Uniting the Party...or Dividing it to win the nomination

[StephNW4Clark]

I am wondering if people here agree that the crucial idea to maintain is party unity. Not necessarily rank solidarity but not attacking the candidates recklessly.

So I wonder what people make of this:

"Just when we were ready to mix up some eggnog and forget about politics for a week or so, Gov. Howard Dean chose to favor the DLC with one of the more peculiar party unity appeals in recent memory. At a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Dean said this, according to the Los Angeles Times:

"One of the reasons I wish the other guys running for president would tone it down a little bit is that at the end, we're all going to have to pull together in order to beat George Bush. Even the Democratic Leadership Council, which is sort of the Republican part of the Democratic Party -- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party -- we're going to need them too, we really are."

Maybe Gov. Dean should take his own advice and "tone it down a little" himself. He should know how it feels to be on the receiving end of the insulting charge of crypto-Republicanism, since it was hurled at him by self-styled Democratic "progressives" in Vermont throughout much of his tenure as governor. It's a cheap shot not just at us, but at former DLC chairmen like Bill Clinton, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman, along with hundreds of hard-working Democratic elected officials around the country who are part of our movement. It also illustrates why we've worried about Dean's loose-lipped approach all along."

DLC | New Dem Daily | December 23, 2003
Ho Ho Ho


See the rest of the article at http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252280

[frustrated_lefty]

1. Hmmm..

I really don't want to follow in the vein of Gephardt or Lieberman.

[dajabr]

2. The DLC picked this fight on July 3, 2003...

Activists Are Out of Step
By Al From and Bruce Reed



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These days, Democrats act as if they're so far gone they've forgotten where they're from.

Every weekend, yet another special-interest group hosts a candidate forum to pressure the presidential candidates into praising its agenda. Some of the candidates seem intent on running applause-meter campaigns, measuring success by how many times they tell the party faithful what they want to hear.

There's one big problem with this strategy: Most of those party activists the candidates are trying so hard to please are wildly out of touch not only with middle America but with the Democratic rank and file. The great myth of the campaign is the misguided notion that the hopes and dreams of party activists and single-issue groups represent the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. They don't.

The fact is, "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," as former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean likes to call it, is an aberration, a modern-day version of the old McGovern wing of the party, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home. That wing lost the party 49 states in two elections and turned a powerful national organization into a much weaker, regional one.

More: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251866&kaid=85&subid=65


More Anti-Dean Missives from the DLC web-site:

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252272&kaid=131&subid=207

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252271&kaid=131&subid=192

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252252&kaid=131&subid=192

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252248&kaid=131&subid=192

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252220&kaid=131&subid=192

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252174&kaid=131&subid=192

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251861&kaid=131&subid=192

Mmmmm... wonder who has an "Agenda" here?

[jonnyblitz]

3. apparently you aren't aware of how unpopular the DLC is

around here. Quoting them to bolster you case for Clark is a true act of bravery on your part.

[wyldwolf]

5. Well, the DLC has it's vocal detractors here on DU...

..but there are also plenty of DLC supporters or those who strongly support DLC democrats.

I'm a Clinton man myself.

[jonnyblitz]

10. yup. There seems to be more supporters of the DLC here now

than there were when I first signed up here at DU just prior to the Bush invasion. Maybe they are just more vocal now. Who knows. :hi:

[SahaleArm]

4. Unfortunately foot-in-mouth disease is part and parcel for Dean...

Expect more of it from now till the nomination, and should he get the nomination I expect more of the same all the way to Nov-2004. He seems to live off this edginess and until recently the media has played along by giving the good Doctor a free ride while bashing every other candidate. Now that Dean has a substantial 20% lead, he's getting a taste of scrutiny he will be under as the nominee.

Watching Dean backpeddle on Clinton, Trippi melt when cornered to name the 'establishment', and now the armed forces relationship gaffe, I see someone who isn't ready for prime-time. Expect a 24-7 media frenzy that will attempt to undermine his credibility, question the flip-flops, call out the rhetoric, and examine the record. And there's very little that the Dean rapid response team will be able to do. This is where the campaign must respond with something more substantial than whining and fundraising. They will be taking on a Republican machine that can double their fundraising if they wanted to, at that point Dean will have to stand up on his own merits and the campaign will have to show some backbone.

