The New Democrats and the Return to Power by Al From

Author:Al From
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

Twelve

The Pre-Campaign

1991

In the May 1991 issue we changed the name of our magazine from the Mainstream Democrat to the New Democrat. Announcing the change, editor Bruce Reed wrote on the inside cover: “Our mission has not changed: to rouse, inspire, goad, provoke, and incite Democrats to chart a new course for our party and the country. . . . But frankly, we think some people misunderstood the message we were trying to convey. We like the name New Democrat because it leaves no doubt as to our purpose. We’re not trying to move the Democratic Party to the center; we want to move it forward.”

Three weeks after Cleveland, on May 29, Reed, Linda Moore, Deb Smulyan, and I met with Bill Clinton in the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock to discuss our strategy for the summer. DLC supporters were ablaze with excitement. They wanted Clinton to run for president.

Reed and Moore, who had been through the 1988 campaign with Gore and Gephardt, respectively, wrote memos listing the tough questions he’d have to answer before he decided to take the plunge. I believed the chances were good that he would run, and I wanted to focus on the 100 days we had left before Clinton would have to resign the DLC chairmanship to begin the campaign. I didn’t mince words.

“With Cleveland behind us, we need to move quickly to take full advantage of the momentum we gained there and to lay as much groundwork as possible for a 1992 presidential run by you or another DLC type candidate,” I wrote in a memo I handed him during our meeting.

Our goals for the summer should be twofold: (a) to make this movement so hot that a candidate coming from it will have momentum getting into the race, and (b) to get you into the states that will be most useful to you should you choose to run for President.

For you, the next 100 days are crucial. You’re hot property now, and you need to take full advantage of that. You need to be prepared to launch a full-scale campaign by the end of the summer. Whatever you decide, you should use the next three months to build the DLC movement and your own political stature at the same time. As I’ve said before, the DLC gives you the opportunity to turn Arkansas into a mega-state. This summer is the time to take advantage of it.

Linda asked him for five 2- or 3-day blocks on weekdays for trips to California, Texas, and key primary states. He agreed. The trips would include the typical elements of campaign trips—meetings with supporters, usually at chapter events, meetings with donors, and a heavy dose of editorial board and press meetings. But we decided that these trips would include something else: events to put the spotlight on ideas in the New Choice resolutions that we talked about in Cleveland, events that would show our ideas in action.

Even before we hit the road for the DLC, battle lines began to be drawn.

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