Dean and the Democratic Conservatives

[kent_allard_jr]

“We can change the way we talk,” Dean intoned to lusty cheers, “but we need to remain people of deep conviction!”

That's Howard Dean, quoted in John Heilemann's article in New York magazine. I haven't said much about Dean's campaign for DNC, because I really don't know if he's the right guy for the job, but statements like these always appealed to me. The Democratic Party may have to change positions on many issues -- party conservatives are perfectly correct in that respect -- but there's no point in doing so unless we can convince ourselves that these are the correct positions to take. The DLC and their ilk, all too often, seemed to make purely instrumental arguments ("we have to do this if we want to win elections"), and when Democrats took their advice it seemed like crass opportunism or cringing wishy-washiness. Unfortunately, after eight years of Clinton's see-sawing, Democrats are left with two lousy choices: Run as liberals and be denounced as crazy left-wingers, or run as centrists and be called wafflers and flip-floppers. Ultimately we have to review the positions we take, but if we can't convince ourselves that our old positions were the wrong ones we have to stick by them.

Comments

[avram]

Our problems have very little to do with the actual positions we take (which polls usually show are supported by the majority of voters) and a lot to do with how we talk about them, or don't, and the fact that the right somehow gets to define all the terms of the argument.