A turf/power war is being waged between Deaniacs and
Clintonites to decide who will control the future of
the
Democratic Party
Ryan Lizza
The division in the party over Dean is less about
ideology than about power. Three years after Bill
Clinton left office, he and Hillary still control what
remains of a Democratic establishment. Terry McAuliffe,
the chairman of the Democratic National Committee
(DNC), was installed by Clinton. Most of the powerful
new fund-raising groups, known as 527s, and the new
think tanks, such as the Center for American Progress,
are run by the best and brightest of the Clinton
administration. As National Journal noted in a detailed
look at what it called "Hillary Inc.," the senator's
network of fund-raising organizations "has begun to
assume a quasi-party status." And some of the best
Clinton talent is heavily invested in non-Dean
campaigns, especially Joe Lieberman's (Mandy Grunwald
and Mark Penn), John Edwards's (Bruce Reed), and Wesley
Clark's (Bruce Lindsey, Eli Segal, and Mickey Kantor).
Dean, by contrast, has come to represent the party's
anti-establishment forces. While the other candidates,
especially former self-styled front-runner John Kerry,
started the campaign by wooing party leaders, Dean
built a grassroots army first--in part by bashing D.C.
Democrats and their disastrous 2002 election strategy
-- and is only now leveraging his fund-raising power to
win over establishment types. No Democrats closely
associated with the Clintons are working for the Dean
campaign. In fact, it's hard to find a Clintonite who
speaks favorably of the former Vermont governor. This
evident schism is not just about Dean's opposition to
the war -- or even his prospects in the general
election. It's a turf war to decide who will control
the future of the party.
This struggle is playing out in several of the party's
organizations and constituencies. Indeed, Dean's
high-profile labor endorsements -- the cornerstone of
the tipping-point argument -- actually emphasize the
party's divisions. Andy Stern, the leader of seiu, is
to the labor movement what Dean is to the Democratic
Party -- an anti-establishment reformer. When the
afl-cio failed to adopt reforms recommended by Stern
earlier this year, he started a breakaway organization
-- the New Unity Partnership -- with several other
unions that is now seen as a major challenge to the
afl-cio establishment. And seiu is a lot like the Dean
campaign.
It's the fastest-growing union and one of the most
democratically run. It's obsessed with organizing new
members to whom it imparts a message of empowerment,
unlike the more centralized afl-cio. Stern and seiu,
with their emphasis on health care instead of
globalization, are the future of the labor movement in
the United States, while the industrial unions, which
back ***** Gephardt and have been bleeding members for
years as they fight an uphill battle against free
trade, are the past. seiu's backing of Dean isn't a nod
from the establishment -- it's a protest against it.
The Dean split is mirrored in the centrist New
Democrat movement as well. No organization has been
more hostile to Dean than the Democratic Leadership
Council (DLC). In May, Al From and Bruce Reed, the
chairman and the president of the DLC -- the group that
served as a policy springboard for Clinton's
rise--wrote their now-infamous manifesto warning that
nominating Dean, whom they view as hopelessly
left-wing, would bring certain defeat for Democrats in
2004. But, for months, another prominent New Democrat
has been making a different case. Simon Rosenberg, who
cut his teeth on Clinton's 1992 campaign and now heads
the New Democrat Network (NDN), sees Dean as the most
innovative and potentially transformative Democrat
since Clinton himself. Like Stern, Rosenberg is a bit
of a rebel within his own movement. He once worked for
From, but his organization is now challenging the DLC
and is becoming an increasingly influential player in
Democratic politics. Unlike the more top-down DLC, NDN
is building a grassroots network of donors and has
become a key player in the new world of 527s. "NDN has
not endorsed Dean or embraced him, but we have given
our opinion that this is a serious campaign that is
going to change the party," says Rosenberg.
As the party's split into Deaniacs and anti-Dean
Clintonites unfolds, one of the most intriguing
subplots concerns the machinations of Gore. Immediately
after the Florida recount was decided in 2000, Gore's
senior aides were purged from the DNC and Clinton's
were installed. Some ex-Gore staffers are still bitter
about the coup, and several express admiration for what
Dean is doing.
The two men have a strained history, but lately Gore
is sounding more and more like Dean. His three most
important speeches since leaving office have been harsh
attacks on President Bush's Iraq policy and his abuse
of the Patriot Act. The two most recent were delivered
before MoveOn.org, the Internet network for grassroots
liberals, which is overwhelmingly pro-Dean. Some
suspect that, just as Dean went outside the Beltway and
built his own high-tech grassroots army to bypass the
sclerotic D.C. establishment, so is Gore. It's not a
bad way for him to exercise influence in the party, if
he wants to make a potential endorsement more powerful
or if he still harbors hopes of running for president
in 2008. "The rest of the Democratic infrastructure is
controlled by the Clintons," says one top Democrat.
Perhaps Gore would not endorse the former Vermont
governor (though Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager,
says "they talk relatively regularly"). Regardless,
he'll have to choose sides, because the Democrats are
splitting into two parties: the party of Clinton, and
the party of Dean.
Ryan Lizza is the White House correspondent for The New
Republic.
© 2003, The New Republic
Posted by Permission
www.jewishworldreview.com/1103/lizza.html
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