromise” with them.
We’ve seen what they call “compromise” from when they “compromise” with republicans. They want capitulation and nothing else.
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.
Ability to compromise, or willingness to accept bribes? If your platform is people first, which his seems to be, who would the compromise be with, exactly?
Other . . people?
I think it is likely that the implied compromises would be made with the capital class, not the working class. That’s the distinction I was aiming for and deriding. In keeping with that line of thought: if corporations are people, then I suppose yes, other people.
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.
I have no issue with that take, and I agree with you there.
I may have an unfairly uncharitable view, but that’s not what I believe he meant. If he did, I would withdraw my smarm.
So an “Establishment Dem” supports Mamdani and y’all are mad about it?
