Democrats Split Again Over Party's Agenda

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dems2jan02.story

Democrats Split Again Over Party's Agenda
Liberals and centrists trading magazine salvos reopen disputes on the war and economics. The debate could affect the next presidential race.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

January 2, 2005

WASHINGTON — The truce appears to be expiring among Democrats in Washington.

In the immediate aftermath of Sen. John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush in November, Democrats notably avoided the postelection squabbling that's consumed the party after almost all recent presidential races — even those it won.

But as the new year begins, a series of high-profile articles in leading liberal journals is suddenly reopening old divisions.

On one front, a liberal operative at a top think tank has accused the Democratic Leadership Council, the principal organization of party centrists, of pushing the party toward a pro-corporate agenda "that sells out America's working class — the demographic that used to be the party's base."

In equally combative terms, a leading young centrist commentator published a manifesto in the New Republic magazine accusing the Democratic left of slighting the struggle against Islamic terrorism and undermining the party's image on security — an argument instantly embraced and promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council. <snip>

Democrats have now moved back to the barricades, at least in their intellectual circles. The lines of battle evident in these disputes also could resurface in the race for the DNC chairmanship, which will pit liberals Dean and party operative Harold M. Ickes against centrists such as former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer and Simon Rosenberg, president of the centrist New Democrat Network.<snip>

[papau]

1. At least this story names the folks in the Democratic Part who are in

conflict over this agenda setting for/against economic policy/populism, and "With Iraq still in turmoil" see a fight over foreign policy rather agreement to disagree on the going in, and to agree on getting out ASAP.

Names mentioned are Thomas Frank ("What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America"), David Sirota, of the American Prospect and the Nation, Matthew Yglesias's (of the American Prospect) rebuttal to Sirota along with Ed Kilgore's arguing that economic populism wasn't a "silver bullet" to recapture voters who doubt the party's positions on social and national security issues, and Marshall saying "The problem is that turning up the heat on corporate malefactors works with … upscale Democrats, professionals, the academic class," he said. "It doesn't work for the audience the left thinks will be swayed by it, working middle-class families who aspire to better lives and want to know what Democratic policies will help them achieve it," - all the while Peter Beinart of the New Republic (and loved by the DLC) suggests a more hawkish stance in the war against terrorism.

So is DU soft on anti-terror - is Michael Moore and MoveOn.org taking us in the wrong direction - or Is MoveOn simply fighting against the Democratic Party doing a wholesale embrace of the neoconservative ideology?

Personally I am with Beinart of the Campaign for America's Future who implies this is an unecessary fight that the DLC has started and which the DLC can not win, but which will be both brutal and a help to the GOP.

[Larkspur]

4. I'm with Howard Dean and MoveOn.org

Beinart is a pro-neo-con jerk.

[ingasm]

2. Why

can't we all just get along.

[papau]

3. :-) God will forgive the GOP if they repent - I just want to stop them!

:-)

[eg101]

5. Howard Dean is a "liberal"?!

Sweet Mother of God!
www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/1668089.php

[txaslftist]

6. "Soft on terra..."

...beats being soft-headed on terra...

That's buying into Bush's crapola about Iraq and Afghanistan being part of the same conflict. Ignoring that the administration was planning the Iraq invasion prior to 9/11...

The DLC is just flat-out choking on this...

Get Howard Dean and Russ Feingold in there and get rid of these Republican-Lite bozos!