Beinart has long been a vocal proponent of DLC centrism that championed inane bromides like "a more muscular foreign policy" (the Iraq debacle, anyone?) and incremental, pseudo-conservative social change. He, like his political hero, the execrable Evan Bayh, has made a career of publicly ripping liberals and anyone to his left in the party (read: most of the party) in support of the DLC notion that the country is essentially conservative, and, should Democrats stray too far leftward, a heavy price will be paid at the ballot box.
Beinart bases his entire political worldview on George McGovern's catastrophic 1972 (corrected) campaign, and on the polling of DLC/conservative Democratic pollsters, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, that insistently declares that embracing liberalism will doom the Democratic Party.
Never mind that Beinart and his DLC brethren ignore or refuse to accept these simple facts:
- Clinton-style, DLC centrism sent the party off a cliff during Clinton's presidency, and
- the electorate is not a static entity, stuck in the politics of 1968 or even 1996, for that matter.
Beinart's latest drivel posted at The Daily Beast on March 15 and wrongly titled, Democrats, Forever Changed, once again highlights his utter cluelessness on Obama, our current political state and what the passage of HCR may mean for the Democratic Party.
Beinart begins his assault on reason and common sense with a recap of the events that brought DLC-style centrism to the fore of the Democratic Party:
In the late 1980s, they responded to these disasters by creating the Democratic Leadership Council, which pushed the party to the right on welfare, taxes, trade, crime and defense. They claimed vindication when a president of the DLC, Bill Clinton, became president, and claimed double vindication when, after Clinton pushed for universal health care and got creamed in 1994, he won reelection two years later by triangulating against the liberals in his own party.
For this generation of Democrats, which includes Al From, Mark Penn, Joe Lieberman, William Galston, Elaine Kamarck, Dick Morris, Ed Koch, Jane Harman, Evan Bayh, and to some extent Bill and Hillary Clinton, being a liberal is like walking past a bear. Move cautiously and reassuringly and the bear will purr contentedly. But make any sudden or threatening gestures, and you’ll be mauled because, fundamentally, the bear distrusts liberals.
As Beinart makes clear here, DLC centrism is based on fear of "the bear" -- "the bear" being an essentially conservative electorate. It's a political ideology based almost entirely on fear... Fear of what Republicans would say if Democrats opposed the wrong-headed Iraq war, fear of promoting more banking regulation and health care reform and workers' right and equal right for gays, and -- well, you name a progressive, liberal, traditionally-Democratic cause and the DLC "centrists" steered clear. Because they feared what the other side might do or say.
That Beinart lists damn near every so-called Democrat who helped drive the party to its very nadir during the later Clinton years and into the Bush/Cheney nightmare should be enough to take the legs out from under any further belief that the electorate wanted more of what these Democrats were delivering in the late 1990s.
Beinart soldiers on, explaining the other side of the party (because, as we know from watching Fox News, there are [only] two sides to every story):
By the late 1990s, "don’t scare the bear" Democrats pretty much dominated Washington. But in the Bush years, a new faction began to emerge. These Democrats were mostly newer to politics. They had never seen a McGovern or Mondale mauled for being too far to the left. What they had seen was the post-1994 Bill Clinton, who shied away from ambitious liberal reform. And they had seen the Iraq War, which DLC types largely supported, partly out of fear (ed. note: there's that fear again!) that opposing it would allow Republicans to paint Democrats as soft on defense.
By 2003, this new group of Democrats was angry as hell. The Iraq War, which party elders had mostly backed, was proving a disaster, and to make matters worse, Republicans were clobbering Democrats as weak anyway. So these Democrats began fashioning a different theory: Perhaps the problem wasn’t that Democrats looked weak because they were too liberal, perhaps the problem was that Democrats looked weak because they didn’t stand up for what they really believed.
Note that Beinart talks about the "DLC types" in the third person, failing to note that he was, and still is, one of them.
