Posted on 07/29/2007 9:29:57 PM PDT by neverdem
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 our message.”
But few headlines will be made this weekend at the council’s “National Conversation” in Nashville. The next president of the United States almost certainly won’t be there. Not only are Democratic front-runners like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama planning to skip the conference, but so are the Bill Richardsons and Chris Dodds of the field. That’s probably a good move for the candidates, as the council has become radioactive among Democratic primary voters. But the Democratic Leadership Council’s fading influence is also good news for the entire party.
One cause of the council’s decline is obvious. The group lost a direct line to the White House when Bill Clinton left office. But the change has also come about for more subtle reasons. The New Republic, where I work, was once closely associated with the council’s moderate agenda. These days, however, many of the fights the group picks seem as quaint to me and my colleagues as an old Fleetwood Mac song. Despite what you hear from the council, the biggest problem facing the Democrats, and the nation, is not the party’s liberal activists.
Before the Clinton presidency, the leadership council’s critique of the Democratic Party had merit. Many...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The neoCOMs are reverting to their true selves. It gives me hope for 2008.
This is real alternate universe stuff. BTW, isn’t the New Republic the rag that published those lies by “Scott Thomas”? I wouldn’t believe them if they tried to tell me what day of the week it is.
Har! That's where I had to shake off this simpleton, Noam Scheiber.
That line alone makes everything else the guy(?) says irrelevant.
What an incredibly stupid thing for this "reporter" to write. Exactly HOW would this even work? Bill Gates shaking down some hippie for spare change?
To believe that the Democrat party is to be credited with welfare reform is past self-delusion and well into clinical pathology. Crime? I suppose he means 100,000 mythical policeman patrolling our streets. The self-delusion continues. In this parallel universe, Newt Gingrich had nothing to do with welfare reform and Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with controlling crime.
Today, the council has almost no constituency within the Democratic Party. About every five years, the Pew Research Center conducts a public opinion survey to sort out the country’s major ideological groupings. In 1999, Pew found that liberals and New Democrats each accounted for nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base. By the next survey in 2005, New Democrats had completely disappeared as a group and the liberals had doubled their share of the party. Many moderates, radicalized by President Bush, now define themselves as liberals.
I suppose if you can steal a language, you can steal the reality it expresses. In this lexicon, "left-wingers" are characterized as "moderates" and "leftists" have lipstick smeared on them and are herded out to us as "liberals."
Two decades of work by the Democratic Leadership Council — and a not inconsiderable assist from President Bush — have made the Democratic Party the healthiest it has been in the 22 years of the council’s existence.
And the author has finally got something right, President Bush has given the American left its best chance for electoral domination which its own lunacy had denied it for decades. I suppose that makes the Democrat party "healthy" but its robustness comes only at the mortal peril of the country.
No. People like Scheiber work from the standard socialist/liberal template that dictates that ALL money belongs to the government, and the government uses the tax code to distribute all of "its" money "fairly". It is a bizarre (bizarre to we normal people!), reverse thought process that results in people like Scheiber concluding that when taxes are cut on a percentage basis across the board, the government "gives" more of its own money to wealthier people (because they pay the most in the first place), rather than merely confiscates less from them.
Another dead giveaway of this mindset is when you hear liberals whine about tax cuts by wringing their hands and wondering aloud how the government will "pay for them". Don't think about all this too hard - - your head will explode trying to understand psychopaths like Scheiber. Simply realize that Scheiber and his ilk are bitter, selfish scumbags who are never to be taken seriously. See you on another thread!
Regards,
LH
NeoCOMs? LOL!!!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
btt
Yeah, right. LOL.
This "blueprint for my campaign message" got Clinton exactly 43% of the popular vote in 1992, and two years later he was thoroughly repudiated at the polls when his party was swept out of power in a lambasting of historic proportions.
How do you reconcile their push for universal health care, belief in anthropogenic climate change and statist proposals for just about everything? Check the keyword banglist, and look at all the proposals for more gun control. The moveon.org types, i.e. the hard left, has taken over the neoCOMs.
The big irony here is that he talks about how Bill Clinton's moderate message isn't as neccessary because the party has become more liberal. But if that's the case, then why is the former First Lady the one favored over Obama and not the other way around? This piece is pure ideological masturbation.
IMHO, women will vote for Hillary just because she's a woman. Other than her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, I can see no ideological differences between Barak and Hillary. Check their American Conservative Union ratings.
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