THE CASE AGAINST THE DLC. Meanwhile, up in America's Dairyland, Senator Russ Feingold has pretty much had it. This is the best argument yet made against the DLC by someone not named David Sirota. (And certainly better than my perennial favorite, "Let's Get The Jaws Of Life And Pry Al From Out Of The Hospitality Suite.") More than anything else, the DLC created a generation of gun-shy Democrats, and that was fine, as long as we could be reasonably confident that the other side would not throw the entire United States government into the monkeyhouse. Confronted with actual existential threats to the progressive tradition, the Democratic Party looked around after Bill Clinton blew town and found that all its shock troops had melted away. (Indeed, Clinton, that priapic dunderhead, owed his survival in office to the steadfast loyalty of people he'd earlier knuckled for cynical political effect.) This is a good, legitimate argument for a political party to have within itself, and perhaps the best indication of what Feingold's talking about is that at least some very big D's are going to be afraid to engage in it.
--Charles P. Pierce
