DLC Head Stepping Down, As Organization Changes Focus For New Era
The DLC has just announced that Al From, the long-time CEO and co-founder of the group over 20 years ago, is stepping down. He will be replaced by Bruce Reed, who recently co-authored a book on policy with Rahm Emanuel. And the organization itself will be shifting its focus from politics -- that is, elections -- to formulating and enacting policy, as well as highlighting a farm-team of elected officials across the country.
"I am immensely proud of the DLC's success," From said in the statement. "The DLC has largely achieved what we set out to do when I formed it in 1985. It has played a vital role in resuscitating the Democratic Party, and it has championed ideas that have changed our country for the better. Now is the right time for the DLC to take the next step, and Bruce Reed is the right person to lead it."
The political environment has changed dramatically since 1984, the landslide Democratic defeat that spurred centrists to come together and form their own organization. The group has had both its successes and failures over the years, to be sure. But this is now a different time, with a newly-elected president who was nominated from the more liberal end of the Democratic Party's ideological range. And that means the Democratic centrists will be shifting their own focus, too.
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I'd prefer the DLC just went out of business entirely. In my opinion, the organization was a destructive force that for many years made the Democrats too much like the Republicans and too responsive to corporate special interests. But my larger point is this: to the extent the DLC had any usefulness at all, it's surely outlived it. The differences between liberal and centrist Democrats are a lot less than they used to be. More importantly, the idea of an organization trying to pull the president and the party he leads to the right at a time when we're on the brink of Great Depression #2, when free market conservativism has been utterly discredited, and when we have the best chance ever of winning health care reform is appalling.
March 5, 2009 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Times are rough for centrist, aren't there? We just learned that Pat Toomey is challenging Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania's Senate race!
March 5, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
So the DLC is rebranding itself and splitting into two organizations. The so called "New Democrats" (DLC dead enders, Bayh et al) will handle the electoral end of things.
March 5, 2009 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink