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New DNC Chair-Donna Brazile shows her Lieberman colors "I'm A Lieberman Democrat"

by repost
We knew it all the time. Black Democratic National Committee member Donna Brazile, who convinced former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun to run for in primaries, is a supporter of the party's rightwing, Bush-minded champion, Joseph Lieberman - the Connecticut Senator with the corporate bucks.
sm_brazile_donna_aipac.jpg
New DNC Chair-Donna Brazile shows her Lieberman colors "I'm A Lieberman Democrat"
http://www.blackcommentator.com/36/36_issues.html

Donna Brazile shows her Lieberman colors

We knew it all the time. Black Democratic National Committee member Donna Brazile, who convinced former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun to run for in primaries, is a supporter of the party's rightwing, Bush-minded champion, Joseph Lieberman - the Connecticut Senator with the corporate bucks.



Brazile came out of the conservative closet waving the war flag. "After I heard Al Jazeera broadcasting that videotape showing what the Iraqis did to the American POWs, I was livid," Brazile told the Washington Times. "We have to send out the strongest possible message of support."

Most of the Congressional Black Caucus oppose the Iraq war. "I don't want to make any comment on the Black Caucus' position. They have their reasons. For many people this is a moral issue," said Brazile, revealing her own moral deficit. "We cannot afford to be talking just to the anti-war people. That's easy. We have to talk to everybody, especially independents."

Lieberman is a raving Arab-killer, more rhetorically hawkish than the Bush men.

Brazile managed Al Gore's 2000 run for President, and recently started her own political consulting outfit. Gore's roots are in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the Southern-born, corporate wing of the party now led by Joe Lieberman. The DLC is the most lucrative grazing ground for big consultant fees. In recent months she has been ostentatiously huddling with Republican operatives, as well, advertising her... open-mindedness.

Slyly, Brazile pretends that Congressman Richard Gephardt - who tore his butt with anti-war Democrats by helping craft Bush's first War Powers Resolution, last October - is her favorite guy. However, veteran Washington-watchers (like the publishers of ) can read her like a commercial billboard. Again quoting the Washington Times article: "Gephardt is a personal friend. I worked for him on the Hill. Dick would put America first," she said, but then she added: "I could also support Lieberman. Gephardt or Lieberman," she repeated. Nothing about Carol Moseley-Braun.

Brazile appears to be already giving the racist, sleep-talking Lieberman advice, on spec.

LIE berman's shameless bid

A few days after Brazile's coming-out article, Lieberman announced what the Los Angeles Timesdescribed as "a series of liberal social goals, including affirmative action and an expansion of civil rights protections for homosexuals." The event was less than advertised, consisting of platitudes and outright lies. Lieberman claims to be a staunch supporter of affirmative action, when in fact he has always added the caveat, "but I oppose quotas" - a red herring since no college affirmative action program has included quotas since the Bakke decision of the Seventies. Lieberman pointedly refused to join other Democratic Senators in endorsing the University of Michigan's "diversity" program, back in January. Apparently, the stacks of corporate amicus briefs favoring Michigan changed his mind.

Lieberman is also the strongest Democratic supporter of faith-based bribery in the Senate. White House Faith-based Initiatives operatives routinely praise his efforts to fine-tune the legislation for smooth passage. Singing the same tune, Donna Brazile urges Democrats to collaborate with Bush's plan to buy the political allegiances of Black preachers: "I'm urging them... to discuss where they can agree on domestic issues, such as Bush's faith-based initiative."

By Donna Brazile
CNN Contributor
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Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, is a political contributor for CNN. She also is the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and founder of Brazile & Associates, a Washington-based political consulting firm. Brazile, who was the campaign manager for the Al Gore-Joe Lieberman ticket in 2000, wrote "Cooking With Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics," a memoir about her life in politics.


Donna Brazile says that even at a time of challenges, there's a lot to be thankful for.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/27/brazile.thanks/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Let's rejoice today and get ready to work hard to rebuild our country's future.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.

Though every day should contain a moment or two in which we give thanks to others and reflect on all our many blessings, this is the day we gather with family and friends to celebrate our love for one another and the goodness of others.

There's so much to celebrate this season. Let's rejoice, even as we come to terms with one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression and yet another terrorist attack on innocent people.

For there are always small gifts and minor miracles for which we can and should express our thanks. This Thanksgiving, for me, it includes having elected a new president who has promised to bring us together as a nation.

I am so thankful that, come January 20, we will have a new president, one who promises to bring about change and to help lead our country in tackling the enormous challenges we will face in the coming year.

And I'm especially grateful that the rest of the world is ready to give us a new start, a second chance to reclaim our place in the world. Their celebration of Barack Obama's election brings with it a resurgence of the international goodwill we have not experienced since September 11.

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It is now our chance to lead in the right direction, with friends and allies by our side.

It is now our chance to remember that the United States and all the countries across this delicate globe are interconnected and mutually dependent.

It is now our chance to be a leader and not a conqueror to the rest of the world.

I am also thankful for the young voters who decided to answer the call to serve. Knocking on doors and canvassing America on behalf of their candidates, they were engaged and dedicated throughout the entire political season to a cause greater than themselves.

Many of them traveled the campaign trail for the first time. God bless them, they now have the bug, the passion and the fever in their blood to revive our democracy and make it even stronger in the years ahead.

I am thankful too for women like Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Sarah Palin, who, taken together, represented all women in leadership willing to compete for the top prizes in their field.

Both women served their purpose. Clinton came close to winning the Democratic nomination. Until the very end, she fought gallantly, and I am glad that she is willing to serve as secretary of state in the new administration.

