Mr. From’s Dreams

Robert Borosage, Co-Director of the Campaign For America's Future, writes about the divisive DLC in Tom Paine

This coming election will be framed around two overriding national questions and one universal personal challenge. To beat George Bush, a Democrat must lay out not simply the horrors of the Bush economic record -- people already know it stinks -- but a cogent strategy to get this economy going. And he or she must offer not simply a critique of pre-emptive unilateralism now going dangerously wrong in Iraq, but a more compelling strategy for making Americans safer. And finally, any candidate must show Americans that he or she is "presidential," a plausible president. For all of his many well-advertised sins, Mr. Clinton passed that hurdle in 1992, in part by his indomitable grit in the face of adversity.

From and Reed want a different test, an ideological litmus test. If you opposed the Iraqi war, as Graham, Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun did, you are by their definition Unelectable. If you support a big health care plan, as Gephardt does, you are Unelectable. Too liberal on affirmative action or the death penalty, Unelectable. Rather than allow the party’s voters to choose their standard bearer, From and Reed want to mark some with a scarlet "U" going into the primaries.

This is simply silly. What Democrats need is a leader who isn’t afraid to take on Bush and present a clear alternative to Americans. That candidate isn’t likely to come from the DLC. From and Reed love to trash the "McGovern-Mondale" wing of the Democratic Party. But their favored candidate for the president -- Joe Lieberman -- combines social liberalism with moral righteousness with a pledge to raise your taxes to balance the budget. The last candidate to run on that torrid combination was none other than Mr. Mondale himself.