Liberal Oasis Thinks The DLC Won’t Be A Problem

Liberal Oasis --

It’s old news that the rise of Howard Dean riles the DLC.

The new news from the DLC meeting is that the olive branches are slowly emerging, as indicated in this MSNBC.com report.

DLC leader Bruce Reed, referring to Dean’s comments at the recent NOW forum, sought to lower the temperature of the spat (which Reed and the DLC started):

We’re grateful that he defended us to Al Sharpton. We’re not looking to have this become personal.

Other DLCers defended Dean on the issues.

Ohio Senate candidate Eric Fingerhut:

His health care proposals are excellent…I also appreciate his approach to budget balancing.

And PA Gov. Ed Rendell:

You can be against a particular war and still be strong on national security.

Most importantly, DLCer Dan Kogovsek said if Dean’s the nominee, even though he’s worried about the result, “we’d support him.”

That is key.

As LiberalOasis has stressed, George McGovern didn’t lose because of ideology.

But because the party's moderate-conservative wing deserted him (in addition McGovern’s own non-ideological missteps.)

Therefore, if the DLC and other moderates stand by a Dean nomination, then Dean will not be McGovern redux.

The Liberal Oasis also caught the Sunday talk shows I did (except I switched to CNN and CSPAN instead of FAUX NEWS) and watched Wolfowitz try to defend his policy. Even Tim Russert caught Wolfowitz: So if you don’t have weapons of mass destruction. And you don’t have a direct link to terrorism. And you do have the third [liberating Iraqis], which the administration has been emphasizing, but you yourself said it’s not a rationale to go to war. What now is the rationale for having gone to war?