Wrong On The Right

Submitted by Robert Borosage

The corporate wing of the Democratic Party - the Democratic Leadership Council—will meet in its "National Conversation" this weekend in Nashville. The press is already noting that while all of the Democratic presidential hopefuls will appear at the YearlyKos progressive blogger gathering in Chicago, not one is slated to join the DLC in Nashville.
DLC head Al From suggests this is because the candidates have "tunnel vision," and, focused on the Iowa caucuses, are chasing liberal activists. But From is certain that the party's nominee will turn to the DLC and drift to the right when it comes to the general election. "It's sort of like you play on one end of the field to win the nomination," From said, "but if you want to win the game, you've got to play on both ends."
This has been the DLC's theme from its inception. Democrats, the group argued, had to distance themselves from "liberal interest groups," bite their tongues, and appeal to a center that, over the years, moved ever further to the right.
But that threadbare theory, dubious when it was initially aired a quarter century ago, is divorced from reality now. The "center" of American politics isn't on the right; the center is increasingly progressive in its views. The majority of Americans now oppose the Iraq War, oppose corporate trade policies, want big reforms in health care and energy policy, and are looking for a new deal in the economy. They aren't looking for the triangulated, modest reforms that Dick Morris and the DLC championed—school uniforms and computerized medical records—they are looking for bold changes and a very new direction.
From is partially right. The progressive base of the party is driving the debate. It has grown in sophistication and capacity, from labor's revived political program to Moveon.org and the new blogger energy. And it is buoyed by a sense that a majority of Americans are increasingly moving our way.
But the DLC—indelibly dubbed Democrats for the Leisure Class by the Rev. Jesse Jackson—has always had a base built on corporate money and lobbyists, not on activists. Its isolation isn't because it doesn't have troops in Iowa or New Hampshire. Its isolation comes because it simply has been wrong on the fundamental questions of our day.
Led by Sen. Joe Lieberman, the DLC was the raucous cheerleader for Bush's war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy debacle in our nation's history. They lauded the corporate trade policies that have left us with the largest trade deficits in the annals of time, and contributed to stagnant wages, growing inequality and a declining middle class. They championed fiscal austerity—even when the budget was in surplus—leaving us with a looming deficit in vital investments from new energy to modern schools to basic infrastructure. "Inequality doesn't matter," they argued, even as we moved into an economy in which the wealthy few captured all of the benefits from growth. One of their first policy papers was an attack on the minimum wage, which went a decade without being raised.
No Democratic presidential candidate—including, notably, Sen. Hillary Clinton—is prepared to stand on that agenda. The DLC is now led by a cautious, if attractive, politician who lost a Senate race in a Democratic year. Lieberman, its past chair, isn't even a Democrat anymore. "We're all populists now," says the DLC's Will Marshall, but the organization still scorns the populist economics that was central to Democratic election victories across the county last year.
But From needn't worry; corporate money will insure that the DLC remains well-heeled, even if it is increasingly out of step with the country.