RALL'S RULE OF IDEOLOGICAL BALANCE

[Khephra]

NEW YORK--Leftist or centrist? That's the big question facing Democrats in the run-up to next year's primaries. "The way to beat George Bush is not to be like him," declares former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose feisty antiwar rhetoric has caught fire among liberals and made him the current frontrunner for the nomination. Seizing the centrist standard of the Clintonites, Senator Joe Lieberman warns that a liberal standard-bearer like Dean "could lead the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a long time to come. It could be, really, a ticket to nowhere."
Who's right?

"(Democrats') major goal is to beat George W. Bush," says Dick Bennett of the American Research Group, whose latest poll shows a third of Democrats undecided in evaluating the nine declared hopefuls. Among the other two-thirds, Dean leads, followed by liberal Sen. John Kerry, Lieberman and Rep. Dick Gephardt.

Turning left means disaster, argues the centrist Democratic Leadership Council: they say Dean, who opposes the Iraq war, would be 2004's George McGovern. When DLC poster boy Bill Clinton co-opted GOP platform planks like welfare reform and deficit reduction in 1992, he defeated the first President Bush. "The Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" asks DLC chairman Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is being taken over by the far left."

History suggests that that may be a good thing.

MORE........................

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. He's absolutely right.

He's absolutely right. That's why we need a real liberal, not a conservative with one issue that appeals to liberal voters.

[DrFunkenstein]

2. Good Points About Kennedy and Goldwater

"When going up against right-wing Republican incumbents, however, Democrats do better with left-wing challengers. John F. Kennedy, an unabashed "Eastern establishment" liberal, won against an incumbent vice president--Richard Nixon--famous as a right-wing McCarthyite. The unabashedly liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned against the militantly pro-business Herbert Hoover with the mondo-leftie New Deal. In both cases, voters felt that the political pendulum had swung too far right over the previous eight years; only a liberal Democrat president could correct that imbalance."

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"Right-wing conservative Barry Goldwater might have given FDR a run for his money in 1936 but his hardcore "extremism is no vice" rhetoric spooked voters weighing him against Lyndon Johnson--who was, by 1964 standards, a centrist Southern Democrat."

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Now think to yourself, who in this race is the "Eastern establishment" liberal, and who thinks "extremism is no vice" against Bush?

[ryharrin]

3. You left out the rest of that paragraph.

He goes on to point out that bush IS a radical right wing conservative, so we do need someone that is a stark contrast from Shrub. So yes, the eastern establishment liberal is Kerry, and the extremism is no vice candidate is Dean (or even Kucinich.)

[DrFunkenstein]

4. That's Why I Clarified "Against Bush"

I absolutely agree with you that Bush is an extremist, and a dangerous one at that. Which is why I am officially ABB, but hoping that Kerry or Dean get the nod.

[ryharrin]

5. Oh, ok, I must have misread.

I'm firmly a Dean supporter, but Kerry would probably be my second favorite. Unless Gore got in, then it would be Dean, Gore, Kerry.