On "Reinventing Democrats" by Kenneth Baer National Leadership

Over Thanksgiving, I started reading "Reinventing Democrats," the story of the Democratic Leadership Council and so called New Democrats.

Geographically, New Democrats since the early 80s have been centered outside the northeast. There are a few references in the book of New Democrats being southern and western democrats, but for much of the book, southern characters dominate the story of the DLC. Western Dems, most prominently Gary Hart and Bruce Babbitt, seem to be considered "there too."

The DLC movement, a way to bring the Democratic Party back to nationwide prominence after the losses in '80, '84 and '88, was seemingly centered in the South. The election of Clinton and Gore in 1992 (even though I haven't gotten that far in the book, I'm around 1991 right now), both Southerners and the candidates "of" the DLC, seem to back this up.

This all begs the question, how important were Western Dems in the creation of the DLC? If part of this whole "look West Dems" message is also partially moderating the Northeast Dem message, isn't being influential in the DLC important?

Western Democrats also reportedly faired poorly with the Clinton Administration. From Orcinus:

In more pragmatic political terms, Democrats need to get to work in revitalizing their own political networks in rural areas. Progressives, as Chris Clarke says, have always been part of the rural landscape -- but in pursuing an urban-centric political strategy that has focused on harvesting votes from locales with the largest numbers of voters, Democrats have over the past decade or more largely abandoned these people to their own devices.

The result is that, by failing to involve and empower their rural counterparts, urban liberals proceeded to pursue a series of environmental policy initiatives that, instead of obtaining a rural consensus, became edicts handed down from on high in the urban ivory towers.

Cecil Andrus, the longtime Idaho governor, former Interior Secretary and godfather of the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, tried to warn party leaders against pursuing this course in the 1990s. In 1994, he and a group of Western governors met with President Clinton and his advisers to discuss the party's approach to rural issues, particularly those in the West. Andrus bluntly warned Clinton that, if his administration didn't take rural people's concerns seriously, and continued to send signals of being out of touch with Western issues, they risked becoming a permanent minority party in the West. Democrats' insistence on representing an urban perspective was a real problem, he warned.

At the end of the meeting, Al Gore reportedly took Andrus aside and gave him a chewing-out, telling him: "We think you're the problem."

The 1994 results -- in which the GOP took control of the House and Senate, and swept to their now-entrenched dominant power role in western states -- of course proved Andrus right. And the myopic worldview of Clinton, Gore and the rest of the Democratic Leadership Council contingent has, through the missteps of 2000, 2002, and 2004, led us into our current quagmire.

I'm not really sure what Gore meant, but all of this does raise the question, how involved were Western Democrats in the movement over the past 20 or so years to "re-nationalize" the Democratic Party, in almost the same way we propose today?

I've gone so far as to pay less attention to winning or appeasing the South so as to pay more attention to the West. While the DLC has said for years that we need to be better at winning Southern votes, I've say "BAH! Who needs the South, when you've got Wyoming?" In the history of the DLC, Western Democrats are but a foot note, not holding dominant positions in one of the largest reform minded moderate bodies in the party.

While the DLC seems to be a natural ally and way to promote our views, have Western Democrats been shut out too long? Granted, I've only read up to 1991 so far, so anyone, fill me in on the last 13 years. But, I'll finish the book in a few days anyway and I'll write some more then.

Emmett O'Connell | December 1, 2004 | Comment on This Post (3 so far) Permalink: On "Reinventing Democrats" by Kenneth Baer National Leadership

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