‘New Democrat’ says center still holds

Michael J. Mishak

Friday, Nov. 2, 2007 | 7:38 a.m.

In August the major Democratic presidential candidates attended the YearlyKos convention, a gathering of influential bloggers and liberal activists.

None of the candidates, however, visited the national conference of the Democratic Leadership Council, the moderate group that served as Bill Clinton's favorite policy and strategy shop. The corporate-backed council was the institutional home of the so-called New Democrats, the centrists who were in ascendance in the 1990s.

That candidates would now shun the council strongly suggested the influence of the organization is fading , with the party and its candidates shifting to the left in the run-up to the 2008 election.

Not so, says Al From, the council's founder and chief executive. In a meeting with the Sun's editorial board Thursday, he said the group's ideas are more relevant than ever - and infused in the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The council is promoting a Web site and developing a national farm team of local and state officials . In Nevada, From met with about 20 leaders picked by former Gov. Bob Miller, including Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera and Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid. (Miller, Oceguera and Reid have endorsed Clinton.)

The council senses an opportunity to regain its relevance.

"This election will be about the triumph of the center and which candidate will claim it," From said. "Democrats have an opportunity to build a long-term governing and political majority in the progressive center."

The words come from a man whose perch on the national stage ended with Clinton's presidency.

Noam Scheiber, who writes for what was once the mouthpiece of New Democrats, The New Republic, this summer declared the council "radioactive" to Democratic primary voters and said it should disband.

In fact, the political pendulum has shifted considerably to the left since the 1990s, with Americans more supportive of a social safety net and more liberal on hot-button issues. In 1999, the Pew Research Center found that liberals and New Democrats each accounted for nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base. By 2005, New Democrats had disappeared as a group, and liberals had doubled in number.

On top of that, President Bush has radicalized many moderate Democrats and pushed them into the liberal column.

Founded in 1985 after Walter Mondale's 49-state loss to President Ronald Reagan, the council sought to rescue Democrats from the increasingly heavy hand of interest-group liberalism that, in effect, had robbed the party of a compelling vision for the country as a whole. It preached deficit reduction and free trade and found its champion in Bill Clinton.

As its chairman, Clinton addressed the national conference in 1990:

"Too many of the people who used to vote for us, the very burdened middle class we are talking about, have not trusted us in national elections to defend our national interests abroad, to put their values into our social policy at home, or to take their tax money and spend it with discipline. We've got to turn these perceptions around or we can't continue as a national party."

Thus, the New Democrat was born, and President Clinton, with From and Bruce Reed (now the council's president) as key advisers, pursued an agenda that largely corrected those perceptions. Among the administration's major accomplishments were balancing the budget and enacting welfare reform.

Critics argue the council lost touch when Clinton left office, citing, for example, council allies in Congress who supported a 2005 measure making it harder for people to declare bankruptcy.

From said he understands why candidates would want to skip his organization's conference: to avoid the withering scrutiny of the newly powerful Internet liberals. Still, he said, candidates who favor a liberal approach over a centrist one will do so at their own - and the country's - peril. "If all we do is what the interest groups want, we end up with a candidate like Mondale," From said.

From said his group's ideas are front and center with the Democrats' top-tier candidates. "You don't have to come to our conference to take our ideas," he said. "Our big influence is on the thinking of our party. Everything else is cosmetic."

Hillary Clinton, he said, is most aligned with the council's policies. He cites her position on the Iraq war, in which she's called for a measured withdrawal (she's the most hawkish of the candidates), and her plan for health care reform, which is simpler than what she worked on as first lady in 1993 and focuses on "shared responsibility."

He also believes Sen. Barack Obama is borrowing from "themes Bill Clinton put on the map in 1992." Former Sen. John Edwards is not far behind, he said. "If you get past his rhetoric, his ideas could come from a centrist think tank."

"In the end, candidates will be judged on what they stand for," From said. "And more voters are in line with our thinking than what's on those blogs."