Picked up the book Reinventing Democrats by Kenneth Baer. It's about how Al From and others founded the Democratic Leadership Committee and brought the democrats back from political oblivion. There's a subchapter titled, ""The Politics of Evasion" which talks about a document produced by the Progressive Policy Institute in 1989 after Dukakis's loss to Bush. It's an interesting paper on how the dems lost their way and what had changed from the days of Kennedy through Carter and into their awful decade of the 80's. It was the DLC and the PPI that helped Clinton center the party and lead it into the economic prosperity that is now in a hiccup. The book goes into the history of the New Democratic movement in greater detail, but it seems on first blush that "The Politics of Evasion" was the paper that served as the rallying cry that shook the party out of its delusion. A self-reinforcing delusion (the paper points out) that it seems the party (especially here in NYC) is in danger of slipping back into. On the national scale, though, it seems Tom Daschle has taken up the mantle of the middle and is going to see how far right he can push W. He had a good first week, but as the budget spending package moves forward and the coming conference on campaign finance, his abilities as a leader will be soundly tested.
- posted by levinson @ 7/02/2001 02:05:00 PM