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WHEN thinking about the state of the Republican Party, I defer to a point that the Democratic consultant James Carville made the other day: “When I hear people talking about the troubled state of today’s Republican Party, it calls to mind something Lester Maddox said one time back when he was governor of Georgia. He said the problem with Georgia prisons was ‘the quality of the inmates.’ The problem with the Republican Party is the quality of the people who vote in their primaries and caucuses. Everybody says they need a better candidate, or they need a better message but...

Pundits have lamented the disappear ance of Republican moderates for years. It's time now to lament the disappearance of moderate Democrats. Last month, Sen. Joseph Lieberman announced he wouldn't seek re-election. He lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut in 2006 because of his support of the Iraq war, but won in November as an independent. The irony was that the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president was re-elected largely by Republicans who spurned their party's little-known nominee. But Republicans seem likely to field a stronger candidate in 2012. Then last week, Rep. Jane Harman announced she'd resign soon to become...

What to make of the news that the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council -- the vehicle that helped propel Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 -- is suspending operations as it ponders an uncertain future? Conventional wisdom says that the DLC, which favored more business-friendly policies in order to make the party appealing to corporate contributors, could no longer compete in a hyperpartisan political environment. Or that the rabid Howard Dean/Daily Kos "Netroots" wing of the party simply overwhelmed its message. Or that in the age of Obama, as Clinton has faded, Hillary has vanished into the swamps of Foggy...

People of faith. To speak to the heartland, Democrats also must be comfortable using the language of faith. Religious Americans believe, with good reason, that bicoastal elites look down on them as Bible-thumping primitives. Yet Democrats ought to be able to oppose the political agenda of religious conservatives -- on abortion, on school prayer, on homosexuality -- without dismissing people of faith in general as hopelessly "retro." They ought to be able to defend the establishment clause and religious liberty without getting in bed with the secular absolutists of the ACLU. It makes little sense for Democrats to be estranged...

Dr. Howard Dean’s fans come out for the big Democratic summer shindig As Tom Andrews, the director of the leading national antiwar coalition, began his speech at the Maine Democrats’ big outdoor summer shindig in Falmouth, John Baldacci signaled his bodyguard/driver to move the large, dark SUV up the driveway. The vehicle soon hid in the trees, its engine quietly humming. At first, the governor seemed to be paying attention as Andrews, the former First District congressman, launched into rousing tales of how the country, under President George W. Bush, had gone "from peace and prosperity to war and recession."...

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said on Saturday he intends to run for governor of Virginia. After months of speculation over his plans, McAuliffe announced his intentions in a video posted on his Web site. In the video, McAuliffe said he will make his intention to run official on Wednesday as part of a week-long campaign kickoff. The stops include town hall meetings in Hampton Roads, Bristol, Richmond and others, where McAuliffe will unveil plans for job creation, education and renewable energy. "Over the coming months we will travel to every corner of the commonwealth to ask all...

Barack Obama, a constitutional law professor and state senator from the south side of Chicago, is a leading candidate for the US Senate in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary. It's an open seat with no incumbent. In a crowded field that includes three well-known and better-funded opponents, Obama is definitely a contender. But who is Barack Obama?

August 28, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Obama Repudiates the ModeratesThe tiny leftist tail that wagged the dog in 2003. By David Freddoso Denver — Tonight, Barack Obama will try to convince America that he is a moderate, ideologically reasonable candidate. If his July 2004 keynote at the Democratic National Convention is any indicator, he may bring up issues of personal responsibility, or discuss the fact that, as he has said in the past, “fatherhood does not end at conception” — an idea which actually contradicts his position on abortion. Before you buy the idea that Obama is a centrist, it...

It helped launch the last Democratic president and has pushed and prodded every Democratic candidate since Bill Clinton to adopt its centrist positions on issues from budget discipline to welfare. But when the Democratic Leadership Council met over the weekend in the shadow of Barack Obama's Chicago headquarters, he didn't bother to stop by. Is it losing its clout? Its members hope not, sidestepping Obama's refusal to see them and politely urging him to consider their approaches. "We asked him," said Al From, the founder of the group. "I hope he'll listen to some of the ideas we've talked about."...

It seems that Carolina’s fair-haired boy is starting to falter. According to the NYT OPINIONATOR’S opinion Senator Edwards is in danger of being marginalized before a primary vote is cast. How poorly is John Edwards faring in his bid to become president of the United States? Writing on his personal blog, Marc Cooper, a contributing editor for The Nation, suggests that “the already sputtering Edwards’ campaign” hit “a definitive speed bump” yesterday when Edwards failed to win the endorsement of the Service Employees International Union. Cooper thinks “the much-coveted endorsement of Big Labor’s biggest union seemed to slip one notch...

