The Black Informant

(usnews.com) As moderate Democrats assembled over a long weekend at the Democratic Leadership Council’s “National Conversation” in Nashville, eight familiar faces were missing—those of all of the party’s presidential contenders.

The closest thing to a candidate was a spouse. Former President Bill Clinton appeared before the group of more than 300 moderate lawmakers and other supporters Monday, but his wife was nowhere to be found even though she spoke at last year’s event and is chair of the group’s American Dream Initiative.

The candidates’ snubbing of the centrist Democratic nonprofit group seemed bound to yield speculation that the 2008 front-runners and the Democratic Party in general are moving decidedly to the left and that the DLC’s influence might be waning. While not attending the National Conversation, many of the candidates—including Hillary Clinton—are slated to appear this coming weekend in Chicago at the YearlyKos conference, hosted by a slew of liberal bloggers.

A handful of candidates also attended the progressive “Take Back America” conference in June, where candidates Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, and others roused the progressive and antiwar crowd with equally progressive and antiwar messages. Clinton, who had been booed at the same event the year before for her Iraq war vote, was more warmly received, reflecting a perception that she’s moving to the left in addressing the war.

While it’s hard to deny that candidates are rousing the liberal base, Marc Dunkelman, who runs the blog on the DLC-sponsored Ideas Primary website, writes that this is history merely repeating itself and doesn’t spell death for the DLC. Pandering to more liberal or conservative primary voters and then moving to the center is the way presidential politics are played, he says. After a nominee is selected in the primaries, he (or she) then moves to the center. Dunkelman reminds readers that Al Gore and John Kerry were no-shows at DLC National Conversations in 1999 and 2003, respectively, but both worked hard to gain the DLC’s support after winning the party’s nomination. (more…)

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