I'm sorry folks, but the supposed Dem establishment is really just a sad group of well intentioned people who were left leaderless after Clinton left town...
The absence of a true Democratic establishment is the central fact not only of the current presidential contest, but also of the last three years of Beltway politics. Washington Democrats are not wholly without political and strategic assets. But when you put it all together, there's not much to look at.
Democrats not only lack control of the White House and either chamber of Congress, they don't even have strong party institutions to fall back on. Not long after the 2000 elections, party chieftains installed fundraising Wunderkind Terry McAuliffe at the Democratic National Committee with a mandate to rebuild the party's long-dilapidated political infrastructure. He's succeeded about as well as anyone could, considering that after he became chairman, those same party chieftains successfully pushed through Congress a campaign finance reform which deprived the DNC of most of its income. These days, McAuliffe is reduced to bragging that his new small-donor program brings in enough money to cover the DNC's operating expenses.
The Democrats also lack the kind of idea factories which, in the absence of controlling any branch of government, are vital to helping parties formulate policy and strategy. The Brookings Institution, supposedly the brain trust of left-leaning intellectuals, houses a number of former Clinton policy hands and publishes well-turned monographs on nuclear nonproliferation and pension reform. But it's hardly a node in the Democratic resistance--until recently, it was run by a Republican. The foremost advocacy-oriented think tanks on the left--the Economic Policy Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the DLC's Progressive Policy Institute--together spend about as much in a year as does just one of the three prominent conservative policy shops, the American Enterprise Institute. Meanwhile, the pressures of Republican rule are beginning to undermine the Democrats' relationship with such long-time allies as the AARP, which recently endorsed GOP-authored prescription-drug legislation, handing Bush a major legislative victory to tout during his reelection campaign. And while Beltway Republicans can count on the likes of the The Washington Times and the FOX News Channel to function as de facto party organs, the Democrats have no such relationship with the mainstream media. NPR has a liberal temperament but, to say the least, lacks a Rush Limbaugh-like taste for political warfare. And The Washington Post, once the liberal Beltway media's high command, if anything now reflects a center-right perspective. The paper's editorial page, having spent the Clinton years hyperventilating about Whitewater, opined that Enron's White House contacts weren't worth a congressional investigation and strongly supported the war in Iraq.
Washington Democrats have recognized their own disarray, and complain about it often. Yet they have continued to behave in many respects as a party in power, negotiating with Republican leaders on the Hill as if they, and not the GOP, govern the nation. "Democrats are inclined to legislate," says Chris Jennings, who ran the health-care portfolio during the Clinton administration. "They always want to be the dealmaker." Nowadays, however, instead of making a deal, the Democrats usually get rolled. Most recently, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) helped congressional Republicans craft their prescription-drug proposal on the understanding that it would not include provisions aimed at privatizing Medicare--provisions which nevertheless made their way into the final legislation, unveiled in December and now signed into law. "It's not just that Ted Kennedy was the old liberal lion, but that he supposedly knew how to play the game," says one union strategist, describing the shock many Washington Democrats felt at how the Medicare debate played out. "He's been on the Hill for 40 years. How could he get conned like this?"
Even as out-of-power Democrats act like establishmentarians, the city's ascendant GOP ruling class retain the instincts of revolutionaries. For three years, Democratic voters and activists across the country have watched the Republican Party assail, with seeming impunity, everything they hold dear. Aside from filibustering the GOP's energy plan and blocking a handful of exceptionally reactionary judicial nominees, there are few success stories to which Democratic leaders can point. There's no question that this experience has created a wellspring of anger against both congressional Republicans and President Bush. But the GOP's romp has also elicited from the Democratic grassroots a deep contempt for the party's Washington leadership. That frustration is the defining characteristic of the ongoing primary contest, dwarfing debates over policy, ideology, or electoral strategy. Dean and his movement have risen up to do battle against an establishment that doesn't really exist--which is why he will almost certainly be the next Democratic nominee. "Dean's people are motivated, they're coherent and cohesive," says one Democratic insider. "They're giving him money hand over fist. And he can just knock over this Potemkin village."
Dean had a chance to be the new leader of the Democratic party, but he failed, and it wasn't the Dem establishment that caused his failure. But like I've said before and I'll say it again, the Dean grassroots army has become and can still be the biggest voice for reform in DC that exists. Dean has rallied against corporate control of DC, he's called out the Dems for not standing up for themselves and he's controled the dialogue during the primary race. Dean's personality turned some folks off, but his message is spot on, and his agenda is one that all Dems can embrace.