2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

And what gathering storm? I think you're misreading this one. I read very little about "radical single interest groups that make up its left wing." If anything, the candidates seem more united in standing against many Bush policies as a group. I have yet to read anything about them or from them that can be construed as a vicious attack. With nine candidates it stands to reason that they will be winnowing themselves out - everybody knows that.

Blatham,

Have you read Paul Johnston's "Modern Times"?

According to Maureen Dowd in today's NYTimes, the Republicans call John Edwards "the Breck girl"! Democrat though I am, I think they've nailed that one!

Ruling May Open Finance Loophole
By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published on Monday, June 9, 2003 by the Baltimore Sun

Rallying the Left
by Jules Witcover

WASHINGTON - Liberal America in exile stirred up a verbal storm against both President Bush and Democratic centrists here last week in a three-day conference to "take back America," as the sponsoring progressive group, Campaign for America's Future, put it.

Seven of the nine declared candidates for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination addressed the estimated 1,500 attendees in what may have been the largest and most boisterous gathering of the party's left wing in three decades or more.

Over the three days, more than 120 speakers and panelists drawn from Congress, organized labor, academia and a host of traditional and Internet grass-roots organizations made forceful arguments for confronting the Bush administration head-on.

In the process, they explicitly or implicitly also took on the party's major centrist organization, the Democratic Leadership Council, elaborating on criticism that the centrists offer the voters "Bush Lite" instead of a clear-cut contrast with the Republican Party.

Several of the presidential aspirants, notably including former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, trotted out the standard liberal line that the last thing the country needs is two Republican parties. The way to get elected in 2004, Mr. Dean said, "is not to be like the Republicans. The way to win is to stand up to them and fight."

The tone of many of the speeches and panel discussions struck the same notion, especially in attacking what conference co-organizer Robert Borosage called "the radical and rightist agenda of the Bush administration." He challenged the attendees to emulate the example of 1970s conservatives who created think tanks and political action committees and took political control of the country.

One of a number of new recruits to the progressive movement, Wes Boyd, a young Internet innovator, told how his creation, MoveOn.org, raised more than $4 million for its causes and generated 440,000 hits to its Internet site opposing the war in Iraq.

At the same time, the conference had the look and feel of the passionate protests of the 1960s against the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon. It was fired not only by opposition to the Iraq invasion but also by an open and fierce anger and hostility toward Mr. Bush, which is not reflected in the public opinion polls.

Although one Democratic member of Congress, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, ignited the crowd with perhaps the most fiery speech of the conference, the party's congressional leadership came in for its share of criticism for not standing up the Republican president.

The fervor exhibited over the three days clearly was a tonic for the party's progressives, and many participants said the speeches - especially the unvarnished assaults on Mr. Bush - sent them home feeling that he might not be as invulnerable for re-election as the polls suggest. Prominent Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg offered findings to that effect.

One veteran of the progressive political wars, Mark Raskin, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, said he believed the conference could supply the spark for a resurgence of liberal activism last seen on a broad scale in the 1968 campaigns of Sens. Eugene J. McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy.

If it is channeled into the fight for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Dean, who got a rousing reception, could be the greatest beneficiary in light of his opposition to the Iraq invasion and his bare-knuckles assaults on Mr. Bush. These activists, though not a majority in their party, can be counted on to be aggressive foot soldiers in the winter presidential primaries.

Mr. Raskin acknowledges that the president's wide popularity in the country at large, based in part on his role as a wartime president and in part on his outgoing personality, will be difficult for any Democrat to overcome.

But these assembled liberals in exile reminded themselves they are not alone. And with 17 months until the next presidential election, there is still time for them to light a fire under a Democratic Party that needs a transfusion of the energy and commitment that was displayed at their rally to "take back America."

Progressives' Conference Highlights Democrats' Split
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page A06

The Democratic presidential candidates brought their best attack lines against President Bush to an audience of progressives here yesterday. But it was an attack on the party's centrists that brought one of the biggest ovations and exposed the fissures Democrats will have to overcome before they can think about winning in 2004.

The three-day conference sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future has revealed a resurgent liberal wing of the Democratic Party, energized by what its members see as Bush's close ties to corporate America and, for many, by his decision to launch the war against Iraq.

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The Austin American Statesman was very Dr. Dean-comes-to-Texas-ish, causing the reporter to bury the lead:

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We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Howard Dean might win both Iowa and New Hampshire; Howard Dean is the only major candidate in the race who talks like both a governor AND a real person from outside Washington; Howard Dean is really using the Internet to fundraise and organize (it ain't just hype...); Howard Dean connects regularly with Democratic audiences in a way that the others can do only sporadically; Howard Dean has a long record of policy thoughtfulness and a capacity to connect it to the real lives of real people that governors do best (and is, dare we say it, Clintonesque) ; and he evinces real anger at George Bush's polices.

The dirty little (not-so) secret of political strategists of both parties is how hard it is to get people interested in, and emotional about, politics. Howard Dean is doing that, and he is bringing new (and young) people into the process. In a crowded field, that is a good thing.