Centrist Dems Close Up Shop
The Democratic Leadership Council may have prevailed in the battle for offices and appointments, but it lost the battle of ideas.
Had the DLC closed its doors in 1997, that would have made perfect sense. They had nominated, elected and re-elected their man Bill Clinton. They had moved the Democratic party toward free trade and financial deregulation. Wall Street financiers and Silicon Valley moguls had displaced trade unions as the party's most important funding source.
Mission accomplished, or so you'd think. But in 2011? Today's Democratic party is like the invasion of the body snatchers: the Clinton people get all the big jobs. But their minds have been altered in the interim. The DLC has prevailed in the battle for offices and appointments. It lost the battle of ideas.
In 2011, the Democrats find themselves institutionally and intellectually back where they were a generation ago: endorsing government intervention inside particular industries, government aid even to particular companies and technologies.
So this is not a story of an organization working itself out of a job. The DLC is closing because its mission has been rejected - and rejected by some of the very people who once believed in it.