Democrat Candidates Ignore the Center
>>By Boston Herald editorial staff
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Members of the Democratic Leadership Council meet in Tennessee this weekend and the man who rode their sensible ideas right into the White House, Bill Clinton, will be there. So will 300 current officeholders from around the country.
But guess who won’t? Well, for starters, one Hillary Rodham Clinton. She’ll be in South Carolina, then home to Chappaqua on Sunday. And Barack Obama, why he’s scheduled to be in Iowa and then home to Chicago for most of the weekend. Not John Edwards either or even any of the second-tier candidates like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. In fact, not a single, solitary Democratic presidential contender will attempt to court the party’s centrists.
And that, sad to say, says a lot about the candidates, about the nature of Democratic primary politics and about how a Republican managed to win the White House - twice.
“They have tunnel vision,” DLC founder Al From told the Associated Press when asked about his fellow Democrats. But this isn’t about From’s injured feelings. It’s about winning elections.
Democratic presidential contenders are too busy pounding the anti-war drums and promising everything to everyone right now to be bothered tending to the great American middle where elections are won.
Not surprisingly, while From and Co. are being treated like some loony fringe group, most of the Democratic presidential contenders will find time in their busy schedules to attend a convention of liberal bloggers the next weekend in Chicago. That ought to make for a few amusing YouTube moments.
Massachusetts isn’t alone in having a preponderance of registered voters with no particular allegience to either party. We now call them “unenrolled” and as unattractive as that may sound, some 50 percent of the state’s voters are perfectly willing to take that as their label.
Many of them would fit comfortably in the DLC mold. Many likely wouldn’t mind casting a vote for Rudy Giuliani either.
The Democratic presidential candidates ignore those voters at their peril. John Kerry learned that lesson the hard way.<<
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