But the real breakdown in that last paragraph is the end of the final sentence: "... the problem was that Democrats looked weak because they didn’t stand up for what they really believed."
Who "really believed" what, Pete? You and your DLC brethren? No, we know what you believed. You believed in cowering under the bed, murmuring, "Don't spank me! Don't spank me!" until the big, bad Republicans left the room with their paddles. Who knows what you and the rest of DLC corporate sell-outs "really believed?" It was weather vane politics at its very worst.
Beinart babbles on, citing Rick Perlstein's book, The Stock Ticker and the Super Jumbo, suggesting that Howard Dean was the first incarnation of a "Super Jumbo" Democrat. That is, a Democrat who opted to build the Democratic brand by sticking to core party principles. And, believe it or not, I agree with ol' Petey there.
But then he goes off the rails (again), wrapping up his clueless commentary by blaming Obama for passing up a chance to "bridge the red-blue divide."
I kid you not...
Why exactly Obama—advised by David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel and Valerie Jarrett—decided to double down on health care remains unclear. But it’s a good bet that President Hillary Clinton—advised by Mark Penn—would have acted differently. And in acting the way he did, Obama has turned himself into a superjumbo Democrat. For the foreseeable future, he has forfeited any chance of bridging the red-blue divide. Prominent Republicans have already announced that if Democrats try to pass health care via reconciliation, they will not work across the aisle to pass anything major this year. Conversely, Obama has cemented his bond with the netroots. It doesn’t really matter that the health care reform bill he is fighting for isn’t particularly left-wing. For the netroots, a politicians’ ideological purity has always been less important than his willingness to resist pressure from the other side, which is exactly what Obama has just done.
But, wait, it gets worse...
Whether health care reform passes or not, Obama has embraced polarization over triangulation. He has chosen Karl Rove’s politics of base mobilization over Dick Morris’s politics of crossover appeal, (ed. note: How's that for a Hobson's choice?) with consequences not merely for how he campaigns for Democrats in 2010, but for he campaigns for himself in 2012. And that’s a disaster for "don’t scare the bear" Democrats whether Obamacare passes or not. The reason is that the DLC wing of the party is much more top-down than the MoveOn wing. It has always wielded influence primarily through elected leaders rather than grassroots activists. But today, Obama is the only leader in the Democratic Party who really matters. As the retirement of Evan Bayh illustrates, there are few nationally prominent DLC-aligned politicians left. (The one person who could have rallied that faction of the party against Obama is now his secretary of state). The DLC wing’s best hope for relevance, therefore, was that Obama himself would restrain the party’s base, that his White House would nurture a new generation of centrist candidates.
Obama has "embraced polarization over triangulation?" Really, Pete? When 100% of House Republicans consistently vote against nearly every major piece of legislation he brings to the floor? And you think Obama has made a choice to not triangulate against the Democratic base?
Good lord, Pete, pull your over-sized noggin out of your rear end! How, exactly does one "triangulate" against one's base when 100% of the other side won't even vote for portions of bills they propose? Do you even understand what's going on in the House and the Senate? The GOP bet the house on shutting down everything Obama has tried to do, particularly on health care reform, and, yesterday, they lost.
Big time.
There was no room for triangulation, Petey. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. As Obama, himself, pointed out to the Republicans at their retreat, when one side is out ginning up emotion using extremist language to describe the other side ("socialist," "death panels," "Armageddon") they've left themselves no room to negotiate anything.
So Obama didn't choose "polarization." The other side did! And that left Obama no choice but to go it alone.
Beinart and his DLC colleagues are so cowardly and pathetic as to almost warrant pity. Almost. But Beinart's conclusion is just more of the same: fear of those big, ol' bad Republicans...
That hope is now gone. From top to bottom, Democrats have decided to bet the party’s future on the belief that Americans prefer bold liberals to cautious ones. Now it’s up to the bear.
Petey, just stay under the bed. We'll tell you when it's safe to come out.
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Psst, c'mon everybody, let's go grab a beer. I bet he stays under there another couple of years!
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