Mark Schmitt says the glee over the DLC's demise misses the point of its founding and its sad history. In the eyes of its critics, the Democratic Leadership Council, which announced Monday that it was closing shop, represented the "corporatist" wing of the Democratic Party. Ben Smith in Politico summarized the criticism as "a religion of compromise, lack of principle, and a willingness to sell out the poor and African-American voters at the party's base." "I wasn't at war with the DLC," Smith quotes DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas as saying, "but with the corporatists who are ruining my party." To The Washington Post's more temperate Ezra Klein (also a Prospect alum), the DLC stood for a formula of "liberal ends through market means," exemplified by the Affordable Care Act. To Klein and others, the DLC's end could be seen as simply the achievement of its policy goals. KEEP READING. . .
