Posted on 12/04/2002 8:27:34 AM PST by GulliverSwift
NEW YORK (AP) - In his first major speech since the midterm elections, former President Clinton (news - web sites) said the Democratic Party needs to communicate clear, fresh ideas on the economy and national security if it wants to recover from election losses.
Clinton's remarks came during a speech Tuesday to the Democratic Leadership Council, a national network that Clinton helped found in the 1980s to steer the party toward a more centrist image.
He reflected on the mood of the party back then to look ahead to the party's next step.
"We had a strategy rooted in new ideas ... we didn't have to wake up the morning after the election and wonder what it was we were going to do," Clinton said. "We knew what we wanted to do, and we set about doing it."
He suggested the party draft unified plans on national security and reviving the economy issues on which he said Democrats floundered in their campaigns this year. Republicans increased their narrow margin of control in the House and took back the Senate in the November elections.
"Democrats have to have ideas to win," Clinton said. "Republicans will always have more money, more powerful interest groups, the fervor of right-wing emotion."
The Democratic Leadership Council's ideology of a "third way" between the traditional left and right is credited with propelling Clinton to the presidency in 1992.
The audience of about 200 people at New York University chuckled after Clinton quoted his own 1991 remark about the struggling party:
"`I've read all the people who say the Democratic party is dead, but I respectfully disagree' I said that on May 6, 1991. I believed it then, and I believe it today," Clinton said.
Much of the party's weakness now, he said, can be blamed on Democrats' failure to stand up for each other when they are attacked by other politicians and "extreme right-wing elements in the media."
"We have to be firm and clear and strong and positive and prepared to defend our positions and those who are brave enough to stick their necks out," he said.
Clinton said the party's national security plan should emphasize action like going after terrorists and planning for specific types of attacks tasks he said should take priority even over weapons inspections in Iraq.
"Al-Qaida should be our top priority," Clinton said. "Iraq is important, but the terror network is more urgent in terms of its threat to our security."
He said Democrats this year failed to highlight the idea that putting together the newly formed homeland security department should take a backseat to other national security issues.
"We didn't say it in the last election, and if we had, it would have made a difference in some of these races," Clinton said.
Meanwhile, the party's economic plan should stimulate in the short run while being responsible for the long term, he said. It also should include a balance of corporate accountability.
"What we need to do is say, 'What we're after is the abuses, but we want to hold up the entrepreneurial giant that made this economy grow in the 1990s,'" the two-term president said. "We can do it in a balanced way that 90 percent of the American people will approve of and will generate a lot of support for the Democratic party."
Might be interesting to have Freepers rate their local media and compile a list of left-leaning vs right-leaning. I'll start with the Dayton Daily News (aka Dayton Daily Democrat) in Dayton, Ohio. It is definitely a leftist publication. However, I would rate the Greene County paper as middle to right leaning.
He responded:
"If I were in the President's place I would not have gotten a chance
to resign. I would be laying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs.
Armey standing over me saying, 'How do I reload this *%@*& thing?'
Link
"We have to be firm and clear and strong and positive and prepared to defend our positions and those who are brave enough to stick their necks out," he said.
Woa, Calm down.
nobody needs you to embellish upon the facts......or simply, flay out misrepresent them.
I didn't misrepresent anything. All of us here know how Clinton feels about the conservative media, and that's what I got from reading what he said. The Washington Post quoted another statement from the same speech where Xlinton does it again:
The Republicans "have an increasingly right-wing and bellicose conservative press," he said. "And we have an increasingly docile establishment press."
I'm surprised the Post would run this statement given the fact that he was talking about them, members of the establishment.
I thought it was news for Bill Clinton to bring up conservative media, just like Al Gore and Tom Daschle did.
Pay close attention to the careful use of the word "image" in the above sentence from the story.
About 12 years ago, here in my district, we had a congressman by the name of Peter Kostmayer. One day he comes back from a big meeting down south of the new DLC (Democrat Leadership Council), chaired by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Kostmayer is apparently pretty excited, and he talks to a reporter from the Bucks County Courier Times about the meeting. Well, doesn't Kostmayer decide to "confide" in this reporter and he proceeds to reveal the new Democrat strategy for winning: Democrats must appear to move to the right, embrace middle class family values, and "distance" themselves from the fringe liberal special interest groups, while letting these groups know, covertly, that they are still on the same side and that Democrats will be working on their behalf. "They just have to stay quiet until we get elected," whispered Kostmayer.
It boiled down to a "wink and nod" complicity (and duplicity), the key being to make these radical liberal groups understand that they should lay low and just let Democrats get elected, all the while knowing that they would get taken care of if they played ball. It was unbelievable candor coming from Kostmayer, and of course it ended up in a very embarrassing Courier Times story. Naturally, many folks around here were outraged when they read the story and Kostmayer ended up losing his next re-election bid to Jim Greenwood.
When you look back at the way Clinton got elected, you can see this strategy being implemented to perfection. Remember his promise of a "middle class tax cut"? People hadn't heard anything like that from a Democrat politician in decades! A TAX CUT?!!
And remember how Clinton "dissed" Sister Soljah? Incredible! A Democrat spanking a black person!
Here, obviously, was a "new kinda Democrat", not the same goofy liberal type the Democrats usually threw up there.
Naturally, the "middle class tax cut" turned into the biggest tax increase in history, and Clinton was eventually dubbed "the first black President", as he appointed the whackiest liberals in the land to his administration (Donna Shalala, Roberta Achtenberg, Jocelyn Elders, etc., etc.) and embraced every goofball leftist cause under the sun.
The point is, Clinton and the Democrats will never change their stripes. They are, and will always be, socialist scumbags who need class envy, racial victimhood and distrust, frightened seniors, and legions of parasites in order to try to win office. The only thing they can do - - and absolutely will do - - is try to find smoother, better liars to run for office. Clinton is their model.
In the meantime, the Democrats will continue to do whatever they can to create as many parasites (their "base" constituents) as possible by attacking traditional America and its families.
Regards,
LH
All of this is a positive thing, though: it shows that it is mostly fashion and conformism. When the tide starts to turn they will jump on the bandwagon. They will be just as silly but they will be the left's problem and not ours.
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