In 1994 a centrist think tank warned Clinton to toe their corporate line.

madfloridian

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Fri Aug-05-11 01:50 PM
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In 1994 a centrist think tank warned Clinton to toe their corporate line.

I find it amazing how they got enough power, just a few men....to bully the president and get him to listen. I find myself wondering if the same think tank, just a different name, is doing the same thing to today's Democratic president. It's as though the people who vote are told to ignore it and vote anyway, and their wishes are ignored. That's power.

It would explain why Bill Clinton told Robert Reich in 1997 that he could not be criticizing the corporations.

Reich and his wife had gone to dinner with the Clintons. Reich mentions that they are "sacrificing public investment so that corporations have more money to invest" and that "at the least, we should expect them to invest with their employees and communities in mind."

There's an awkward pause. Have I overstepped the line?

'It seems to me,' says Clare, weighing her words carefully, 'that corporations are downsizing not only themselves but also a big part of the middle class.'

She's bailed me out. I want to kiss her on the spot. I throw caution to the winds and ask B, 'Would you be comfortable saying what Clare just said?'

'I have to keep myself from saying it everyday,' he says softly. 'I shouldn't be out in front on these issues. I can't be criticizing.'

Review of Locked in the Cabinet.

We should wonder why a Democratic president would fear being critical of corporations.

The DLC warned him in 1994 and in 1995 to follow their goals...or they would withdraw support.

Party centrists issue stern warning to White House

The Democratic Leadership Council's moderate ideas helped Bill Clinton win the presidency. Now, the organization's head honchos are angry over his slide from the organization's themes. The Democratic Leadership Council, which created the "New Democrat" themes that helped put Bill Clinton in the White House, has turned sharply critical of him, saying that the president is finished if he ignores their ideas. It was another sign of the political anger and unrest Clinton faces in his party if his wounded presidency does not recover.

The DLC's blunt warning was delivered in November in response to the Democrats' midterm election debacle, which shrank the party's congressional membership and shook whatever remaining confidence they had in Clinton's political viability. The DLC's criticism followed some bitter remarks by its chairman, Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, who, after losing his Senate bid, complained that his defeat was due to "a visceral anti-Clintonism" among the voters.

..."I think for President Clinton there is a pretty blunt message in this poll," DLC President Al From told reporters this week. "It's `Get with the program or you'll have to pay the consequences.'"

Will Marshall, who heads the group's Progressive Policy Institute, said the poll showed that swing voters who helped elect Clinton were sending the president and the Democrats this message: "We are disappointed in what you've done, but we haven't given up on you. You have one last chance. You govern as a New Democrat, unequivocally as a New Democrat, and you can win us back, and you can win back the vital center of the electorate. But if you don't, you're in big trouble."

They gave him one last chance? It was their way or no way, they said.

In 1995 they put out more warnings to President Clinton.

From Time Magazine July 1995. Catch the swipe that is made at Jesse Jackson and "traditional" elements of the party.

Clinton's troops turn away.

The White House is having an anxiety attack at the prospect of a liberal challenge from Jesse Jackson, but a potentially more dangerous threat may come from the Democratic Leadership Council, the group of moderate Democrats formed in 1985. Clinton helped found the organization, chaired it before resigning to run in 1992 and sold himself to the nation on the basis of the ideas developed by the council's think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Clinton had defined the DLC's task as creating "a new middle ground of thinking on which someone can not only run for President but actually be elected."

Having accomplished that goal, Clinton has wandered. "Since his election," says DLC president Al From, "the President's campaign agenda hasn't been his first priority." A repeat of that performance is what many centrist boosters worry about most. Clinton's latest moves to the center, like his recent balanced-budget proposal, are viewed by the DLC as mere electoral tactics that may signify nothing at all about a second term's direction. "In '92 our ideas captured the country but not the party," says William Galston, who resigned recently as a White House aide to help develop what From calls a "third way." Since then, adds Galston, the tension within the Administration "has involved accommodating the liberal tendencies that still dominate the party and the centrist views the President ran on." That confusion is exactly what could doom Clinton, since many Americans still wonder what the President really believes in and what he will fight for.

The centrists don't want to go down with him. Explains Elaine Kamarck, a former PPI fellow currently working for Vice President Gore: "The DLC worries about dying off if the President's defeated. The battle for the party's soul will continue even if he wins. But if he loses, the liberals will claim that the dlc's centrist views were responsible and should be tossed aside entirely. The counterargument will be that just because the messenger proved imperfect, doesn't mean the message itself should be junked."

But these words from Al From in that article just about tell the whole philosophy of the think tank that hijacked the party's platform.

Al From himself embodies John Maynard Keynes' warning that the real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas but in escaping from old ones. "The problem for us and him," says From, "is that Clinton promised to be different. He's been that a bit, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The fundamental change he pledged hasn't come. We've been consistent in articulating the ideas he won on, but he hasn't been consistent in advancing them. We were at this before Clinton, and we'll be at it after he's gone, because a long-term majority will never be created around the interests represented by Jesse and the labor unions. Most people are politically homeless now. They're our target. We'll work to get Clinton to pursue us, but we're damn sure going to make it hard for him to catch us."

I think pretty much the same thing goes on today. The name of the think tank has changed, but I think they still bully the president. A strategist who plays a Democrat on TV has assured us that there is a new leader in town, and we liberals need to watch out.

The Democrats' New Power Base

And she does not mean the voters.

The truth is, the DLC�s position as the leading centrist Democratic think tank was long ago overtaken by a group called Third Way, which has been growing more influential by the day.

Before joining the White House, Bill Daley, President Obama�s new chief of staff, was a board member of Third Way.

In an interview before the news of the DLC�s shuttering, Ken Baer, communications director for the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime fan of Third Way, told me: �Their power is rising. They put out original policy ideas that are rooted in reality and relevant to the moment. They are really the only organization owning the reform space in the Democratic Party.�

Then as now, they seem unconcerned about actual voting members of the party. They assume we are on board anyway, no matter what.

That's what gives them the power to bully.