Al From's group wanted a "bloodless revolution" in our Democratic Party. [View all]

[madfloridian]

Al From in his recent book, The New Democrats Return to Power, indicated that their group was formed to take over the party's policy.

He went further, even proclaiming they could take over the party. In many ways they did. This is sort of Part 2 of It's Al From’s Democratic Party, we just live here.

The DLC group is sometimes portrayed as a pro-Wall Street set of lobbyists. And From did recruit hedge fund legends like Michael Steinhardt to fund his movement. But to argue these people were corrupt or motivated by a pay to play form of politics is wrong. From is clearly a reformer and an ideologue, and his colleagues believed they were serving the public interest. “Make no mistake about it,” wrote From in a memo about his organization’s strategy, “what we hope to accomplish with the DLC is a bloodless revolution in our party." It is not unlike what the conservatives accomplished in the Republican Party during the 1960s and 1970s

I disagree with Stoller on one point for sure. I do not believe From's colleagues believed or even cared if they were serving the public interest. I believe funding and profit were their main goals.

We can thank them for the trade deals that have taken many jobs overseas. Al From was really firm on Bill Clinton supporting NAFTA. Notice he wants to "beat" organized labor. What kind of Democrat does that? A New Democrat.

As From wrote in a memo to Clinton in his first term, “Of all the opportunities you have this fall, NAFTA presents the greatest. Passing NAFTA can make your presidency. NAFTA presents both an economic and political opportunity…I can’t tell you how much better it would make your life and how much it would strengthen your presidency for you to beat (David) Bonior and organized labor on NAFTA. That would reestablish presidential leadership in the Democratic Party, something that hasn’t happened since 1966.”

From had an institutionalist perspective on NAFTA. He believed in free trade, but he also believed in Presidential primacy over the legislature. '“Politically, a victory on NAFTA would assert your leadership over your own party by making it clear that you, not the Democratic leadership in Congress or the interest groups, set the Democratic Party’s agenda on matters of real national importance.” You can hear echoes of Obama, and the broad Democratic party, in its collective disdain towards Congress. That is one consequence of From’s revolution, a shift of legitimacy away from the legislature.

From worked with Bob Rubin, Bill Daley, and Rahm Emanuel to run a campaign to pass NAFTA. Since rolling labor and crushing the left was his favorite activity, From jumped into this feet first. He registered as a lobbyist, talked to members on the Hill, and traveled nationwide to do public and media events on behalf of the agreement. It worked, and in his view, set the stage for the rest of Clinton’s term

I question the wisdom of having a contest between Congress and the President on purpose.

More from Al From's piece about his book at The Atlantic last year.

Recruiting Bill Clinton

Subtitle:

How the New Democrats recruited a leader and saved the party after three devastating Republican routs

I have to disagree with Al From about the subtitle. We have had other devastating losses in the most recent years. How does he explain that? His DLC advocates are still in firm control of the party apparatus, so how do they explain these losses.

In this article Al From tells of how they got started on changing the party. Their think tank formed their own think tank called the Progressive Policy Institute. Al From named it Progressive because, in his own words, he was tired of his group being called conservative.

To bring about real change in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Conference, which we had founded in 1985 to expand the party's base and appeal to moderates and liberals—had to become a national political movement. That required two things.

First, we needed an intellectual center, because without a candidate to rally around, we needed a set of compelling ideas. Just as it was clear that we needed to paint the mural, it was also clear that we needed to beef up our capacity to paint it. We needed more substantive help. We needed a political think tank with the capacity to develop politically potent, substantive ideas that our elected officials and political supporters could embrace. In January 1989, we created the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

Hard to argue they did succeed in setting policy for the party.

This article from last month by the Progressive Policy Institute tells how President Obama worked on getting the TPP passed.

New Democrats plan ‘assertive’ new presence in House

But a group of pro-business Democrats, who allied with President Barack Obama and Republicans to pass landmark trade legislation, are angling to cut more deals with the GOP and White House as a way to assert themselves — and force the Democratic Caucus to the center.

