The Chris Moeller Archives

Unfucking the donkey

July 2005 has been as disheartening a month as one can imagine for progressive Democrats already eyeing the 2008 Presidential Election, especially Iowans. Last week, our governor, Tom Vilsack, took the reigns of the right-centrist Democratic Leadership Council, the demonic corporate-financed coalition that annihilated the Roosevelt-wing of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, lifting Bill Clinton into the White House and losing, for the Democrats, nearly every other branch of state and national government. Vilsack promised--- in double-speak that would make John Kerry swell with pride--- that he would unite Democrats under a "centrist progressive" policy agenda. Huh? Which is it, Governor? Centrist or progressive?

At the same DLC gathering in Columbus, Ohio, the Democrats' likely 2008 nominee, Hillary Clinton, continued her surge to the right, waffling over whether the U.S. needs an exit strategy in Iraq, and leading the "government-as-babysitter" attack on an adults-only video game-- a move that signals Democrats' willingness again in '08 to alienate young voters in return for campaign cash.
And what a war chest Clinton has accumulated!-- $12.6 million for her re-election bid next year. She'll surely raise a similarly hefty sum for her White House run in '08, making that pesky Presidential Primary a mere coronation, rather than the meaningful debate on policy it was designed to be. She'll then discover, as John Kerry did, just how much corporate money can buy you against a Republican candidate.

In the wee hours of this morning, 15 "Bush Democrats" crossed the aisle and voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, allowing the bill to pass by two votes in the House of Representatives. If nothing else, this defection should prove to remaining skeptics in the labor movement why monumental leadership change has become necessary. Guard that candidate endorsement like a Lutheran schoolgirl guards her virginity!

For your perusement, here's a blueprint for Liberal victory in 2008, courtesy of author Rick Perlstein. I liked the editor's title so much, I claimed it as my own.

posted by CM @ 10:17 PM