"When Liberals Were Organized"

[applegrove]

When Liberals Were Organized

By Julian E. Zelizer at the American Prospect

http://www.prospect.org/article/when-liberals-were-organized

"SNIP.................


When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, one of Speaker Newt Gingrich’s earliest moves was to end the public funding for the Democratic Study Group (DSG), a caucus of liberal Democrats that had been created in 1959. It was one of Gingrich’s shrewdest maneuvers. As Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, a staunch conservative then and now, wrote in an internal memo, “The demise of the DSG severely damages the power structure of the House Democrats.”

Roberts was right. The DSG is almost forgotten today, but its history suggests lessons for the current generation of Democrats. Since 1994, congressional liberals have failed to replicate a powerful, independent organization like the Democratic Study Group. They have been dependent on a House leadership that is sometimes but not always sympathetic to their goals. The closest thing to a DSG, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has been a pale imitation of its predecessor, a fragile informal coalition that has lacked the same kind of leadership, money, publications, communications strategy, or clout. As liberals prepare for the start of the 114th Congress and hope for stronger Democratic returns in 2016, they would benefit from looking back at the history of the DSG to see just how much a vibrant and robust caucus can offer.

....................

From its founding, the DSG lobbied the Democratic leadership to appoint liberals to serve on influential committees, to support procedural reforms that would weaken committee chairmen, and to back legislation to expand the role of the federal government. The DSG regularly assembled task forces to develop legislation on key issues. The leaders created their own whip system, with 12 Democrats assigned to check on promised votes. They produced and disseminated first-rate research for members and the press, exposing conservative tactics and offering weekly legislative updates on their key issues. In the committee era of Congress, this kind of information was both novel and crucial, since so much of the legislative process was secretive and committee chairs retained tight control over staff and data. The political scientist James Sundquist described the DSG as “the most elaborately organized ‘party within a party’ in the history of the House of Representatives.”

When the Rules Committee bottled up a civil rights bill in 1960 (though it was extremely mild), members of the DSG sought to force it out of committee through a “discharge petition,” a process requiring 218 votes. Chairman Smith was counting on the fact that the signatures on a discharge petition were kept secret. Engaging in guerrilla warfare, the DSG leaked the names of those who had signed the petition to the New York Times so that civil rights organizations could pressure the non-supporters. The strategy worked, and the bill made it through committee and was passed by Congress. “The importance of the Democratic Study Group,” wrote Robert Remini, the late historian of the House, “cannot be emphasized too strongly in the ongoing struggle to safeguard civil rights.”




...................SNIP"