DLC/New Dems/Third Way vs. Dean discussion

[knowledgeispower]

The way I see it, this primary is really about the identity of the party. Do we throw our weight behind the DLC sponsored New Democrats because they brought us 8 years of Clinton and what should have been at least 4 years of Gore? Or do we instead attempt to frame the debate ourselves by rallying behind a candidate who promises a "new kind of politics?" That is the central question, IMO.

There are strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the argument. The DLC (which I shall use here as the moniker for "New Democrats" and "the Third Way" as they are really all interchangeable) gave us Bill Clinton, or perhaps Bill Clinton gave us the DLC. Either way, the point is that the DLC represents a Democratic president being elected for the first time in 12 years and being re-elected for the first time since FDR (though JFK would almost certainly have been...or RFK for that matter). Then Al Gore largely road the DLC path to what should have been a narrow victory over George W. All in all, we did have 8 full years of a popular Democratic president and probably should have had 12-16.

The other side of the argument is this: what exactly does the DLC stand for? Winning is the first and foremost answer, and that is a praiseworthy goal since nobody likes losing (especially as horribly as the Dems had pre-DLC). But beyond winning, do they have any principles? Is there a master plan? It seems to me that winning is all to the DLC, which leaves little room for even moderate idealogues in the party. What's more, some people have argued that not standing for anything has hurt the Democratic party's chances of winning elections in the long run, although I think that really still remains to be seen. The point is that the DLC doesn't give much to rally behind other than staving off a McGovern/Mondale/Dukakis type defeat.

I think it should also be mentioned that the Dems lost both the Senate and the House under the DLC's leadership. This does not necessarily imply causation; perhaps the house and senate were lost for reasons that had nothing to do with the DLC. But there still remains the possibility that DLC politics have damaged the view of the Democratic party as representative for the little guy.

So on to Dean. It is hard to characterize him in any other terms than that he is not DLC, yet at the same time he is hardly the opposite of DLC. He was himself DLC for a while, and as many have pointed out he is rather moderate. In other words, a Dukakis he is not. But Dean DOES stand for something other than merely winning. He may be revolutionizing the way campaigns are done through his massive donations from individuals. Unlike the DLC, he is not, at this point, sold out or beholden to the corporations. It is this facet of the DLC that makes it hard for them to be anything other than Republican-lite. When both parties are controlled by largely the same money interests, you just aren't going to have a lot of political diversity.

So Dean represents a possible escape from that path. It remains to be seen how he would fare in the general election, but at least as far as the primaries go his strategy of grassroots fundraising has obviously caught on. This is what excites me about Dean more than anything else, including the decidedly moderate principles he espouses.

The question Democrats must decide in this primary is as follows: Should the Dems stick with the DLC path (as represented by Lieberman, Kerry, Clark, and-to a lesser extent-Gep and Edwards) or should they instead seek out a new path with new promises (as represented by Dean) but also new challenges.

What say you, my fellow DUers?