Taking charge

The Democratic Leadership Council, founded in the mid-1980s to drive the looney left from the party, is worried that the liberal activists may be taking over again.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, running on an ultra-liberal, anti-war platform that has re-energized the party’s left wing, is running neck-and-neck in New Hampshire with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who has a voting record that is nearly identical to that of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s.

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri is running on a huge, big government, universal health care plan that will cost trillions in higher taxes and that the centrist-leaning DLC says won’t work.

Among the second tier candidates, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is bringing rank-and-file labor union members to their feet with a call to take the profit out of the health care industry and turn it over to the government, lock, stock and barrel.

At a candidate forum Saturday sponsored by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employes in Des Moines, a focus group of AFSME members gave Mr. Kucinich — who doesn’t draw a blip in the national polls — their highest approval score.

Fearing that the party’s large, left-wing, activist base is in its ascendency in the post-Clinton era, the DLC sent out a blistering memo last week that not only attacked liberals like Mr. Dean, Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Kucinich, but the party’s liberal special interest groups as well.

“What activists like Dean” stood for was the old “McGovern-Mondale wing [of the party], defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home,” the memo charged.

“That’s the wing that lost 49 states in two elections (1972 and 1984), and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one,” DLC founder Al From and President Bruce Reed reminded Democratic leaders.

Mr. Dean may be flying high in New Hampshire, where he has made more than 80 campaign visits, but he is in the single digits in most national polls. He is not going to be the nominee. Still, his anti-Iraq war message and a call for a more robust social welfare policy has wetted his party’s appetite for a true left-wing agenda after years of going along with Bill Clinton’s triangulation.

Alarmed by the left’s ascendency, the DLC memo — titled “The Real Soul of the Democratic Party” — launched a frontal attack on the party’s activist base, charging that it does not represent what Democrats really stand for.

“The real tradition of the Democratic Party is grounded in expanding opportunity and economic growth, increasing trade, standing up for a strong national defense and for America’s interests in the world, and strengthening community at home,” said Mr. From and Mr. Reed.

“Not only is the activist wing out of line with Democratic tradition, but it is badly out of touch with the Democratic rank-and-file,” they said.

To underscore their case that the party’s liberal activists have very littlle in common with party regulars, they pointed to a 1996 Washington Post survey that compared the views of Democratic convention delegates to those of registered Democratic voters. The differences were astonishing.

“Democratic delegates were nearly five times more likely than Democratic rank-and-file to have incomes over $75,000, three times more likely to have a college degree, and over five times more likely to have done postgraduate work,” they said.

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