I’m attempting to make heads or tails out of Noam Scheiber’s article in the New York Times chronicling the rise, decline, and fall of the Democratic Leadership Council. Left Blogosphere denizens are chortling. The center has moved left; the DLC is old news.
The source of my confusion: what fall? What discomfiture?
Here’s a fairly recent list of prominent DLC members.
Rahm Emmanuel, the primary architect of the Democrats’ 2006 Congressional victory is a member of the DLC.
Does anyone really doubt that, barring some act of God or gaffe of unimaginable scope, Hillary Clinton will secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2008? Hillary Clinton is a prominent member of the DLC.
Senate committtee chairmen Christopher Dodd, Byron Dorgan, Max Baucus, and Dianne Feinstein are all DLC members.
Just what downfall are we talking about here?
The question I would ask is how much influence does the organization have as a group? What are it’s goals and is there support and progress toward achieving them? I don’t think it matters, so much, who is a member and if they are individually influential – but, are they pooling their influence toward some common agenda?
I don’t have any answers – I’m not affiliated with any groups in either party.
“Just what downfall are we talking about here?”
Maybe the “downfall” that comes from not bending down to kiss Kos’ ring. Because God knows, if you are not hot stuff at the trendy liberal blogs you are just nothing.
Some folks might do better if they expanded their web browsing.
Seeing your posting, thought you might be interested in the DLC’s response, which I posted on our new website, http://www.ideasprimary.com. Hope you’ll take a look.
I think the relevant piece of info that you’re missing is that Hillary won’t be addressing the DLC conference this year, despite a long track record of previously doing so.
That said, I think Yglesias is also right that this has less to do with a substantive policy shift and more to do with the DLC brand itself becoming less valuable.