This is really an amazing look back at our party in the year 2000. It is done looking back at 2000 from the year 2004. It was written by Franklin Foer for The New Republic. It gives an interesting view of the attitudes at the 2000 convention.
This is not an especially critical post, just one that examines discussions and views since 2000. I think it is interesting.
The article is no longer up at the TNR site, but I found a pdf version of a later Foer article by following links from an old post by DUer hedda_foil. I have not seen her around for a while, and the date of the post is 2002 here at DU. Long time ago.
The dates are confusing because the pdf version had to have been in 2004, as it mentions the Dean and Edwards campaigns.
But hedda was writing in 2002...so Foer must have written some of it then and updated it later in 2004. hedda_foil starts out with this comment...from my files:
hedda_foil (3235 posts)
Oct-15-02, 06:18 PM (ET) Reply to post #49
50. That seems to because it is a Republican Manifesto
I've been trying to track down this Simon Rosenberg character who seems to be the power behind this all. Here's a very interesting little piece from The New Republic about the New Democrats at the 2000 convention.
http://www.tnr.com/082800/foer082800.html The abundance of liberals in prime-time speaking slots stands in stark contrast to the aggressive moderation on display at the Republican convention in Philadelphia, where hard-liners were kept firmly out of public view. The irony is compounded by the fact that, unlike the GOP, the Democratic Party really is controlled by its moderate wing. In other words, at their Los Angeles convention, the Democrats are doing something almost unprecedented in recent political memory--they're concealing their true centrism.
...."Simon Rosenberg has witnessed the reversal firsthand. As a student at Tufts University in the late '80s, he founded a middle-of-the-road magazine critical of the campus left. After stints in the Clinton campaign war room in 1992 and then at the DLC, in 1996 he founded the New Democrat Network, a political action committee that funds centrist congressional candidates. At first, he ran the PAC by himself out of his Washington, D.C., apartment. Now he has twelve people working in his Capitol Hill office, and he hopes to raise $5.5 million this election cycle.
The New Democrats, Rosenberg explains to me in the convention center cafeteria, have consciously emulated the conservative movement's gradual takeover of the GOP. He pulls out a sheet of paper from his black canvas bag and draws a timeline of modern conservatism's rise: "National Review to Goldwater to the Heritage Foundation to Reagan. It took thirty years for them to take over the party." He then draws a parallel line for the New Democrats, starting with the founding of the DLC in 1985 and running through Lieberman's addition to the Democratic ticket this month. "This all happened very quickly, much more quickly than on the right," he says, staring down at his diagram. "When I worked at the DLC, I studied the institutional infrastructure of the right, especially gopac. You need to fund candidates who support your ideas. We learned lessons from the right, and we borrowed from them." The article hedda refers to has more about Rosenberg. It is an interesting take, and he has since distanced from those like Al From I believe. He has done a lot for the party.
More from her post from 2002, then some from the pdf version by Foer which incorporates a lot of this but has updated more.
Of course, the primary liberal complaint against the DLC is that it borrows more than just strategy from the Republicans. And Rosenberg--a 36-year-old who, in his charcoal Brooks Brothers suit and crisp white shirt, looks and sounds like a junior partner at Bear Stearns--fits the stereotype. Not long ago, an aggressive New Democrat like Rosenberg would have felt uncomfortable at a Democratic convention; when he first started the New Democrat Network, in fact, the AFL-CIO demanded that he be barred from meetings of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
That, as they say, was then. Now Rosenberg can't walk five feet across the convention floor without shaking a hand or kissing a cheek. Everywhere we turn, it seems, he's running into a congressional candidate or city councilman or state representative or another "one of the bright young stars we're working with."
One more paragraph from hedda's 2002 post. It involves some Democrats from Florida, which was one of the very first states to heartily embrace the New Democrat ideas.
Making his way through the Florida delegation, for example, he's greeted by the state party chair, the head of the state DLC, and a gruff lawyer from Lakeland named Bob Grizzard. Defiantly wearing a t-shirt from Clinton's 1992 campaign over his checkered oxford shirt, Grizzard tells me he's a "proud member of the DLC." When I ask him about the prominence of liberal speakers on the convention docket, he says, "We're the party of diversity and inclusion," then pauses before adding, "and if they don't want to swallow DLC, we'll stick it to 'em." A minute later, he grabs the shoulders of an African American delegate and pulls him over. "He's not quite with us yet," Grizzard confides to me jokingly, "but we'll give him time." Grizzard's friends are a little embarrassed by the gesture but share his triumphalism nonetheless. "The DLC is the wind in our sails," says Bob Poe, the state party chair.
Here is the link to the pdf version that had to be from 2004. Or maybe even early 2005, very early.
Center Forward? The Fate of the New DemocratsJust some snips of interest, mostly those looking back. I love this part about John Kerry...Foer expresses regrets that Kerry was not enough inclined toward DLC. But then we knew that.
Although Kerry has made some important feints in the direction of the DLC agenda over the course of his career—delivering speeches where he flirted with supporting vouchers and raising questions about affirmative action—he has never really been a stalwart of the movement. There are serious doubts as to his commitment to any core set of beliefs, let alone a heartfelt sympathy toward the New Democratic agenda.
So..they had "serious doubts" about Kerry's centrism. Good for Kerry.
Foer says that the Left is stirring and getting more active, but then he has to compare us to the Rush Limbaugh types. They just can't help themselves talking down to us.
For the first time since the late 1980s, the
party’s left wing has shown signs of life, and this actually understates
the health of the Left. It isn’t just stirring; it is vital, thanks to a
proliferation of antiwar blogs, talk radio, and the unintended consequences of campaign finance reform, which have all exaggerated the
power of unions, environmentalists, and other interest groups. The
most troubling aspect of the Left’s revival is its grim determination
to imitate the Right. Where the Rush Limbaugh Right has spent the
past decade being uncivil and mean, the Left’s grassroots now demand
that their party become more uncivil and mean, to match the wingnuts
tit for tat.
No, not really, we don't want uncivil and mean...not fair.
This is a very long article written from the DLC viewpoint. The end of it shows it most likely written in 2004, after the primaries and before the election. The Left is not treated kindly.
Right now, it’s hard to consider the Left too grave a threat to the future of the party. For the time being, they seem to be in an incredibly pragmatic mood, driven by an overwhelming, earnest determination to oust Bush. But what happens if Kerry loses? I’m guessing that the proponents of the old left-liberal style of campaigning will announce that events have vindicated their view of the world. They will pin blame for the defeat on Kerry’s “cautious” style and his “centrist” view. And if the Left claims to champion bare-knuckled politics now, just watch how bloody the election postmortems will be. It is at that moment that we’ll need the New Democrats to defend their policy legacy, their political playbook, and all that is sensible in the party. We’ll need them more than ever.
Okay, back for a moment to hedda's post, the Foer article there from 2002 (yes it is confusing...some of the same parts in both articles)...
I thought it was interesting, a few comments about why they wanted Gore to choose Lieberman as VP.
"The DLC's triumph was further cemented by Gore's choice of a running mate, which allayed lingering fears that the vice president might not run a centrist campaign. Rosenberg, in particular, is effusive about the selection of Lieberman, who helped him found the New Democrat Network in 1996. "I don't mind saying," he confides, "that I had doubts about Gore and the direction of his campaign."
Or, as Will Marshall puts it, "The selection of Senator Lieberman decisively pushed Gore into the camp of New Democrat reform and against the temptation to backslide."Al Gore must have been under great pressure to keep his populist side in check.
Interesting article. Would love to find the original hedda posted, but I have had no luck with the Wayback Machine.
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