The DLC Is MIA
The Democratic Leadership Council seems to have prematurely ejected itself from the political sphere, denying the party an essential check.
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been missing in action, a virtual no-show in the media during the run-up to the election. And with the lingering suspicion that the DLC is on the outs with Obama, many are predicting its demise or, at the very least, organizational irrelevance.
The post-Clinton years have not been kind to the DLC. Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, both DLCers, went down in defeat. Had Gore heeded the DLC platform rather than resorted to a populist appeal down the stretch, he could have won, or so the DLC likes to say. And the organization suffered another blow when, in the wake of 9/11, it aggressively supported Bush on national security.
In May 2003, early front-runner and Iraq war critic Howard Dean was targeted by DLC founder and CEO Al From, who wrote that Dean represented the “McGovern-Mondale wing” of the Democratic Party, whose “weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home” had crippled the party. In 2006, as Democrats swept to victory based largely on their opposition to the war, the DLC was relegated to the sidelines. The DLC was right to support a war, given that it was trying to rebrand the Democratic Party; they just chose the wrong war. And it hurt them, perhaps irreparably. No longer, it seemed, was there much of a market for the DLC. Why try to emulate Republicans when their product isn’t exactly moving off the shelves?
A near-knockout punch was leveled with the nomination of Barack Obama. In his post-partisan rhetoric, Obama could have easily been mistaken for a DLC poster child, but he had mixed feelings about being in the organization’s corner — concerned, perhaps, that it would hurt his standing with key liberal constituencies whose support he needed to earn the nomination. When Obama didn’t attend the DLC national convention in Chicago — which was widely viewed as a snub — and later moved into the White House, the DLC was put on life support.
Obama has generally kept his distance from the DLC. As far back as 2002, when he was still an Illinois state senator, Obama was reluctant to be seen as a DLCer. That year, he was mentioned in a DLC list of 100 rising stars, prompting the liberal Black Commentator to remark that Al From and the DLC leadership had claimed Barak Obama as one of their own. “A black activist/intellectual/politician with previously stellar progressive credentials,” it said, “has joined the main mechanism of corporate, right wing influence in the Democratic Party.” With a flair for finesse, Obama responded that he didn’t object to inclusion on the list but that it didn’t indicate his endorsement of the DLC platform. Elsewhere, he was reported to have said that his positions on the Iraq war, NAFTA, and health care made him “an unlikely candidate for membership in the DLC.”
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Adam Behar is the publisher of Baja Breeze, a travel and lifestyle magazine devoted to Northern Baja California, Mexico, and he's also the president of BajaPR. A contributor to college-level textbooks on Public Relations, Adam’s marketing and PR campaigns have received many honors and awards, and his poetry has been featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
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5 Comments
1. therealist:Good article. The DLC was the “grownups”, the guys that understood that yes we do have to defend America, grow our economy, balance the budget, etc, but still also believed that you can set up some good government programs, mostly around education and health care that do more good than harm. (A lot of their programs are innovative public/private partnerships.) Intellectually its at least coherent and they can be reasoned with. It’s sad to see them go, if not least because I would certainly rather be governed by a DLC Democrat who wants to grow the GDP and then skim a little off the top for redistribution rather than a KosKid prog who sees America as an imperialist and the free market as a crime and won’t be happy until I’m locked in some North Cuban nightmare with them as the cultural police. It’s pretty much all Howard Dean’s and George Soros’ fault.
So what’s the effect? I believe that without the DLC as a counterweight, the Democrat party will simply implode more quickly. If you read a book like Mark Levin’s (I’m 60% through it), you might have a hard time associating his description of statism with a DLC Democrat like Clinton who reforms welfare, approves NAFTA, hires more cops, bombs bosnia, and balances the budget. But with Obama the characterization is dead on. The sad part is how many of the centrists later decided to jump on the Obama bandwagon. The two Clintons should be preparing for their ‘12 primary challenge and running on the economic wreckage not trying to win the nobel prize for Naivety with these embarrassing overtures to Iran. I’m hoping the game isn’t over and HRC resigns in disgust next year and starts her campaign early.
Apr 11, 2009 - 1:09 am 2. AThinkingPerson:How interesting! Conservatives have been told to put a fork in it because their ideas were “dead”. I’m guessing we can now add moderate Democrats to that pyre? That leaves us with Liberal, Left Democratics. God Help us all.
Apr 11, 2009 - 5:22 am 3. LeighB:therealist, nothing would make me happier than if you are spot on and HRC resigns in disgust and challenges BHO for the nomination in 2012.
I don’t know if the D-party would allow it, they’d find a way to disallow some results as they did in 2008 and then stall until the busloads of koolaid drinkers made it to the caucuses on time. Helpful hint to the team from Chicago: 16 year olds from NY just don’t “pass” as Texans, you gotta do better at recruiting from the region.
I hope the centrists have a candidate they can get behind in 2012–we need a POTUS who understands economics and loves this country. And not in that order.
Apr 11, 2009 - 7:08 am 4. LeighB:The DLC is MIA and no one cares…how sad.
Apr 11, 2009 - 11:42 am 5. Derek:The DLC has been subsumed by Obama. Look at all the names of the DLCers that now work for Obama. (conservatives should take lessons from Obama in order to figure out how to subvert the GOP establishment) And these aren’t minor players, Rahm and Hillary are big time DLCers. But really the issue is this, DLCers are less relevant because the democrats have already pushed their governing majority almost to it’s fringe. Now that fringe is Blue Dog democrats, not DLCers (or New Democrats). I mean, who do you think were the democrats that voted against the stimulus or against the budget, or against the first bailout?
As for the resident PUMA, how long can a sour apple last?
Apr 11, 2009 - 8:12 pm