The feud between left-wing bloggers and the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council is getting hotter at a time when activists on both sides say party unity is critical to winning back the White House next year. The groups held dueling conferences this month, and the Yearly Kos Convention clearly came out on top. It drew 1,500 liberal activists — including 500 bloggers — and a half-dozen Democratic presidential candidates, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The New York Democrat has been embraced by the DLC as one of its own. The DLC drew 350 elected officials to its conference but was...

"They'll find their way back to the middle. And if they don't, they won't win." So says a blunt Harold Ford Jr., chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, of his party's current crop of presidential candidates. The question is just how many would-be Democratic presidents recognize the wisdom of his words. Mr. Ford is in a feisty mood throughout our chat, as well he might be given the shelling his group has recently endured at the keyboards of the far left. Skip back 15 years, and the DLC stood as the proud architect of Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" campaign victory....

The much ballyhooed debate on "Meet the Press" between former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the liberal Daily Kos website, was instructive for what it revealed about both the divisions in the Democratic Party and the underlying disingenuousness of both factions. Ford was defending the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), an organization that holds itself out as centrist, urges the Democratic Party to move in that direction, and proudly claims former President Bill Clinton as its most honored member. Moulitsas was there to represent the more leftist wing of the party, which has used his website to...

A first-tier presidential candidate was the keynote speaker at a recent trade association convention held just outside Washington. The candidate began the evening by telling the crowd: "His eye is on the sparrow, we know that. . . . And we are here tonight to give praise and thanks to He who made it possible for us to be with each other this evening." The candidate spent a lot of time talking about the importance of hard work and personal responsibility, quoting another thinker's motto: "If I've accomplished anything in life, it is because I've been willing to work hard."...

Markos Moulitsas to Debate Harold Ford Jr. on ‘Meet the Press’ By Noel Sheppard | August 11, 2007 - 19:33 ET After the press spent last weekend gushing over liberal bloggers with nothing but glowing coverage of the YearlyKos convention in Chicago, the media's fascination with the Netroots continued with reckless abandon this weekend. On Saturday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, to be followed by a debate on Sunday's "Meet the Press" between the head Kossack and the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Harold Ford, Jr. Are media recognizing the power of...

The Honorable Harold Ford, Jr. Chairman Democratic Leadership Council 600 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 400 Washington, D.C. 20003 Dear Rep. Ford, I appeared with you on the O’Reilly Factor on July 31, 2007, in my capacity as spokesman for FreeRepublic.com to discuss politics on the Internet. The host, Bill O’Reilly, falsely accused FreeRepublic.com of having the following comments on its site: "Homosexuals are dogs," "I hate blacks," "Hillary Clinton should be assassinated," and "A stray bullet should kill her." To be blunt, those comments were made up by the O’Reilly Factor. The O’Reilly Factor was not able to provide documentation...

Dan Drezner, commenting on the fact that the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates are passing up the centrist DLC's summer meeting in favor of speaking at YearlyKos, says: The fact that YearlyKos matters more than the DLC seems like pretty damning and uncomplicated evidence to me of where the party has traveled over the last four years. Actually, I think it is a little more complicated than the simple "left vs. centrist" spin that most people have put on this. In substantive terms, after all, the three main Democratic candidates this year are only slightly to the left of...

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen suggested himself as a model for Democratic presidential nominees Monday, though disavowing any interest in a national position and declining to state a preference for any of his party’s presidential candidates. “If one of those presidential candidates who chose not to come here today can sell themselves in Tennessee, they can sell themselves in mainstream America,” Bredesen told the Democratic Leadership Council. None of the Democratic presidential candidates spoke at the DLC gathering, though they were invited. Still, presidential politics was a topic in speeches by former President Clinton, Bredesen and three other Democratic governors...

NOT very long ago, the Democratic Leadership Council was a maker of presidents — or, at least, the maker of a president. In 1991, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, then the council’s chairman, elucidated the “New Democrat” ethos and previewed the themes of his presidential candidacy (“opportunity, responsibility, community”) with a speech at the centrist group’s annual conference. “It became the blueprint for my campaign message,” Mr. Clinton later wrote in his autobiography. He added, “By embracing ideas and values that were both liberal and conservative, it made voters who had not supported Democratic presidential candidates in years listen to...

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...