[dajabr]

7. All that, and still the frontrunner...

Overall, Dean's critics are correct to point out that this straight shooter sometimes engages in rhetorical bank-shots. After all, he is a politician. And his gaffe quotient is indeed high enough to warrant worry. Is it a sign he is not yet fully comfortable talking about foreign policy? (I pose that as a query, not a suggestion.) But the question that his Democratic foes need to face is, despite these liabilities, why is the Doctor doing so well among their voters? So far none of them have been able to serve up the right mix of passion and straight talk to blow a heretofore little-known governor away.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9660

[SahaleArm]

22. Loose lips sink ships...

In the past three months the doctor has had less than a week of negative press coverage. It's just starting and if it continues expect to see the effects across the board. Linking to the Nation doesn't change my view of what Dean will have to handle; both from the negative press and the Republican machine. Right now the Doctor has the base of the base, 30% of the Democrats who will partake in the primary and the target audience for the Nation. From here on out he'll have to win the rest of the Democratic base (70%) to win the nomination and 10% of the swing to win the presidency. I have my doubts.

[DancingBear]

8. Well stated

Many of us have tried (and will continue to try) to advocate the "battle tested before battle" scenario. I'm sure we'll get attacked, but so be it. It truly is that important.

Then again, if you have a General at the other end... :)

[dajabr]

13. A General. Who's never won an election...

Or Dean, a Governor who won election 5 times?

[DancingBear]

21. A general, but thanks for asking! n/t

[oasis]

6. just because Dr.Dean chooses to lable DLCers as GOPers don't make it so.

If it does come down to Dean followers vs. DLCers, those who want to replace Bush in the White House should ask themselves which group has broader voter appeal.

[Scott Lee]

9. My lip's supposed to quiver for the DLC here?

Screw 'em. They asked for this a long time ago. Howard Dean is bringing the warrant to the door and the DLC better be ready to vacate.

[Cocoa]

11. I think he's just scoring points

he knows there's a lot of anti-DLC sentiment among primary voters.

He'll cozy up with them soon enough.

[oasis]

12. Many Dems and independents are more concerned with making Bush vacate.

[dajabr]

18. 'Cept the DLC Strategy ain't workin'. See 2002 elections...

Failed Midterms
by John Nichols

George W. Bush may have lost the 2000 election, but he won the 2002 election--with a good deal of help from Democrats, who took a dream scenario and turned it into a political nightmare. Only in battles for statehouses did Democrats post gains, and even there the victories were fewer and farther between than had been anticipated.

Bush made himself the critical player in this year's election races. After his political team recruited the candidates, raised the money and ginned up a war vote in order to redefine the fall debate, Bush became the Campaigner in Chief. In visits to fifteen states in the five days before the election, he promised voters permanent tax cuts, conservative judges, a Department of Homeland Security and an ousted Saddam Hussein. And at the close of a relentlessly negative campaign season, Bush offered an oddly optimistic and conciliatory message--shapeshifting into a proponent of prescription drug benefits, a defender of Social Security and, in Minnesota, a friend of the late Senator Paul Wellstone.

Democrats countered with an agenda that was so anemic that candidates were forced to fend for themselves. Some, like Maryland's Christopher Van Hollen, who defeated moderate Republican incumbent Constance Morella by making an issue of the extreme conservative bent of House Republican leaders like Tom DeLay, succeeded in nationalizing local contests. Most did not, however, and the list of narrow defeats in House contests that Democrats should have won in Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama and South Dakota was depressingly long. The Democratic leadership's fits-and-starts approach to the question of whether the Bush tax cuts should be canceled left the party's candidates woefully unprepared to capitalize on economic developments--rising unemployment rates and declining consumer confidence--that in the past would have been tailor-made for Democrats running in a new Republican President's midterm. "The big story is that the Republicans had more of an economic plan than the Democrats," said Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America's Future.

More: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=nichols

[MoonRiver]

14. I get enough of the 'do as I say, not as I do' carp from *istas.

I definitely don't appreciate hearing more of it from Dean.

[KittyWampus]

15. Has Dean Ever Apologised For Being DLC?

Has he ever aadmitted that HE was a leading part of the movement which brought our party to the Right?

Does he own up to the fact that he only moved to the Left upon entering the Democratic Primary?

[dajabr]

19. I think he's alarmed the DLC followed Bush out of the Center...

And wants to do something about it.

[rucky]

16. We've been divided for years

Back when the DLC ruled, people just left the the party. So fighting over who we should all get behind is a BIG step forward from 2000, imo.

[killbotfactory]

17. After months of the DLC saying he's unelectable and calling us supporters

"fringe activists" I'm supposed to feel sorry for the bastards? To here them talk about party unity is a joke.

"Boo-hoo, Dean made fun of us... let's go cry in our teacups.."

[dajabr]

20. "Get over it" (nt)

:-)