PPI/DLC founder posts at Dean's blog. Interesting history here.

It is very significant that Dr. Kamarck posted at the Dean site. She took great attacks from the DLC for her support of him during the campaign. She was a founder, and Dean was part of it when he was governor. But he dared speak against them. I link to the New Republic article at the bottom of the post.

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/features/2004/05/20/why_vietnam_matters.php
SNIP..."Why Vietnam Matters

by Elaine Kamarck

"Can we finally put the Vietnam War behind us?" I was asked that question last week by one of those "fair and balanced" anchormen on Fox News. My answer was firmly no. The Vietnam war is directly relevant to this current presidential campaign in two ways - it tells us something about the character of the two men who are running and it tells us something about their judgement.

Start with character. As a young man George Bush obviously used his Daddy's connections to get a coveted place in the Air National Guard. So what? Lots of people who could - did. Then he used his family connections to miss his flight physical and, as far as we know, did not show up for the last year of his service. Yet he still managed to get an honorable discharge. Not so many people could do that. But the real character question goes to his decision, many years later, to put on a flight suit and land on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln - a decision that outraged people who knew that there were questions surrounding Bush's own military service. END SNIP..

The article from the New Republic from February:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=I2Aygkdgy3gJ5REFNboWuB%3D%3D

DEAN'S SUPPORTERS FACE RETRIBUTION.
Oops!
by Franklin Foer
SNIP..."But the most painful defection of all was that of Harvard Professor Elaine Kamarck. Kamarck had made her name in the 1980s as a wonk on the staff of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the DLC's in-house think tank. During the '90s, she served as Gore's domestic policy adviser, overseeing his reinventing-government initiative, the quintessential Third Way program. Kamarck had been one of the prime explicators of the DLC's electoral strategy. In 1989, after the Michael Dukakis debacle, she co-authored an essay for PPI called "The Politics of Evasion": "Liberal fundamentalists argue that the party's presidential problems stem from insufficiently liberal Democratic candidates who have failed to rally the party's faithful," she wrote. "The facts, however, do not sustain this allegation." But, over the course of last fall, Kamarck became one of Dean's most vociferous defenders in the press, culminating in a January column in Newsday endorsing Dean. As my colleague Jonathan Chait has pointed out, this meant embracing a candidate whose electoral strategy she had debunked 14 years earlier. (When I asked Kamarck about the inconsistency, she replied, "Well, the nation's changed. We're living in a fifty-fifty electorate. You can win elections with an excited base.")

Kamarck's colleagues won't bash her on the record. But, with the protection of anonymity, they turn harsh. One ex-Clintonite says, "This town is famous for its opportunism, but it's a terrible mistake to turn on your friends and join someone else's bandwagon." Another prominent New Democrat complains, "As we criticized Dean, Elaine rushed in to blindly defend him."

So this is a significant post in many ways. Thanks for a good article, Dr. Kamarck.

:hi:

I can just see the heads of Al From and Bruce Reed exploding. They really pressured her to back away from Dean, she did a little, then I guess she decided to do what she thinks is right.