Burnt Orange Report

We must destroy this party to save it: a View from the DLC

By Andrew Dobbs

There was a time when I was proud to call myself a New Democrat. I believe that we ought to have a strong military, balanced budgets, a right to bear arms, strong businesses and I am a Southerner. The Democratic Leadership Council stands for all of these things, and as far as I can tell, so does the man that the DLC once praised as being the kind of governor they wanted other Democrats to be- Howard Dean. A rabid fiscal conservative with an “A” rating from the NRA and a market-driven health care proposal (as opposed to ur-DLCer Bill Clinton’s socialized single-payer system) ought to be the DLC’s go to guy in 2004. Especially if this guy is building the kind of grassroots support that Howard Dean is. But alas, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times reports:

Al From, the founder of the organization and an ally of Mr. Clinton, invoked the sweeping defeats of George McGovern in 1972 and Walter F. Mondale in 1984 as he cautioned against a return to policies — including less emphasis on foreign policy and an inclination toward expanding the size of government — that he said were a recipe for another electoral disaster

The warning, by the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats that helped move the party to the center 10 years ago, was largely a response to the popularity enjoyed in early presidential primary states by Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.

The DLC seems uninterested in electing a Democrat unless it is their Democrat. Their fear might be an honest one- perhaps they truly believe that Howard Dean is a hopeless liberal who will lose dramatically to George Bush. But their very rhetoric, calling Dean supporters elitists who are out of touch with the “real” Democratic Party, is ignorant and destructive. Maybe it is your classic Southern apprehension for Yankees, but wherever it comes from it is uninformed and unnecessary. Furthermore, their grasp of demographics and Democratic electoral politics over the last 25 years seems to be feeble at best. Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post:

Dramatic erosion in support among white men has left the Democrats in a highly vulnerable position and unless the party strongly repositions itself, President Bush will be virtually impossible to beat in 2004, according to a new poll commissioned for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

Hmmm…. white men eh? We haven’t won that demographic since the mid 1970s. Our electoral success is built on a coalition of women, liberals, union members and ethnic minorities. Let’s also point out that Democratic support has grown dramatically among college-educated professionals, Hispanics, Asians and suburban women- four of the fastest-growing demographics in the country. The DLC seems to want to out-Republican the Republicans and we will always lose that game.

Polls suggest that our country is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats with about 15-20% of the population identifying themselves as Independents. The Republicans have won elections by sticking to a hard right program that turns out the vast majority of their base, and then softening it up with good images and rhetoric that get the few points of swing voters they need to win. Democrats have abandoned our base and so we are left grasping at 75% of the swing voters and we lose. If we can nominate a Democrat like Howard Dean that gets our base excited to vote again through grassroots organizing, plus keep pulling in many of the swing voters that are attracted to his moderate qualities we will beat Bush in a landslide.

Additionally, Al From and Bruce Reed need to remember that the President is elected by the electoral college. Democrats hold 260 votes that would be hard for us to lose, these are states dominated by post-industrial metropolitan areas that are home to minorities and college-educated professionals, the two most Democratic demographics. That means that an additional big state (Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Missouri) or a combination of a few smaller states (Louisiana and Arkansas, Nevada and West Virginia) will mean a victory for the Democrat. This effort will be much harder if the Democratic Party appears to be divided. What if Howard Dean is the candidate? All of the DLC’s bluster and dishonest rhetoric will feed right into the GOP’s hands. They’ll portray our candidate as a liberal out of touch even with his own party and they’ll have “Democrat Al From himself” to put on their commercials. Let’s say that one of the DLCers makes the ballot. The ill will they’ve sown among many of the party faithful who are supporting Dean will create an anti-candidate backlash and our party will look like a bickering, in-fighting group of people that can’t agree on anything against a Republican Party united and cooperative under a strong leader like Bush.

The DLC ought to put out position papers and ought to stress the values it believes in, but it ought to leave the name-calling and bomb-throwing at home. They might be surprised to see that the people they call out the hardest are actually the ones most likely to serve them.
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