The Heart of the Party
    The Journal Enquirer | Editorial

    Friday 28 July 2006

    Some people say the battle between Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination is a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

    And some people say the battle between Hillary Clinton and whoever emerges as the anti-Hillary in 2008 for the Democratic presidential nomination (Gore? Feingold?) is the same battle, only for higher stakes.

    There probably won't be a definitive moment in this contest.

    But make no mistake, there is a battle raging for the soul of the Democratic Party.

    And it is not really a battle of fanatics or ideologues versus grown-ups and moderates.

    Not at all.

    It's not even a battle of professionals in politics versus amateurs. Howard Dean is a professional politician and so is Al Gore.

    And one could argue that Bill Frist is an amateur of the most dangerous
kind.

    The battle is not about bloggers or the people who read and respond to bloggers. The former reflect movement in opinion as much as they shape it, and the latter are indeed often rabid and intolerant, but so are the listeners to talk radio. And 25 years ago people were wringing their hands about talk radio. It's called democracy. Al Frankin and Rush Limbaugh are both part of it.

    The blogger and the talk radio host are both direct descendants of Ben Franklin. They are practicing free speech.

    Not all free speech is enlightened and it never has been.

    No, the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party is the fight between those who want to go back to Franklin Roosevelt and those who want to be corporate Democrats, in sync with banks and large corporations and the greater money interests of the land. It is the battle between those who believe in a party of issues versus those who think any party is a collection of interests. It is the battle of the peaceniks and civil libertarians who wish to use American power, at home and in the world, for justice but are skeptical about the potential abuses and limits of power, and those who trust power, whether it be held by a president, the NSA or FBI, or Wall Street.

    There are those who see how power corrupts and those who see nothing of the kind, because they have power, and they feel fine.

    What establishment Democrats fear about the FDR Democrats is not that they will lose an election or lose a war (the establishment Democrats have done those two things very well on their own), but that the new New Dealers will, in challenging power, change the actors as well as the rules. The Liebermans, and Clintons, and Schumers, and Dodds of American politics are not looking out for their party. They are looking out for themselves.

    This is why so many establishment Connecticut Democrats are working for Joe Lieberman today. (And there are more than a few who say they are working for him but are really sitting on their hands.) Not because they believe in Joe Lieberman, but because they fear new blood. They are old blood, and they would rather the body politic be weak than transfused with a life force they know they cannot control.