ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
Democrats must run from the middle
December 9, 2004
This Saturday in Orlando, at a meeting of state party chairs, a parade of potential candidates are going to be making the case for why they should be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.
I don't have a candidate. But I do have a litmus test: Anyone raising the idea that the party needs to "move to the middle" should immediately be escorted out of the building. Better yet, a trap door should open beneath them, sending them plummeting down an endless chute into electoral purgatory – which is exactly where the party will be permanently headquartered if it continues to adopt such a strategy.
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Ever since the election, Democratic leaders have been crawling over each other in a mad scramble to the middle... "Things are accomplished in the middle. We have to work toward the middle. And I think that that's clear." That was new Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on "Meet the Press" this weekend... Last week's meeting of the 21-strong Democratic Governors Association was similarly an orgy of centrist groping, best summed up by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said, "This, for us, is our moment to push an agenda ... that is centrist and that speaks to where most people are."
If Gov. Granholm, a rising star in the party, really thinks the center is where the majority of people were located this past election, the Democrats are in even worse trouble than we think. Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give – from "the center" – before they realize it's not a very fruitful place?
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That's why the DNC race is so important. The party needs a chairman able to drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the ballot box in many conservative parts of the country. Just how potent is revealed in "The Democrats' Da Vinci Code," a brilliant upcoming American Prospect cover story by David Sirota that shows how a growing number of Democrats in some of the reddest regions in America have racked up impressive, against-the-grain wins by framing a progressive economic platform in terms of values and right vs. wrong. These are not "left" ideas; they are good ideas.
More..
Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041209/news_lz2e9huffingt.html Huffington can be reached via e-mail at arianna@ariannaonline.com.
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