The DLC Is MIA
I recently asked a journalist friend what had happened to the DLC. He was equally baffled by its low profile. When he got back to the office, an email was sitting in his inbox. It was from the DLC announcing Al From’s retirement as the group’s CEO; his protégé, Bruce Reed, would take the helm. Meanwhile, the Progressive Policy Institute, which served as the DLC’s think tank, also severed ties. The press release also said the DLC was changing its mission from getting mainstream Democrats elected to — gasp! — helping advance a reform agenda. After all those hours of strategic planning, all those consultants sequestered in board rooms with crappy coffee and flip charts, “reform” is the best they could come up with; a trendy buzzword that is so vague as to be rendered meaningless.
The DLC grew out of the butt kicking that Walter Mondale took in 1984 at the hands of Ronald Reagan when he managed to win only one state. Democratic candidates, the DLC argued, were ignoring the concerns of the vast middle class. The DLC would focus on attracting swing voters to the Democratic Party. A new, “progressive” agenda was needed, a term the DLC sought to brand. But according to Bruce A. Dixon, the DLC was anything but progressive. Writing for Black Commentator, Dixon argued that the DLC was a mainly southern white response to minority and union influence in the Democratic Party: “The DLC’s mission is to erase the last vestiges of social democracy from the Democratic Party, so that the corporate consensus will never again be challenged in the United States.” Others, including consumer advocate Ralph Nader, have critiqued the DLC on similar grounds.
The DLC recently proclaimed that the “Democrats have made their way out of the political wilderness” with a “pragmatic, post-partisan appeal” that — or so they would like us to believe — has its origins in the DLC. Taking credit is something at which the DLC seems to excel. Does the DLC have a rightful claim to the intellectual or rhetorical fuel that drove the Obama campaign? While Obama’s campaign rhetoric may have been reminiscent of the DLC, his positions on a host of issues ranging from tax policy to the war in Iraq were strikingly at odds with the organization. Granted, Obama parroted the “opportunity and responsibility” theme throughout the campaign and tried to occupy the adult middle ground between feuding factions. But whether the DLC has ownership of these ideas is debatable. It may be more plausible that Clinton made the DLC rather than the other way around and that it is Clinton who deserves credit for repositioning the Democratic Party.
Is the DLC still relevant today? It may not be visible, but its members argue that behind the scenes they are influencing the policy debate with “post-partisan” ideas, another nice-sounding buzzword that at the end of the day really doesn’t mean very much at all. On the other hand, they seem well positioned given that new DLC President Bruce Reed is a longtime friend of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Others in the administration with DLC ties include Hillary Clinton, White House Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers, and Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano.
Whatever one thinks of the DLC, it seems to have prematurely ejected itself from the political sphere, denying the party an essential check just as a few lone voices — in both parties — struggle to hold the center. As both parties cater to their bases and become ideologically dug in, there is a need for moderate and moderating voices. In their absence, a serious third party challenge in both parties seems increasingly likely.
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.
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.
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.
The DLC is MIA and no one cares…how sad.
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?