Led by Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin, the New Democrat Coalition of some 50 members sees opportunities this fall on taxes, trade, Medicare and government spending. Those are all areas where House Republicans have struggled to fashion 218-vote majorities from within their own party, with a cadre of restive conservatives often rejecting leadership’s compromises with Senate Democrats and Obama.

“We need to reconstitute the center of American politics again, on both sides. That is a crucial role we have to play, especially when it comes to the economic message and what resonates in those competitive districts,” Kind said in a recent interview.

Moderates are tired of being overshadowed in a party where liberals have long dominated the agenda, even as Democrats slipped further into the House minority after the 2014 midterm elections. They’ve accused the White House and party leaders of focusing too much on niche economic issues like the minimum wage and pay equity — policies, moderates argue, that turn off suburban voters Democrats need if they want to take back the House. And top Democratic leaders have released them to break with the party’s liberal base, in many cases an acknowledgement that many moderates come from tightly contested districts.

Early returns have been positive.

When needed support from his own party to pass landmark trade legislation, he turned to the New Democrat Coalition. The group mustered just enough votes — 28 in total — to clear fast-track trade authority through Congress, despite opposition from the party’s left, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. It was the latest — and most controversial — instance of the group flexing its muscles.

I disagree with above statement about liberals controlling the agenda. Can't remember a time when we did that. Maybe before my time.

In his article linked above, Recruiting Bill Clinton, Al From tells why they felt they needed someone like Bill Clinton. He quotes from Clinton's words:

He was not afraid to challenge old orthodoxies. In the early 1980s, long before I knew him, he and Hillary Clinton pushed cutting-edge education reforms, like pay for performance and public-school choice, against the opposition of the powerful Arkansas Education Association. Speaking about education in his Philadelphia speech, Clinton said the Democratic Party was “good at doing more. We are not so good at doing things differently, and doing them better, particularly when we have to attack the established ideas and forces which have been good to us and close to us. We are prone, I think, to programmatic solutions as against those which change structure, reassert basic values or make individual connections with children.”

Some "established ideas" that have been under attack for a while are Social Security and public schools.

From's writing indicates the group believed they were deciding policy for the party even back in the early 90s.

Nearly a year after our Little Rock meeting, at the DLC’s Annual Conference in New Orleans on March 24, 1990, Bill Clinton became the DLC’s fourth chairman. Calling Clinton a “rising star in three decades,” Sam Nunn passed him the gavel. Nunn quipped that when the DLC was created “we were viewed as a rump group. Now we’re viewed as the brains of the party. In just five years, we’ve moved from one end of the donkey to the other.”

I noticed some interesting quotes from Amazon reviews about From's book from December 2013, The New Democrats and the Return to Power.

Al From redefined centrist politics and provided the ideas and organization to move the Democrats from opposition to government, showing progressives across the world how to be principled, modern and in power. (Tony Blair, former prime minister of the United Kingdom)

I always wished I could be as smart as Al, and this book shows why. He shows what it was really like to be present at the creation of a movement that would take the Democrats from the wilderness to the White House, forever changing the course of American political history. This is a book about ideas as much as the people who forged them into a winning strategy, and it should be read, re-read and underlined by anyone who wants to know what it takes to be successful in American politics today. (Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago and former White House Chief of Staff)

Before 1992, the Democratic Party had moved too far to the left to win national elections. Too little credit is given to Al From, whose book tells the story of how he helped move his party back toward the common sense center. (Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi)

The American business community owes a big debt of gratitude to Al From. With vision and persistence he helped lead a major political party back to the principles of private sector growth, trade, jobs, personal responsibility, and fiscal stability. This book proves that the political center can win politically and govern effectively. Both parties -- and the American people -- would be wise to learn from Al's inspiring story. (Thomas J. Donohue, President & CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce)

I don't find those reviews reassuring considering the sources.

I think we have to look back like this to understand why we are where we are now. It's time to reverse that "intellectual leveraged buyout" of our party.

Otherwise known as a "hostile takeover."