Like using the Vince Lombardi playbook in the Bill Walsh
era
Clinton's New Job: Defining the Center
Party moderates pick the New York senator to draft a plan to craft the Democrats' agenda.
By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio ? The Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of influential party moderates, on Monday named Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to direct a new initiative to define a party agenda for the 2006 and 2008 elections.
The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton ? once considered a champion of the party's left ? with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion.
In her speech at the group's annual summer meeting, Clinton signaled a desire to retain her independence from any party faction. She called for a truce between the DLC and liberal elements of the party, which have engaged in a ferocious war of words over the Democrats' direction since President Bush won reelection last year.
"Now, I know the DLC has taken some shots from some within our party, and that it has returned fire too," she told the gathering in Columbus. "Well, I think it's high time for a cease-fire ? time for all Democrats to work together based on the fundamental values we all share."
The DLC has been struggling to maintain the influence in the party it wielded when Bill Clinton held the White House. Leading party centrists formed the DLC after President Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984 over Walter F. Mondale, who was allied with the most liberal Democratic interest groups.
Clinton assumed her role as head of the DLC's "American Dream Initiative" at a meeting that drew three other centrist Democrats considered possible 2008 contenders and highlighted the maneuvering already underway for the next presidential race.
Besides Clinton, about 500 elected officials and DLC supporters heard from Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), the group's outgoing chairman; Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who replaced Bayh this month; and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner.
The session amounted to one of the first multi-candidate "cattle calls" for potential 2008 contenders. "I thought I was at a New Hampshire J-J dinner," joked Warner, in a reference to the Jefferson-Jackson Day party dinners that are frequent platforms for Democratic presidential contenders.
Each of the potential candidates delivered campaign-style speeches that blended criticism of the Bush administration with calls for Democrats to pursue centrist policies on issues such as national defense, energy and the federal budget.
Clinton's speech was built around an elaborate portrayal of what the country might look like ? on issues from healthcare to domestic security ? to a similar gathering in Ohio 15 years from now. Clinton envisioned a more prosperous and secure future, presumably under Democratic policies. And she charged that President Bush's agenda was leading America away from that day.
Mark my words. She will never make it out of the primaries if she runs.
Hillary Clinton's instincts suck. They are horrible.
Her enemies will ALWAYS paint her as a liberal, regardless of her real stands. Her name is a byword for liberalism and corruption among the right. They will fight her to their last breath. The DLC wants to use the same failed playbook it has always used, run down the middle of the road and lose to the GOP.
At the same time, all this does is alienate liberal supporters who are perplexed by her insane and pointless manuvering. Video games, abortion, all these issues do not help her. They just make her look weak and vaciliating.
John Kerry ran to the left and lost by 110K votes. He didn't hide from being a liberal and he came close enough to winning that Bush was sweating out election day. So what lesson does Clinton take from that: run to the middle. Despite every poll, every focus group that wants a strong, active Democratic party, the Democratic Loser Council wants to stay in the middle.
She keeps this up, she'll be watching John Kerry or John Edwards take the oath of office in 2009.
Why does the DLC not get it? Why does the DLC think that they can recreate 1992 when they can't even hold on to Senate seats. All their bright shining boys like Brad Carson got waxed by hard core GOP nutters. Why does she think Vichy can do anything more than appease and lose?
But what is so amazing is that Clinton doesn't take Clinton hate seriously. She thinks she comes into the room with a clean slate and she doesn't. To many people, she is the modern embodiment of liberal feminism, no matter what she really believes. She can preach moderation all she wants, but Max Clelland, Tom Daschle and many, many others show what happens to those who do. They may hate Howard Dean, but they do not fuck with him.
Atrios points out the uniting ways of the DLC and I added more.
If only we could hear such moral clarity from our own party's left! Instead, we heard from Daily Kos, the ur-liberal ur-blogger, whose blog included a cheer for, among others, outcast Labourite George Galloway, who blamed the attacks on Blair's Iraq policy -- and was roundly denounced by virtually all British politicians. "See, Democrats? That's how it's done," lectured the blogger ignorantly. Likewise, Matt Yglesias, an articulate liberal voice at The American Prospect, who belittled Marshall Wittmann's call for moral clarity as a phrase never used "unironically" anymore. No wonder Democrats are perceived to have a values problem.
My liberal friends are quick to point out that the left's chief grievance is with the war in Iraq, not the war on terror. But what does it do for the image of the Democratic Party -- not to mention the thinking of rank and file Democrats -- when some of our most skilled commentators use a moment of unambiguous terror to first find fault with an American policy (unseating Saddam Hussein) rather than first condemning the terrorists?
As Atrios points out, Kos didn't say that, but people cheered when Galloway spanked the whisky soaked Chris Hitchens and Norm Coleman in one day. Becuase he stood his ground, a concept foreign to the Democratic Loser's Council.
Uh, it's a shame the DLC hasn't noticed what Bill Lind and Tony Cordesman, no liberals, have. Our Iraq policy is a grotesque failure. Defending it only draws the contempt of average Democrats, who don't want their kids to die there. Removing Saddam made things worse, not better, for Iraqis in most aspects of their lives.
Atrios also asks why they hate Kos so much, and the reason is simple: he points out what pathetic losers they are. That doesn't surprise me. What did surprise me is the attack on Big Media Matt. None of us take that asshole Wittman seriously. He was laughed out of the room when he tried to run for DNC chair. And not by a blogger, either, but by Matt Taibbi of the NY Press.
If Hillary Clinton wants to lose with the DLC, that's her business. But lose she will.
