NYT: The (DLC) Centrists Didn't Hold

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/opinion/28scheiber.html

The Centrists Didn’t Hold

By NOAM SCHEIBER
Published: July 28, 2007

Washington

NOT very long ago, the Democratic Leadership Council was a maker of presidents — or, at least, the maker of a president. In 1991, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, then the council’s chairman, elucidated the “New Democrat” ethos and previewed the themes of his presidential candidacy (“opportunity, responsibility, community”) with a speech at the centrist group’s annual conference. “It became the blueprint for my campaign message,” Mr. Clinton later wrote in his autobiography. He added, “By embracing ideas and values that were both liberal and conservative, it made voters who had not supported Democratic presidential candidates in years listen to our message.”

But few headlines will be made this weekend at the council’s “National Conversation” in Nashville. The next president of the United States almost certainly won’t be there. Not only are Democratic front-runners like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama planning to skip the conference, but so are the Bill Richardsons and Chris Dodds of the field. That’s probably a good move for the candidates, as the council has become radioactive among Democratic primary voters. But the Democratic Leadership Council’s fading influence is also good news for the entire party.

One cause of the council’s decline is obvious. The group lost a direct line to the White House when Bill Clinton left office. But the change has also come about for more subtle reasons. The New Republic, where I work, was once closely associated with the council’s moderate agenda. These days, however, many of the fights the group picks seem as quaint to me and my colleagues as an old Fleetwood Mac song. Despite what you hear from the council, the biggest problem facing the Democrats, and the nation, is not the party’s liberal activists.

snip//

Today, the council has almost no constituency within the Democratic Party. About every five years, the Pew Research Center conducts a public opinion survey to sort out the country’s major ideological groupings. In 1999, Pew found that liberals and New Democrats each accounted for nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base. By the next survey in 2005, New Democrats had completely disappeared as a group and the liberals had doubled their share of the party. Many moderates, radicalized by President Bush, now define themselves as liberals.

On a variety of issues the council, and not the party’s liberal base, is out of touch with the popular mood. A recent Washington Post poll found that 60 percent of independents, along with 70 percent of Democrats, favor withdrawing from Iraq by next spring.

Two decades of work by the Democratic Leadership Council — and a not inconsiderable assist from President Bush — have made the Democratic Party the healthiest it has been in the 22 years of the council’s existence. Democrats should thank the group and then tell it that it’s no longer needed.

[Arugula Latte]

1. Things Fall Apart

:)

Including bad things, like the DLC

[HereSince1628]

5. Yeah, I'm heartbroken.

Not!

Too bad, too. Membership in the DLC gets right down deep into the bones. Once contaminated, always irradiated,

[democratsin08]

2. this is bad news

we need more moderates

[ulysses]

3. that's exactly why it's good news. n/t

[Colobo]

7. We need more progressives.

[struggle4progress]

13. The DLC isn't "moderate," and rejecting the DLC doesn't mean rejecting

moderation.

Anybody with any political pragmatism knows that politics is often a game of defining and holding the political center.

The DLC actually pushes a corporate agenda through a peculiar alliance with rightwing Republicans: the DLC pushes a "triangularization" strategy that involves continually moving the Democratic party towards the right in a supposed search for the center.

nfortunately, this strategy doesn't work because the center isn't over there.

The real political task is not to find the center but to construct it consistent with national needs and realities -- and if we forget this fact, we will become a contemptible rudderless ship of fools.

If we follow the DLC strategy, we look politically shrewd, visionless, and morally bankrupt: that's the reason we lost Congress in 1994.

[IndianaGreen]

18. DLC are not moderate Democrats, they are disenfranchised moderate Republicans

They were hurt by their irrational pursuit of appeasement of the Bush regime. Their New Labour counterparts in the UK, were hurt by Tony Blair's support of Bush's criminal war in Iraq.

New Democrats and New Labour have joined the Vichy French in the pantheon of those that enabled tyranny rather than opposed it.

[Robbien]

4. What a bunch of bunk. The DLC is despised by the base. Clinton etal knows this

That is why they are having this event. The DC presidential candidate Dems are having the DLC hold this fiasco and not go. Then they can say to the voting base, "See we are not DLC".

Not buying.

They can keep changing the name and call themselves DLCers, NewDems, BlueDogs or ThirdWay or whatever. We know who they are.

[Maat]

22. I agree with you, Robbien!

I smell a rat (or a BUNCH of DLC rats).

[Greyhound]

25. Actually it's now "the defenders of democracy", (fanfare follows)

and just look at this http://www.defenddemocracy.org/biographies/biographies.htm">list of their bedfellows. All the usual suspects gathered again...

[Faygo Kid]

6. this is good news

We need more focus on the issues that matter to people, like economic justice and financial security, preserving the Constitution and the integrity of the vote, assuring adequate health care and getting the HELL out of Iraq, which has always been an afterthought to the DLC.

I don't know what a "moderate" is anymore, but I suspect it's somebody who thinks Bill O'Reilly may actually be looking out for them, at least occasionally, and that George W. Bush actually gives a rat's ass about the bulk of the American people.

[Wilms]

8. .

[illinoisprogressive]

9. Poor DLC. I am not sorry to see it decline.

[mzmolly]

10. Darn, there goes a great talking point for Nader and his ilk.

:P

[ulysses]

26. I'll gladly make the trade

since it was the point all along in my book. :D

[fightthegoodfightnow]

11. NO SURPRISE DLC FALLS SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE GOP

They are one in the same.

The DLC is irrelevant.

