The centrist think tanks appear to have succeeded in neutralizing the Democratic party.

[madfloridian]

I refer to this meaning of "neutralize" which I found on Word Web.

"Make politically neutral and thus inoffensive"

Their stated goal has been to change policy so that no one would be tempted not to vote for a Democrat.

The DLC's former head, Al From, said it just that plainly. This is from a 2009 interview with him at the WP.

Al From interview

"One of the important things we had to do in 1992 was remove the obstacles that kept people from voting Democratic in the first place," he said.

That included addressing issues of welfare, fiscal discipline and crime. "As long as people thought we were going to take money from people who worked and give it to people who didn't work, they didn't want to listen to anything else," he added. "The Republicans have to make people understand that they're not just a right-wing, southern party."

Notice how hard it is to get anything done for the poor, needy, the unemployed. Notice how easy it is to get stuff for the rich who don't need it.

Here is more from that interview about Obama and "post-partisanship." Note the similarity to what has happened recently on the national scene.

The other advice he offered was for Obama to make good on the campaign promise to create a post-partisan politics. Swing voters are especially important in this era of polarized politics, he argued, and Democrats should do nothing to cede the center to the Republicans. Because nothing in politics is permanent.

"Post-partisanship is not going to be a compromise between the two old orthodoxies. It's sort of creating a new politics," From said. "I think we're pretty early to make a judgment as to how the administration's going to go, but I also do think it's important for Democrats to remember that if we aren't careful, it's possible to get pulled back into some of the bad habits that got us in trouble two decades ago."

Bad habits? Really? Like listening to the traditional constituents of your party?

Another founder of the centrist think tank echoed Al From.

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

That "ideological" freedom is showing itself clearly now.

The decision to become a "business-led" party began a couple of decades ago. It is seeing fruition now. We knew it was happening. Trouble is the only way to stop it would be to hurt the party ourselves, and most of us never wanted to do that.

From The American Prospect in 2001

Privately funded and operating as an extraparty organization without official Democratic sanction, and calling themselves "New Democrats," the DLC sought nothing less than the miraculous: the transubstantiation of America's oldest political party. Though the DLC painted itself using the palette of the liberal left--as "an effort to revive the Democratic Party's progressive tradition," with New Democrats being the "trustees of the real tradition of the Democratic Party"--its mission was far more confrontational. With few resources, and taking heavy flak from the big guns of the Democratic left, the DLC proclaimed its intention, Mighty Mouse–style, to rescue the Democratic Party from the influence of 1960s-era activists and the AFL-CIO, to ease its identification with hot-button social issues, and, perhaps most centrally, to reinvent the party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a probusiness, pro–free market outlook.

It's hard to argue that they haven't succeeded.

Today's is not your father's Democratic Party. Though the dwindling chorus of party progressives provides counterpoint, today's Democrats are proud to claim the mantle of budgetary moderation. They oppose President Bush's $2-trillion tax-cut plan not by arguing mainly for more spending on health, education, and welfare, but because it risks the new sacred cause of paying off the national debt. They are the party of increased military spending, the death penalty, the war on drugs, and partnership with religious faith. They are the party of Ending Welfare As We Know It, the party of The Era of Big Government Is Over.

I remember this post from a blog called The Horse's Ass. I have quoted from it before because of the not so elegant way the blogger spoke about bi-partisanship.

From 2007

When the media establishment moralistically calls for more bipartisanship, this is what they are talking about: Democrats caving and crossing the aisle to vote with the Republican block. It almost never happens the other way around on the most important issues of the day. Almost Never.

The issue here was simple. Is simulated drowning torture, and thus illegal? Mukasey, soon to be our nation’s top law enforcement official, refused to say. So this noble display of bipartisanship now confirms that the United States of America is a nation that condones torture.

Fuck bipartisanship.

This is almost exactly like 2007 when the whole media scene was yelling for bipartisanship. The difference is that we have a Democratic president who is actually carrying out the "bipartisan" theme.

From 2007... sounds like today unless you look at the date.

Since we won the election in November 2006, the spokespersons for this group have been front and center on TV. They are pushing for all of us not to be partisan, not to be angry about what Bush has done to this country, pushing for unity, pushing for bipartisanship.

That means they get to have their agenda, because the right wing is going to keep fighting fiercely. It looks like our side is the only one getting the shaft.

I love some of the bloggers today, they are really digging in their heels on this.

Digby's Bipartisan Zombies...a great read

Bipartisan Zombies

"Today we have none other than the centrist drivel king, David Broder, reporting that a group of useless meddlers, most of whom who were last seen repeatedly stabbing Bill Clinton in the back, are rising from their crypts to demand that the candidates all promise to appoint a "unity" government and govern from the the center --- or else they will back an independent Bloomberg bid."

The unity movement did not make headway. So they called it the new No Labels movement.

The DLC has ceded real power apparently to the Third Way.

Other than that it's all the same.