DLC chairman Harold Ford Jr. debated Markos Moulitsas during today’s Netroots Nation luncheon. Here is my succinct recap of how the debate went. Markos talked about our successes. Harold Ford pointed out that a lot of the candidates that we helped to elect turned around and voted against us on FISA and then said (paraphrasing), ‘these are your people that fucked you over, what are you complaining about?’
Or, in other words, ‘I’m here to make you eat a little shit with your box lunch sandwiches’. It must be said that Harold Ford Jr. has not convinced me that he (or his organization) sincerely wants Barack Obama to win this election. He doesn’t act like he wants Obama to win. When he appears on television (which is far too often) he makes backhanded arguments that undermine our candidate.
Someone will have to post a transcript of Ford’s performance so I can display for you the full flavor of his corporate lackeyness and his dripping contempt for the progressive movement.
Booman you are so spot ON!!!!!!!!!!
By the way Ol’Harold is much smaller and slighter than he appears on TV. He is just as slimey.
Best comment was Markos saying”That ASSHOLE Joe LIEberman”
DLC Ford ran outta here as soon as it was over.
dude makes me angry.
.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I do respect Ford for making an appearance. But I sat here watching it on streaming video and found myself yelling at my monitor and regularly saying !!! WTF !!! out loud to no one but the dog. He seemed to be oozing condescension in many of his comments and observations.
And to top it all, after his totally insane and illogical defense of the FISA, we had a questioner who asked the very question that needed to be asked as a follow-up to his defense of the vote and Markos jumped in and “rescued” Ford because the question was outside the parameters of the session’s debate about party infrastructure.
Very disappointed in the substance of the discussion.
Harold Ford is definitely a dick, but I can’t argue with the fact that he “pointed out that a lot of the candidates that we helped to elect turned around and voted against us on FISA and then said (paraphrasing), ‘these are your people that fucked you over, what are you complaining about?'”
he’s right, isn’t he? harold Ford didn’t help Chris Carney or Joe Sestak or Jerry McInerny get elected. We did that.
Touché.
However, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me……..you can’t get fooled again”
Or some idiocy like that.
and I can take you out”
We need to remember this little saying. And then we need to implement it. If one particularily egregious Bush Dog was selected, taken out in the primary, and a somewhat more progressive Democrat elected in his/her place, we would have made a good point.
However, if we get them dumped in the primary, and our candidate loses the general, the exercize backfires.
it’s the ‘what are you complaining about?’ that I am referring to.
yeah, I’ll conceded that that’s annoying as all hell.
You get the feeling what Harold Ford needs is a good belt in the chops. Maybe more than one.
doesn’t he work for Fox News too? Harold Ford is a DLC stooge..has he even give Obama the Max 2300 donation?? I’m sure he can afford to.
He used to work for Fox. He now works for NBC.
He mentioned during the debate that “he still has tremendous respect for his former colleagues at FOX”.
That brought a precipitous round of booing,hissing, moans and groans from the people in the room.
You can move the politico out of FOX, but you can never fully remove FOX from the politico. Once he is there the contamination never goes away.
We should always be grateful to someone who tells us ugly and painful truths. Ford is a tough guy, has to be. His family has had power in and around Memphis a long time. He knows the mind of the people. He has had the race card blatantly played against him. Until we can get enough progressives in the House and Senate to get things done without conservative Democrats, I, for one, will prefer to have them with us rather than against us.
An enemy would have suggested that we were right and should go after all who betrayed us. That would play into the hands of the Republicans. We are tougher than that. If not we need to be.
Howdy to you, Boo, in Austin. I’m just back from painting DC pink and green.
But speaking of green…Harold “has his orders” as I like to say, but really, he’s jealous; just green with envy.
Remember, he was supposed to be the new pink poodle in 1996–he was the wave of the future, etc., etc. He was riding hard on Gore’s coattails…and hasn’t awakened to the fact that the world has moved on from the warmed over DLC pablum that was supposed to make him a national star.
I didn’t see the Ford/Moulitsas thing, but it seems to me that what he was really saying was this:
“You guys got them elected, but me and my guys got them to fall in line. What are you gonna do about it?”
I’ve heard a lot of justified grumbles about our Netroots candidates jumping ship now and then, but no consideration of WHY they do this. Just for the hell of it? Because they like biting the hand that fed them, just to prove they can? I doubt it. It seems to me the most likely explanation is that these greenhorns walk in and fimmediately find themselves in the middle of an ongoing shitstorm where they are suddenly subjected to all kinds of powerful and sometimes inescapable pressures from people they don’t particularly like (kind of like an initiation).
To tell you the truth, I think that’s what just happened to Obama on this FISA thing. Existing power blocs bring their power to bear… to show “who’s boss” and to “teach a lesson”.
In other words, getting people elected is only step one. And of course, step two is that their supporters quickly lose interest in supporting them, because they made a bad vote. Now that we put them in, take them out? That takes too long, is very denoralizeing to all concerned, and it misses the point. It willprobably just keep happening. Maybe we should look a little deeper and be a little more realistic. I don’t mean being happy when our people cave, but we need to learn how to parlay our support into real power.
Not that I am by any means an expert in this, but I suspect that many of us are babes in the woods when it comes to how things actually work in Congress… we have to learn to martial support and help these guys buck the pressures on difficult votes. Hopefully it will be somewhat easier when there are more Democrats, but let’s face it, our party still has a strong bloc of powerful quislings.
right on target.
And, outside of money donations, it would be good to hear from the officials we help elect as to what support they want, what support, while they are in office, would HELP them hold true to the platforms on which they campaigned.
Bidirectional dialog, basically. (Which absolutely cannot happen with a candidate that refuses to even USE the internet, like McCain.)
I’ve gotten to know and stay in touch with my congressman and his staff. I communicate at least several times a month. Although he’s a blue dog, I suspect its more because of a belief in a balanced budget than any other ideological position. Still, I was amazed when he voted no on the recent FISA amendment, even though I heard from one of his staff that he had resisted some pressure to do so. I let him know immediately how happy I was that he was fighting for our 4th Amendment rights and would write LTE’s to that effect if he needed them. I’m not nearly as pleased with my VP wannabe senator who seems to hang to the right of his republican counterpart of late.