Palin proved to folks who needed such proof that not all female leaders are the same. I can't believe that it needed proving, but apparently it did. She has a real chance to make a comeback in the Republican Party, which is in need of a new brand and a rescue plan of its own.

The lasting lesson of having two women out there talking to voters and making a difference for women leaders is to once again remind America not to underestimate the majority of its citizens.

That's right; women are the majority in the United States. Our time will come, and I hope to live long enough to witness that historic moment come to pass as well.

I am thankful to Howard Dean and the leaders of the Democratic Party for their 50-state strategy. Not just because Democrats won up and down the ticket in so many states, which is reason enough for this partisan to be grateful, but because it showed Democrats, Republicans and independents alike in red states that no vote should ever be taken for granted.

No candidate or political party will ever again forget any state in the quest for electoral votes. The 50-state strategy strengthened our democracy. By making people believe that they and their votes mattered, the strategy brought new participants of democracy into the fold.

This year we voted as a nation, not as red and blue states. And I am thankful for the unity it wrought.

Many of us awaited an October surprise disastrous enough to swing the momentum of the presidential campaign. But the biggest surprise ended up being the form it took: not a manufactured partisan attack but a economic meltdown.

And I am also grateful that in creating one of the most partisan administrations in political history, the Bush administration left the door wide open for our newly elected president to usher in an era of civility and cooperation between the two major parties. In short, team Bush prepared the country for the change Obama offered.

I never thought that in my lifetime I would witness a biracial president of the United States take the oath of office. There is so much to be thankful for that I expect many a turkey will cool while families and friends gather around their table and give thanks for the special blessings in their lives.

Even the unexpected, the unpredictable things deserve gratitude. It is struggle that makes us change, grow and progress. What a blessing it is to have a day in which we can reflect upon all the gifts in our lives, even the ones disguised as hardships.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Donna Brazile. E-mail to a friend | Mixx it | Share

Lieberman Supported School Vouchers
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-08-16/news/0008160033_1_lieberman-gore-school-vouchers
Black support for ticket rescued
Lieberman positions clarified for caucus
August 16, 2000|By Jonathan Weisman | Jonathan Weisman,SUN NATIONAL STAFF
LOS ANGELES - Gore campaign officials moved swiftly yesterday to stamp out a potential brush fire of black voter discontent with Al Gore's running mate, dispatching Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman to personally "clarify" his positions on affirmative action and private school vouchers.

Lieberman, along with Gore's African-American campaign manager, Donna Brazile, and two black Cabinet members, Alexis M. Herman and Rodney Slater, descended on a meeting of the Democratic Party's black caucus to make the case that Lieberman has been sympathetic to their causes since 1963, when he helped register black voters in Mississippi.

The effort appeared to succeed, at least with one key black Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who had previously questioned Lieberman's commitment to core issues important to blacks.




"He has said enough," Waters said after Lieberman publicly affirmed his support for affirmative action and vowed to follow Gore's lead on such issues as school vouchers. "He has done enough, and he has demonstrated his willingness to deal with the issues of concern to the black community."

The Gore campaign's show of force was impressive. But for Democrats, it was a troubling sign that the Gore-Lieberman ticket must still shore up its liberal base of support, even as it appeals to moderate swing voters who will likely decide the election against Gov. George W. Bush.

"When Maxine Waters said she was willing to campaign enthusiastically for the ticket, it meant they've got a powerful ally," said Ron Walters, a University of Maryland political scientist with close ties to black Democratic leaders. "But they've just raised the price for African-American [voter] turnout," Walters added, suggesting that the Gore campaign might have to "sell" Lieberman as more of a liberal.

The Gore team has been thrown on the defensive about issues in which Lieberman and the vice president differ, from the age of Medicare eligibility to publicly funded vouchers to pay for private school tuition. Should Lieberman tack to the left to satisfy the Democratic Party's liberal wing, he risks alienating precisely the moderate voters his nomination was intended to help capture.

The brush fire among African-American Democrats was sparked Sunday when Waters, at a rally in South-Central Los Angeles, raised questions about Lieberman's record on affirmative action, criminal justice and school vouchers.

Herman, the Clinton administration's labor secretary, summoned Waters from a meeting of the party's black caucus yesterday morning. Herman was joined by Slater, the transportation secretary, in a very public full-court press for Waters' support.

Even after that show of force, Waters was balking.

"I would seriously sit out an election if in fact the issues that I have worked on all my life are undermined," she declared.

But after Lieberman took to the podium in a hotel ballroom here to issue a personal appeal for black support, the firebrand lawmaker pronounced herself content.

Gore's choice of Lieberman as his running mate has helped the vice president narrow Bush's lead in the polls. Lieberman's centrist politics appeal to moderate voters, and his reputation for moral probity - cemented by his early, scathing denunciation of President Clinton's behavior in the Monica Lewinsky affair - could help separate Gore from the taint of scandal that hangs over the administration.

But the selection of Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, unsettled some in the African-American community. The Dallas branch president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was forced to resign Aug. 10, after he questioned the choice of Lieberman, asserting that blacks should be "suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money."

Waters and other black politicians raised more substantive questions, especially about Lieberman's support for affirmative action. Lieberman has said he does not support affirmative action programs that involve mandatory quotas. And in 1995, when Californians were considering whether to ban all state-funded race- or gender-based preference programs, he said of the proposed ban on preferences, "I can't see how I could be opposed to it."

Yesterday, in his first public appearance since arriving in Los Angeles after midnight, he sought to explain that statement to black party activists.



As Lieberman recalled, a reporter had asked him about the California proposition at the time it was pending, and he first replied that he did not know enough about it to take a position. But when the reporter read him the proposition, which stated "the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group," Lieberman told black party activists that he responded, "That sounds like a basic statement of human rights policy."
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