UH OH! Now look what you've done! Tisk! Tisk!
Centrist Democrats Warn Party Not to Present Itself as 'Far Left'
By ADAM NAGOURNEY - NEW YORK TIMES
PHILADELPHIA, July 28 - The moderate Democratic group that helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 warned today that Democrats were headed for defeat if they presented themselves as an angry "far left" party fighting tax cuts and opposing the war in Iraq.
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.
Dr. Dean has attracted wide notice for his criticism of the Democratic Party for supporting the Iraq war and some of President Bush's tax cuts.
Neither Dr. Dean nor any other presidential candidate attended the two-day conference of the leadership council, which ended today.
But the group's leaders said their concerns went beyond Dr. Dean and reflected what they feared was an emerging perception of the entire Democratic presidential field as supportive of liberal policies that the council rejected long ago.
"It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left."
When a reporter asked a panel of council leaders whether Democratic woes were a result of Republican attacks or Democratic mistakes, Senator Bayh responded with a curt two-word answer that silenced the room.
"Assisted suicide," he said.
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.
"There are some in our party who would take us back to our pre-Clinton days, who refuse to learn the lessons of President Clinton's success," Mr. From, the group's chief executive, said after being introduced as "the man who led our party out of the wilderness once before."
"The D.L.C. has saved the Democratic Party once, and we're bound to do it again," Mr. From said, his voice intense with emotion. "We can't afford to do anything less because the stakes are so high."
The concerns expressed here in Philadelphia, where Republicans nominated George W. Bush for president three years ago, suggested the extent to which Dr. Dean's rise has rekindled the left-center ideological battles that Mr. Clinton and the council thought had been put to rest a decade ago.
But they also illustrated the decline in the fortunes of both the council and the party and the increasing concern among Democratic Party leaders about next year's presidential race.
In contrast to last year, when four Democratic presidential contenders delivered addresses at the council's summer meeting, this conference did not feature a single candidate.
Mr. From said that the group did not invite any presidential candidates because it did not want to be overshadowed. He said he wanted to highlight a new generation of moderate Democratic governors, the new governors of Kansas and Arizona, Kathleen Sebelius and Janet Napolitano respectively, among them.
That said, the council has become increasingly politically radioactive in this primary season, with many liberals accusing it of abandoning traditional Democratic positions. An invitation to the candidates would have put them in a politically difficult position.
Even though the council has close ties to many Democratic presidential candidates, its president, Bruce Reed, was at a loss today when asked to name the candidates in this race that embodied the council's philosophy the way Mr. Clinton did in 1992.
Two prominent Democrats, Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina, scheduled what they described as major policy addresses that directly competed with the proceedings here today.
"I miss having a president here," Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan said in a remark that drew a hearty round of support from the audience.
The council was started in 1985 by elected officials mostly from the South and the West to make the point that the influence of labor unions and what they called "special interest groups" on the party had resulted in Republicans' being elected to the White House.
The group, which is supported by corporate contributions, today includes many of the same people who were leading it when Mr. Clinton was elected in 1992, though it has grown sharply.
The problems faced by the Democratic Party and the pessimism about next year's presidential election was reflected in the sometimes glum, sometimes combative comments throughout the day.
Mark J. Penn, a Democratic pollster who worked for Mr. Clinton and is now advising Senator Lieberman, offered polling data to show that Mr. Bush was vulnerable but that the Democratic Party was also in a politically perilous position.
"We're at a postwar historic low of Democratic Party membership," he said.
Mr. Penn said that the Democratic Party now trailed the Republicans among people who earn more than $20,000, and that just 22 percent of white men called themselves Democrats.
"Among middle-class voters, the Democratic Party is a shadow of its former self," Mr. Penn said.
The perception, he said, is that Democrats "stand for big government, want to raise taxes too high, are too liberal and are beholden to special interest groups."
Most important, Mr. Penn said, the party has to prove itself credible on the issue of national security, something that many Democrats attending the conference here said would be impossible to do if the party were perceived as opposed to the war on Iraq.
The war was opposed outright by five of the nine candidates: Dr. Dean, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun, a former senator of Illinois.
Leaders of the council tried to avoid the perception that Dr. Dean was the target of their attacks. "This has never been personal," said Mr. Reed.
Indeed, Dr. Dean is hardly alone in advocating policies that council officials described as potentially damaging.
Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who has had close ties to the council, has called for rolling back all of Mr. Bush's tax cuts, to finance a huge national health care plan.
Still, Dr. Dean's candidacy haunted the convention today. The organization's magazine, Blueprint, in its July issue published for the meeting, featured an article that included this headline: "Howard Dean's protest campaign has found a niche online. Could it be the next dot-com bust?"
Even the attacks on Dr. Dean alarmed some Democrats, who warned that they were only serving to elevate him among his supporters. Further, complained Laura Ruderman, a state representative from Washington, the bickering plays into Mr. Bush's hands.
"I don't think we can be successful if we let ourselves go down that rat hole," she said. "How do we not have that fight and destroy any chance that we have of getting rid of that man?"
nytimes.com. |
