mainstream democrats castigate dean for being anti-clinton

just stumbled on this site, looks like some kind of an official dlc site with a bunch of articles from people like sarah bianchi and bill clinton and such. here is what they had to say about dean:

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252472&kaid=127&subid=171

There are many plausible explanations for Howard Dean's downfall, but his perverse decision to run as the anti-Clinton candidate tops my list. While Bill Clinton in 1992 campaigned against his party's past failures, Dean seemed to relish attacking those responsible for its most recent successes.

His campaign not only channeled activists' rage at Bush but also tapped into smoldering resentment in the party's left wing over the New Democrats' intellectual and political ascendancy. The Dean Zeppelin took flight only after Dean, the erstwhile centrist, adopted a belligerent anti-war stance and anointed himself the choleric champion of "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

Why the leftward lurch? Dean and his followers seemed to have swallowed whole the paleoliberals' revisionist history of the 1990s. By this account, Clinton scored strictly personal triumphs by selling out the party's core principles and accommodating the country's rightward drift. Here's Dean's diagnosis: "While Bill Clinton said that the era of big government is over, I think we have to enter a new era for the Democratic Party, not one where we join Republicans and aim simply to limit the damage they inflict on working families." Dean also dismissed the New Democrat electoral strategy of reaching out to independents and swing voters: "We are going to take back the Democratic Party from the idea that the way to win elections is to neglect our base."

That Dean's putsch failed suggests that most Democrats remember the 1990s more fondly than he does. "Limiting damage" hardly does justice to the unprecedented surge of growth and job creation that brought unemployment, poverty, and budget deficits down while driving working family wages up. Public innovation also flourished, as New Democrats introduced national service, public charter schools, more cops and community policing, a work-based social policy to replace welfare, and other reforms. Clinton's "big government" line was not a sop to conservatives but an acknowledgement that central bureaucracies don't work very well in a networked world.

Judged on the results, it's incontestable that the 1990s was America's most progressive decade since the 1960s. Yet many on the left apparently haven't forgiven Clinton for achieving these results in unfamiliar and unorthodox ways.

It's true that Clinton's success didn't enable Democrats regain control of Congress after 1994. But surely that failure should be charged to the account of congressional leaders, who failed to offer the public compelling reasons to return Congress to Democratic control.

Dean's claim that New Democrats ignored the party's base is equally wrong-headed. Clinton's strongest supporters were African Americans, Latinos, and women. Yet Clinton also won more votes than Democratic candidates before and after him from white men, suburban moderates, and independents. He showed, in other words, that the "base versus swing voters" argument poses a classic false choice; winning candidates have to frame appealing messages to both.

Yet Dean embraced that hardy perennial of left-wing fancy: the myth of the hidden majority. It posits that there is a latent leftish majority slumbering in the electorate that can be galvanized to vote -- but only if it hears the message loudly enough. Recent studies of non-voters, however, suggest that their preferences aren't much different from those who do go to the polls.

A more interesting challenge to the New Democrat legacy comes from Stanley B. Greenberg, a prominent Democratic pollster. In his new book, The Two Americas, Greenberg argues that the Clinton Democrats serve a vital purpose by reassuring voters with doubts about Democrats on issues like national security, fiscal discipline, and social and cultural values. But while a strategy of reassurance may eke out a victory in a presidential election, it won't break the deadlock in U.S. politics and build a durable Democratic majority, writes Greenberg.

This may be true. But Greenberg also overlooks the dynamic, reformist dimension of New Democrat ideas. Democrats won't beat Bush or realign U.S. politics by defending the programmatic status quo against GOP onslaughts. To be relevant, they must offer better solutions to today's most urgent challenges: the need to fundamentally redesign our schools for the 21st century; to help poor families achieve self-sufficiency and upward mobility; to promote "clean growth" by helping America kick its oil habit; to help parents balance work and family; to make Medicare an agent of successful aging, not just a payment system; and to modernize Social Security for rising generations that want more personal control over their retirement security.

Dean's campaign failed because the real choice facing Democrats isn't between a principled liberalism and a soulless centrism. It's between ideological purism and a radical pragmatism that wins because it works.