DLC: Be gone. You have no power here.

[bvar22]

12. Did the DLC get the memo?

Centrism as a political philosophy is DEAD because Centrism has NO ISSUES for which it STANDS.

Triangulation as a political strategy is a FAILURE because eventually the chickens come home to roost!

Be wary.
Despite its absence of grassroots, and its unpopularity with Democratic voters, the DLC still has the backing of the large Corporations and their puppet media. The DLC ownes Hillary Clinton.

[KittyWampus]

14. Trianagulation is the strategy Ben Franklin used to get France on our side...

so it certainly DOES work.

[knight_of_the_star]

28. That wasn't triangulation

What Franklin did was convince the French that 1.) Working with us was an excellent opportunity to give the British a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and 2.) We could actually win. It was effective diplomacy, not triangulation. Triangulation is finding a middle ground that isn't really there and running towards it, what Franklin did was wait for his opportunity (The Battle of Saratoga) and until then keep pushing the idea quietly and with the right people. Big difference there.

[KittyWampus]

29. Triangulation is working across the isle to advance your overall agenda. Franklin didn't just

work with France.

He spend quite a long while cozying up to England to the point that many of his fellows back in America thought he was a traitor.

The whole time Franklin cherished dreams of England granting him a large parcel of land. He wasn't all that enthusiastic about breaking off completely.

But ultimately he played England and France off one another. By working with England, he essentially got France to give us money.

And your definition of Triangulation is not correct.

As a political term, it came into use with Clinton and refers to his willingess to pick up positions from the right in order to get the rest of his agenda passed.

[wisteria]

15. Up until recently they have had too much clout in the party. I think November 06 changed that.

We can thank leaders within the party, like Senator Kerry for changing the direction of the party. Of course, we had a hand in this too. I wouldn't credit Bush though, the DLC was still pushing a domestic agenda in 06 and was petrified to stand up to the Republicans.
Now, I wonder where this leaves Senator Clinton, she may try to shy away from the DLC right now, but she shares in a major component of its leadership. Actually, I would hope that she is not trying pretend she is not associated with it at all.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. The now-played wild card: Bush radicalized the moderates

No one could have predicted that. <---- sarcasm

[unkachuck]

17. nah....

"Democrats should thank the group and then tell it that it’s no longer needed."

....no need to thank them....

[IndianaGreen]

19. The DLC became lobbyists for Big Banks and war profiteers.

From the OP:

Democrats, moderate and liberal, have been bewildered by the group’s post-Clinton agenda. Take, for example, the law passed by Congress in 2005 that makes it harder for ordinary people to declare bankruptcy. The measure’s only obvious beneficiary was the credit-card industry, and most Democrats opposed it. One main exception was a coalition of House members allied with the council. In an implicit rebuke to their Democratic colleagues, these New Democrats declared their support for the bill “as champions of both personal and fiscal responsibility.”

<snip>

The leadership council made an analogous mistake in the aftermath of the Iraq war. By 2006, most Democrats who supported the invasion had recanted. But council officials doubled down in the face of the fiasco, attacking opponents of the war during Ned Lamont’s Senate campaign against Joe Lieberman.

[ProSense]

20. Two good pieces: Death of Triangulation? and Village Bipartisan Block Party

The Death of Triangulation?

The Village Bipartisan Block Party...Somewhere a new well of stupidity has been opened

[WCGreen]

21. I was attracted to the DLC back in 1994 because of Clinton...

I quickly saw the true meaning of the DLC and left before the years was out...

All that triangulation bullshit accomplished only one thing, the complete marginalization of America's disenfranched poor...

[Totally Committed]

23. That's why there is this current full-court press to get a DLC-er crowned POTUS

before anymore of the rank-and-filers catch onto their "game". Clinton, Richardson, Dodd are all currently DLC. Edwards was formerly, but no longer. Obama and Biden might as well be, if they let their policies, and their "centrist" stands do the talking.

So, here we sit with a Party the DLC and their toadie candidates have triangulated so far to the right, it's only a shade different than the other side, and is filled with electeds who (in any other era) would have just run and won as Republicans, and still stand with and vote with their political soulmates whenever the chance to derail any meaningful progressive vote comes up.

While the OP states: "Today, the council has almost no constituency within the Democratic Party. About every five years, the Pew Research Center conducts a public opinion survey to sort out the country’s major ideological groupings. In 1999, Pew found that liberals and New Democrats each accounted for nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base. By the next survey in 2005, New Democrats had completely disappeared as a group and the liberals had doubled their share of the party. Many moderates, radicalized by President Bush, now define themselves as liberals.

On a variety of issues the council, and not the party’s liberal base, is out of touch with the popular mood. A recent Washington Post poll found that 60 percent of independents, along with 70 percent of Democrats, favor withdrawing from Iraq by next spring." These self-important, self-righteous "New Democrat" neo-cons hurl their disrespectful epithets at anyone who comes down to the Left of the lasr Czar of Russia on any issue, from social to war-and-peace.

It's time to take our Party back from these RW-ers. I will never again vote for anyone who is a current member of the DLC, or who even leans their way on issues that count to me.

If we elect ANY DLC candidate -- Clinton, Richardson, Dodd; or any who lean to the center -- Obama, Biden, they will rise up again in this Party and take us all the way to Republicanism.

TC

[polichick]

24. Thanks DLC...

...you are no longer needed.

[Totally Committed]

27. RIGHT. ON.

I'm with you all the way on this!

TC

[AtomicKitten]

30. good response

and I agree

:toast: