The Dems “liberal wing:” something new

Thomas Edsell at Huffington Post:

…Some black leaders within the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are complaining that under Gerald McEntee, Hillary Clinton's strongest and most outspoken backer in the labor movement, union money is being spent to build white turnout for the New York Senator in what has become a racially polarized competition for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a number of sources.

The conflict is emblematic of the intensifying hostility within Democratic ranks as the nomination fight slowly moves towards closure. The fact that the two leading candidates are a black and a woman has produced internal and external disputes involving civil rights, women's rights and a variety of other groups and leaders in the liberal wing of the party. …

Edsell's entire post is here.

Disputes within the liberal wing of the Democratic party are nothing new.

In 1968 Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Eugene McCarthy, both long-time liberals, and Sen. Robert Kennedy, by then generally regarded as a member of his party’s liberal wing, were all involved in the battle that year for the Dems’ presidential nomination

Sen. George McCovern was one of a number of liberal Dems who fought for the party's 1972 presidential nomination.

And only a few years ago two of the Dems’ liberal wing’s then rising stars - NY’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and NY's now disgraced and resigned former Governor Eliot Spitzer – were going after each other with a viciousness Sens. Clinton and Obama have yet to approach.

Disputes within the Dem’s liberal wing are not new.

It’s what the current disputes are about that's new.

In a "rush to the bottom" by both Clinton's and Obama's followers, the disputes within the Dems' liberal wing are now almost entirely about race and gender.

That's sad.

I think what we’re witnessing should be called: “The Triumph of PC Values and the Academic Left.”