Washington Post's E. J. Dionne, "Kerry, and the Party Establishment"

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61946-2004Jan29.html

MERRIMACK, N.H. -- Here's the Republican Party line for the near future, coming from a conservative pundit near you: Sen. John Kerry is the establishment candidate who derailed Howard Dean's brave insurgency on behalf of a frightened party leadership.

The party-liners will then predict that Dean's intrepid supporters, intent upon real change, will -- and should -- continue to vent their rage and take Kerry apart. Many who will be saying this were, just a couple of weeks ago, trashing Dean as a dangerous, unelectable, flaky dove. That won't bother them a bit. The identity of the Democratic front-runner has just changed, so all the hostile fire must be redirected Kerry's way.

Of course, turning Kerry into a Mondale-style establishmentarian is but one line of attack. Yesterday Ed Gillespie, the Republican National Committee chairman, said that Kerry's Senate record was "one of advocating policies that would weaken our national security." You could tell how urgent it is for Republicans to make this case, since Gillespie had to concede in his speech that "Kerry's record of service in our military is honorable." On the night of the New Hampshire primary, you could already see the Republican battalions turning their guns. Mike Murphy, the brilliant Republican strategist and self-confessed spinner, told Ted Koppel on "Nightline" that "the establishment side of the party has taken control of the race again. . . . I think you'll see a rush of the party establishment to Kerry because they don't like Dean. He's an outsider."

The only problem with this story line is that Kerry's comeback came despite, not because of, the party establishment, such as it is. In the weeks before Dean's defeat in the Iowa caucuses, a large share of the Democratic leadership was in fact already making its peace with Dean and writing off Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark and the rest.

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[sybylla]

1. Where's the evidence for your claim?

I haven't been in the Primary forum much so maybe this is evident to others but I didn't see any evidence of "Democratic leadership...making its peace with Dean and writing off Kerry."

[WiseMen]

3. Dean Was Endorsed by Establishment: Gore Harkin Bradley. Kerry Stiffed.

Kerry has never been supported by the "Establishment." While viewed as the likely front-runner DLC types saw him a liberal and having too radical a past. Once Kerry went down to Dean attacks, Kerry was
written off and no money went to his campaign from establishment types. Clark was encouraged to jump in and all the money went to Dean, Clark and Edwards.

Almost all the Establisment "Key Endorsements" went to Dean.

Al Gore was one of the founding members of the DLC. He was Vice President and the 2000 Democratic Candidate for President. How much more Democratic Establishment credentials do you want to see.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Nader_DLC.htm
Al From, the founder and soul of the soulless Democratic Leadership Council(DLC), assembled his flock in Philadelphia recently and warned his comrades about a takeover of the Democratic Party by "the far left." Launched in 1985, the "far right" DLC grew to have a controlling interest in the Party through the efforts of then-Governor Bill Clinton, Senator John Breaux, Senator Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman.




http://www.counterpunch.org/bradley.html

Indeed, on the big issues, trade, labor, defense, crime, health care and the environment, Bradley and Gore are pretty much indistinguishable. Both sedulously follow the neo-liberal line charted by the Democratic Leadership Council back in the late 1980s. In the past Gore has pandered to the right, on issues such as race, crime and tobacco. Bradley's signals to Wall Street that he's their man are, even in these lax times, shameless well beyond the point of indelicacy. In the one-paragraph statement on economic policy on the Bradley website, phrases such as "prudent fiscal policy", "open markets", "lowest possible tax rates" and "keep capital flowing freely" bow and scrape from every line.


http://www.progressive.org/nichols9904.htm
. . . . . . . . . . . .
A resolute free marketeer through most of his career, the Democratic alternative to Gore actually shares the Vice President's worst tendencies when it comes to international trade issues. Three days before the 1993 Congressional vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a New York Times article outlined the deep political divide within the Democratic Party over the plan to abolish tariffs and trade barriers with Mexico and Canada. The article identified the bill's leading supporters as Al Gore and Bill Bradley, both of whom declared, "To defeat NAFTA endangers the Presidency." Bradley added: "The days of the forty-year career on the assembly line of one company making one product are over."

This was not a momentary deviation for a man who has often kept company with the Democratic Leadership Council. "If I had to put a label on Bradley, I'd say he was a New Democrat before there were New Democrats," says Richard Aregood, editorial page editor of the Newark Star-Ledger. No shock then that Bradley, who since leaving the Senate has been employed as a senior adviser at J.P. Morgan & Co., counts among his top backers Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, Barnes and Noble chairman Leonard Riggio, and Disney chief Michael Eisner. As Randall Rothenberg, author of The Neoliberals: Creating the New American Politics, once explained, "Bradley's economic savvy has made him a darling of the financial community."

It has not, however, made him the sort of candidate who might be able to attract strong labor backing. During his almost two decades in the Senate, Bradley's AFL-CIO ratings sometimes dipped into the sixties, far below those of Ted Kennedy and even Al Gore.

[sybylla]

4. 3 members of the establishment does not equal the establishment

I understand what you are saying, but doesn't that discredit Gore, Bradley and Harkin?

Rather than analyze a candidate's policies, propositions and plans, Gore, Bradley and Harkin decide to endorse him because he's the frontrunner. Is the party establishment some kind of borg that dictates who its members can support? Or did Gore, Bradley and Harkin perhaps get a bad taste in their mouths from Kerry's kicking his opponent when the media had him down and decide he wasn't viable in the long term? Either way, by your suggestion, these three wisemen of the Democratic party didn't base their support on the candidate's qualifications, experience, and platform.

And I have yet to see any evidence that the DLC or the DNC, the actual "party establishment," has encouraged their members to throw support and money to any one candidate. Just because I am a member of a Democratic organization and I throw my support to someone, doesn't mean that the organization itself also throws its support behind them.

I'm not convinced.

[Nazgul35]

5. So I guess all those establisment..

ward captains in Iowa, Iowa Gov's wife....Gov. Sheehan in NH....all those folks were just figments of our imagination....

Oh, and buy the way...all those Dems you mentioned for Dean came without any institutional organization that could have helped Dean in either contest...and that includes Harkin! He left his endorsement so long that his organization had already committed to other Dems...three guesses as to who they were...

[Corgigal]

2. If you smart

you always hold your friends close but your enemies closer.

[THUNDER HANDS]

6. the Don speaks!

Dank you godfaddah! :D