Hmm. ;-( Michael Pugliese -----Original Message----- From: Michael Eisenscher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sunday, July 15, 2001 10:45 PM Subject: New Democrats Declare Cease-Fire July 16, 2001 Politics & Policy Democratic Centrists Declare Cease-Fire With Liberals to Establish United Front By JOHN HARWOOD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- The centrist political guerrillas who assembled to wage war on the old Democratic Party are declaring a cease-fire. The Democratic Leadership Council, for years the scourge of liberal "fundamentalists" within the party, is siding with teachers' unions in opposing experiments with private-school vouchers. It has stopped short of endorsing partial privatization of Social Security. And its allies in Congress show increasing sympathy with labor's demands for protection of workers and the environment in trade deals. As its adherents gather in Indianapolis this week, the DLC is highlighting the noncontroversial theme of improving the party's image on cultural values, largely by tempering language on issues such as gun control and abortion, rather than changing Democratic positions. "There are times to make fights and times not to make fights," says DLC Chief Executive Al From, who helped found the group 16 years ago. Mr. From began the latest dialogue with the Democratic left shortly after the 2000 election, by inviting AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to lunch at Washington's Hay-Adams Hotel. He says: "A lot of the big differences are behind us." DLC leaders say that is because they have succeeded in moving the Democratic Party toward the middle, and their new tone represents no compromise of principles. Liberals delighted by the change see something else -- a tactical retreat due to increasing firepower on the Democratic left, which influenced the party's 2000 presidential strategy and probably will again in 2004. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a recent DLC chairman who saw labor's renewed activism first hand as last year's Democratic vice-presidential candidate, is one of several prominent "New Democrats" considering the party's 2004 nomination. "The DLC got mugged by the reality of the 2000 election," cracks Robert Borosage, the onetime Jesse Jackson aide who heads the left-leaning Campaign for America's Future. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, a leading congressional liberal who welcomes diminished sniping from DLC stalwarts, says the group "decided to declare victory and get out" of an intraparty trench war with diminishing returns. Whatever the motivation, rapprochement between Democratic centrists and liberals has important ramifications as the party looks to the 2002 midterm elections and beyond. It has enhanced party unity around such Democratic priorities as adding a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare and enacting a patients' rights bill. And it has helped minimize defections as Democrats rally in opposition to President Bush's tax and fiscal policies and his plan to overhaul Social Security via individual investment accounts. "There's nothing better to unite a political party than having the opposition take the White House and both houses of Congress," says Mr. Lieberman, referring to the Republican dominance that preceded Sen. Jim Jeffords's abandonment of the GOP. "We're going along with more a sense of common goals. And if we disagree, it's not going to be bitter." The movement that centrist Democrats started 16 years ago can claim some big victories. Democrats had lost four of the previous five presidential elections before the DLC's founding, usually by landslide margins. Since then, Bill Clinton won the White House twice and Al Gore led Mr. Bush in the popular vote even as he narrowly lost in the Electoral College. Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore had been active in the DLC. And both bucked liberal opposition to support expanded trade, welfare overhaul and anticrime measures. At the same time, many Democratic liberals complained the DLC tried too hard to draw sharp lines of division within the party. As recently as 1998, the organization's New Democrat magazine decried "The Myth of the Resurgent Left" and criticized organized labor's "lurch" toward a more liberal stance under Mr. Sweeney. Even then, however, conditions for a rapprochement were building. Clinton administration officials and Democratic lawmakers were bruised by intraparty battles, Mr. Gore was maneuvering to lock up the 2000 nomination, and the president himself needed solid Democratic support to stave off impeachment. House Republicans Are Wary Of Embracing Bush's Agenda (July 10) At labor's behest, the Clinton administration turned down Texas Gov. Bush's request for a federal waiver needed to permit privatization of some welfare programs. After a lengthy dialogue on Social Security reform, the Democratic president gratified the party's left by rejecting the idea of diverting part of the retirement program's payroll tax toward the creation of individual retirement accounts; Mr. Clinton instead proposed additional savings incentives as an add-on to Social Security. Mr. Gore adopted the same position, and Mr. Lieberman renounced interest in Social Security privatization soon before becoming the vice-presidential nominee. New Democrats and organized labor still disagree over continued trade expansion. But even on that bedrock issue, pro-trade Democrats in Congress have pushed to give environmental and labor standards a higher priority in trade negotiations, since labor-friendly Democrats helped to block the Clinton administration from winning so-called fast-track negotiating authority from Congress in 1997. There has been "a gradual evolution" toward stronger labor and environmental standards, says Rep. Robert Matsui of California, a New Democrat who serves on the Ways and Means Committee. That trend is helping to hold up Republican efforts to move fast-track legislation on Capitol Hill. "They really changed on this," says AFL-CIO official Gerald Shea, who has followed up on the dialogue between Messrs. From and Sweeney with his own meetings with DLC President Bruce Reed. Steve Rosenthal, the AFL-CIO's top political operative, praises the DLC for creating "a much more open relationship than there had been before." Some Republican strategists warn that potential Democratic candidates like Mr. Lieberman, by taking peace making with party liberals too far, could miss an opportunity to carve out a distinctive market niche in the 2004 nomination fight. But the Connecticut senator, who says he has made no decision on a future race, says labor's "all-out" effort for the 2000 ticket built strong personal bonds. "I saw more of the [union officials representing] painters than I saw of my wife and children" during the campaign, Mr. Lieberman quips. Signs of closer ties between moderates and liberals will abound at the DLC's "National Conversation" in Indianapolis this week. Representatives of unions such as the Communications Workers of American and the International Association of FireFighters are attending, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, often seen as a liberal icon but now a member of the centrists' New Democrat Coalition, will speak Monday. The current DLC chairman, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, is expected to repeat his past calls for a "trigger" blocking Mr. Bush's tax cut should the budget outlook worsen. The latest edition of the DLC's magazine calls for Congress to "fix" Mr. Bush's tax cut by suspending repeal of the estate tax and tax cut for high-income earners, steps some Democratic centrists once might have lamented as "class warfare" tactics. "Everybody recognizes that we won't win back the White House if we're not working together," says Mr. Reed, domestic-policy chief in Bill Clinton's White House and now the DLC president. "For too long there was a debate over whether we have to get our core vote out or appeal to independent voters. This past election proved we have to do both." 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