Will Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

what exactly is the difference between dlc and dnc ?

if you look at the title of the article -
Why the Dean Putsch Failed
putsch, as in coup; may be there is some truth to speculations that clintonese democrats really thought of dean movement as a dangerous rebellion

dlc is somewhat like a think tank. they make strategies and other ideas on policy. but it's up to candidates on whether they want to take their advice or not. dnc isn't as policy focused but more about just supporting candidates who are of the party through financial and other ways.

but richard gephardt voted against both even though he is part of the dlc.

first of all in the interest of full disclosure I was a Dean supporter. But I'm going to try and just answer a couple of your questions and avoid the heat that will surely accompany any discussion of the DLC.
This is an article from March... so it's not new news. But anyway there was bad blood between Dean and the DLC from about 3/2003. I think it boils down to a disagreement on strategy for winning the election. I'd take what either party in this dispute says with a grain of salt, though again I obviously chose a side in it.
The DLC has been appropriately described in this thread as a Democratic think tank. The DNC is the national party structure.

and thus disagreeing with some Clintonian policies.

Up with Dean, as far as I'm concerned.

The first sentence of the article states Dean made a perverse decision?

We've been infiltrated.

I look around this cyber world here and I see many different people representing different ages, lifestyles and political causes. I look at the Democrats in my family and see different people than the young Deaniacs. So what is "mainstream"?

I thought being monolithic was a Repugnican thing. Ya know...all be rich, all be white, all be slim, all be assholes and so on.

BTW...that "New Democrat" term was passe in 1988.

this is an official dlc site.

doesn't get much more mainstream than that.

As I stated above I thought "New Democrat" was a misnomer. DLC represents one faction of the party...and seems to obsess so many here. Oh my!

We all have the same core beliefs and right now a major objective...the removal of this regime. Splitting hairs as to who is a "mainstream" Democrat or who is a better Democrat is a luxuary one can't currently afford. And it sure smacks of the inclusiveness many of us are working hard to marginalize.

eom.

First:

"There are many plausible explanations for Howard Dean's downfall, but his perverse decision to run as the anti-Clinton candidate tops my list."

Refutation:

That's bullshit. Dean's "downfall" had two parts to it: #1 is that the media crucified him. #2 is that there were a great many black boxes voting in the primaries, just as there were in the mid-term elections in 2002, that are still very suspect.

Second:

"Dean's claim that New Democrats ignored the party's base is equally wrong-headed. Clinton's strongest supporters were African Americans, Latinos, and women. Yet Clinton also won more votes than Democratic candidates before and after him from white men, suburban moderates, and independents. He showed, in other words, that the "base versus swing voters" argument poses a classic false choice; winning candidates have to frame appealing messages to both."

Refutation: While Clinton was, and still is, very popular among minority groups, swing voters, etc., WHAT WAS THE ALTERNATIVE that any of those groups could have turned to, at the time, that would represent ANY of their views, with equal power & support from the main party?

It's been a long damn time since anyone has gone "national" with the message that Dean had. He changed the landscape of American politics, while Clinton sold out the "values" of the base of the Dem party to the center. In retrospect, many of Clinton's decisions have very much "enabled" the take-over of the country by the media, corporations, and the neocons.

Now, having come out of the Reagan/Bush era that we had been in, it was IMPERATIVE for someone w/ Clinton's political finesse, power & charisma to do that...to get the PEOPLE (the masses) to have hope in a Democratic leader again. But Clinton's policies do not truly embody the message of the PEOPLE, in general...NAFTA, deregulation of the FCC, letting the labor unions get hammered, etc.

Third:

Dean's campaign failed because the real choice facing Democrats isn't between a principled liberalism and a soulless centrism. It's between ideological purism and a radical pragmatism that wins because it works."

"Radical pragmatism"??? Sounds like Ayn Rand in sheep's clothing to me! "IT WORKS"????? For WHOM does it work? FOR THE CORPORATIONS, my friend, and for the powerful, and for the congresscritters who have been bought and paid for by said corporations.

Outsourcing jobs by the millions overseas -- and yes, it started under Clinton's administration, and he still supports the global corporate interests -- began the bankrupting of the spirit of America's dynamic workforce. The "MBA mentality" that took over corporations across this nation during the Reagan-Bush I administrations, allowed corporations to start treating our superior workforce as "units" of production, rather than humans with a great competitive spirit and talent. THAT is where the decline began in America.

The forces of Capital (i.e., the basis of the Capitalistic system we hold to be "God" in this country), is made valuable because of the necessary relationship between capital and labor. When you start to discount the value of that labor (as in the days of the robber barons), you create a 2-class system that is a DISINCENTIVE to the massive, economy-building innovation, which fuels more and more job-building wealth within the economy.

When only ONE class in a 2-class system is allowed self-respect, you will have a downward spiral that eventually leads to loss of rights, loss of patriotism, and loss of incentive. It's a "brain drain" from within. Eventually, it leads to a loss of Democracy, because the "winners" don't want to be told what to do by the "losers", and those with power will eventually use oppressive tactics with greater and greater frequency. WHICH IS WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW IN THE U.S.

I'm SO FUCKING sick of listening to these DLC creeps. They are NO BETTER than the GOPer-gropers. Dean saw that, and he understood where WE, THE PEOPLE were coming from. He spoke back to the heart of the populous, who had started to forget that we were the forces of labor -- without which capitalism and Democracy don't work!

:kick::kick::kick:

and welcome to a brewing storm. :hi:

I suppose you missed the bloodletting here during the primaries, and this article opens a few old wounds.

The DLC is a group of "new Democrats" who saw the way to the Presidency and Governor's chairs as being pragmatic and moderate. They had the strategy of coopting Republican and conservative issues to pretty much nullify the Republicans.

Sometimes, it worked, but you will find very few here who have any fondness for the DLC or their thinktank, the PPI. Many of the far lefties here hate them with a passion, and many of the rest of us just kind of look at them with blank stares. Politics without soul or passion pretty much says it.

Right now, most of the passion seems to be coming from the religious right, and the left has just a few stragglers out there trying to be heard. The vast number of sleepy voters out there don't seem to have much interest in anything at all, although the price of gas may be getting to them, along with the causalty reports from Iraq.

The left and the religious right see a crisis from their points of view, but everyone else seems to be a bit edgy, but not quite at the panic point. Those are the people everyone is trying to attract, and no one seems to know how. Dean got some of them, but not nearly enough.

The DLC and their minions essentially say don't rock the boat too much. Strong policy statements tend to alienate more people than they attract. Say as little as possible to avoid attacks from the other side or pissing off potential voters. "Liberalism" is not all that popular right now, so don't look too much like one.

Doesn't make for an interesting campaign, does it? Or interesting candidates.

But, unless something happens to wake people up, that's one of the downsides of democracy. You can't lead if you can't get anyone to vote for you.

The bastard should be in Leavenworth Federal Prison on death row for the crimes of treason he has committed as a member of PNAC. In NO WAY should such a vile piece of shit be allowed to speak for the Democratic party.

Will Marshall is a PNAC SIGNATORY.

He has a Faustian pact / blood oath with the neo-cons.
How he has been able to portray himself as a "new democrat" and get away with having "democrat" associated with his name is frustratingly confounding.

Don't give Marshall any more credence than you would Bill Kristol - they are comrades-in-arms - literally.

what the hell is PNAC?

I am sure I missed a lot during the primaries. There was a lot of speculation about how the democratic establishment brought dean down, but a lot of it came from idiots like rush who think that hillary being elected president is the only goal that democratic party has.

Have you been sharing a cave with Osama for the last 2 years or something? I thought PNAC was a household word by now.

This was the "think tank" formed by the neocon traitors in the mid 90's when they first mapped out their "strategies" with the aid of Sharon & Netanyahu of Israel's fascist Likud party. When they failed to sell their plans to President Clinton, they knew they had to install a puppet in the White House who would do their bidding.

The group included names like Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rumsfeld, Cheney, among others. Uh, you DO know those names, right?

The key to implementation of PNAC's agenda was an "event such as a new Pearl Harbor" which would cause the American people to back their plan of global fascism disguised as "democracy".

They got their Perle Harbor on 9-11-01. Whether by sheer luck or deliberate design remains the question.

i kind of figured out it was some kind of a think tank

i read papers and watch tv, but i don't get that deep into it.

never heard of perle before.

feith, isn't that the guy in bush administration who works for department on defense in iraq and who general franks called 'a complete moron'?

The DLC is angry at Dean because he called them on their cowardly bullshit approach to taking on the Bush administration. During the primaries they used their influence in the media to take out Dean using one word- "unelectable"- and Dick Gephardt, and backed Kerry (which was actually a compromise, for them). They know that if Dean succeeded in his plan to re-direct the Democratic Party their era of power within the Democratic Party would be over. They are cowards, but they are in powerful positions, and they will try dearly to hold onto them.

In reality, the DLC is already dead. They cut their own balls off. Good riddance.